Alright, picture this: you start up your favorite FPS (let’s say TF2, for the heck of it), scroll through the character classes, prepare to select a sniper… …and find that there are already 20 other guys playing the exact. same. role. That’s more or less me: I’m usually responsible enough to try and keep multiplayer teams balanced, but when it comes to single player games, if something has a scope on it, it’s a fair bet that I’ll be using it to cap punkarse NPC bitches from a camouflaged position at some ludicrous distance.
Having said that, I’m in the market for a new game with good sniping/sharpshooting. If it helps, I loved the pseudo-realism of the Hitman games: enough real-world concerns to make sharpshooting significantly more challenging than close-range ownery, but enough Hollywood make-believe to keep the whole thing fun. The Battlefield games were alright, but they got pretty repetitive after a while… and the original Tribes was absolute genius, if only because it combined huge, open-ended maps with a system of locomotion that made you fast enough to change position every few shots without spending hours on the run.
Operation Flashpoint was good for that (similar to Battlefield, only bloody unforgiving) , you had to lead your targets and account for distance. The dragunov had the fiddly manual sights just like in real life where you had to measure your target on a scale to estimate distance.
Unfortunately it’s more of a battlesim with vechicles and you’ll be lucky to find any multiplayer games since it’s too old, so I’m not too sure if it’s up your alley.
It was made about 5-8 years ago on the PC, so should be cheap. There was a sequel called “Armed Assault”, but I haven’t played it.
I don’t know if there’s an active community of people still playing Vietcong but that game had great single and multi player. It had a very wide variety of weapons and great jungle environments especially for its time. If I recall correctly there could only be ONE sniper on each team, unlike all the games now like Battlefield (which I also like) with a million snipers all shooting each other.
Wow, thanks for all of the great replies! I’ll certainly look into some of these later today! I’ve heard great things about the Ghost Recon series but I’ve never played it, and Vietcong sounds like it fell through the cracks just enough for me to have missed it… so I’m excited to try both out.
And I should have mentioned, I like all of the games I mentioned in the OP, but the only REAL sniper game is, of course, Duck Hunt.
(And, of course, the only real way to play Duck Hunt is with a mirror, facing away from the television.)
America’s Army is free and makes a semi-reasonable attempt to simulate the M24 and M82. I recall one game where I was looking through the scope, trying to find the last OPFOR when I heard a weapon cocking behind me. Without even thinking, I whirled and plugged him, much to the amusement of the people watching.
Ooh, I really like Deus Ex! I haven’t used the sniper rifle in ages, though: after the first playthrough, I’ve been trying to beat each level without anything but the baton and crossbow.
I’m playing Far Cry Instinct: Predator on the XBox360. The large redraw distances and think underbrush on open ended maps really allow you to chose any number of options - diving in with literally both guns blazing, patiently crawling through the bush to stab your enemy from behind, setting Viet Cong style booby traps and of course reaching out and touching someone 100m away with Ole Bessy.
Battlefield 2 is pretty good and it’s balanced so that everyone really can’t play as a sniper (you’ll be quickly overrun). Best part: When you unlock the Barrett .50 you can shoot through the canopy of a helicopter. There’s nothing better in online play to drill one through the pilot’s head, and see the copter go out of control with the copilot having know idea what the fuck just happened.
I’ll put in another vote for America’s Army. Free download.
You have to score well on basic riflery to get the sniper at all, and there is a maximum number of sniper slots on each side, that scales as the teams grow.
The stun baton or regular one? Does hacking turrets count, or is this strickly a no-kill playthrough? I tried that once, but I quit after the first level when letting Gunter out made Paul yell at me.
The stun baton, and I don’t think I’ve ever hacked a turret. This is a “no-kill within reason” playthrough, and I do keep at least one lethal weapon in my inventory for the few unavoidable fights. (Gunter, for instance, is very technically avoidable: I believe you’re supposed to be forced into fighting him, but a friend and I once managed to tiptoe around the terrain that triggers his script.)
The only thing I don’t like about the mission (aside from the last part where the helicopter comes in on Expert) is that there’s really one shot that you’re taking in the “real” sniper mode. I’d have liked more of that, but if they did it, it’d have probably felt gimmicky.
I’m still stuck on the very last part in that mission.
