PC

  News 
  Reviews
  Previews
  Hardware
  Interviews
  All Features

Areas

  3DS
  Android
  iPad
  iPhone
  Mac
  PC
  PlayStation 3
  PlayStation 4
  Switch
  Vita
  Wii U
  Xbox 360
  Xbox One
  Media
  Archives
  Search
  Contests

 

Sniper: Art of Victory

Score: 55%
ESRB: Mature
Publisher: CI Games
Developer: CI Games
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1
Genre: First Person Shooter/ Action/ Shooter

Graphics & Sound:

Being that Sniper: Art of Victory isn't exactly a big budget, triple-A title, it's hard to fault the developers over at City Interactive for lacking the pizzazz present in most games on the PC today. For what it's worth, the visuals are passable and get the job done, but don't expect anything more. The environments tend to represent a war-ridden area fairly well and the character models actually represent their World War II affiliations without a problem. It should also be noted that this game doesn't support large graphical resolutions, and while you can choose different aspect-ratio resolutions, the game footnotes that the game is best played at 1024x768.

The audio of Sniper: Art of Victory isn't all that bad, most of the time. Every shot of the sniper rifle shines with audio fidelity, and enemy fire sounds equally as good. Explosions also ring true, although most are not as explosive in nature as they should be. Grenades tend to be a bit flat in audio and visual splashes; moreover, tank explosions also fall flat. Where this title falls off the map in terms of auditory grace is in the in-game enemy voiceovers. It seems that all of the enemies are either chipmunks or have been neutered, because the high-pitched vocals are absolutely ridiculous; whether this was intentional or a bug in the game, it is unacceptable.


Gameplay:

Sniper: Art of Victory, for the most part, plays just as its title suggests. You are a WWII sniper on the side of the alliance against the Nazi regime, and it is up to you to lead your team through hostile enemy territory. Along the way, you will have to infiltrate enemy lines and take out your adversaries who stand in key positions so that your approaching army can safely pass. A number of enemies await, from snipers on hillsides and building tops, to ground patrols that will take you out if you get too close.

As its name implies, the best way to take out the enemy is from a distance with your sniper rifle. During your progression, the in-game map will update (although slowly sometimes) with current objectives and sniper points for you to gain a better view of your targets. You can certainly go running into situations with one of your other guns blazing, but this is usually a death trap, requiring a restart from the last auto-save. As a sniper, however, you'll do well to pay attention to your surroundings, generally looking for high locations to get a better view of the area.

Sniping does require you to be precise, yet the aiming (especially in the harder difficulty setting) doesn't actually feel all that precise. While looking through your scope, you will see different meters that represent your accuracy. The first is the wind, which tends to flare up at the most inopportune times, yet is still somewhat predictable. The second source of instability is that of the heart rate. If you happen to sprint before activating your scope, you'll be unable to control for a set amount of time. The final stat that affects your shot is the distance. From close range, picking off enemies is no problem, but from afar, you really have to account for a drop in the trajectory of your bullet.

While the gameplay is actually entertaining, it's not to say that Sniper: Art of Victory isn't without its problems. There were a few times when I actually got stuck on geometry and invisible walls, causing me to restart from my last save. Switching weapons also caused problems. While it felt like the mouse wheel scrolling was backwards, the main issue was that pressing the numbers on the keyboard didn't work the way it should.


Difficulty:

There are two difficulty settings in Sniper: Art of Victory, and changing from the easier Recruit setting to the more difficult Veteran setting is fairly drastic. The truth is that nothing in the game really seems to change when you up the ante other than that getting shot likely hurts more. Where the difficulty truly lies while playing as a Veteran is that you no longer have the trajectory marker that is shown while sniping within the Recruit setting.

You see, all of those previously mentioned scope meters come into play even more in the higher difficulty setting. Instead of seeing exactly where the wind will take your bullet, you'll have to use your judgment by looking at the meter as it goes left and right. Likewise, keeping your character calm and knowing how much your bullet will fall based on the distance meter will be the only way to take clean one-shot kills. On paper, it doesn't sound all that bad, but in practice picking off bad guys this way is truly an art form in itself.

Other than these things, Sniper: Art of Victory's difficulty doesn't change all that much. In fact, the enemy A.I. is downright stupid much of the time. Sometimes they don't react to gunfire or their buddy being dropped in fairly close proximity to them. This doesn't happen all of the time, but enough to make note of it. These enemies also walk very predictable patterns, and are always in the same positions upon restarting.


Game Mechanics:

Sniper: Art of Victory's control scheme is okay, but not great. The positive is that you can remap any of your controls to match your preferred style, which makes shooting, running, crouching, and interacting easy as pie. However, after playing other first person shooters, Sniper falls a bit flat in this department as well. Unfortunately, a simplistic control that is lacking is that you can't immediately run from a crouched or prone position, which can cost crucial time in sticky situations.

Of course, most of the time you do want to avoid these close-up encounters anyway. Sniping is the name of the game, but the long-range mechanics don't feel all that precise at times either. When you do get a perfect shot off, however, you'll be treated to an animated cut-scene of your bullet flying through the air and hitting your target for a one-shot kill.

Sniper: Art of Victory is a decent game that delivers a fun experience. While the Recruit mode doesn't necessarily feel all that challenging (don't get me wrong, I was a casualty of war many times), the Veteran mode will offer up some tough replay value. Sniper: Art of Victory may be worth a look for those who want a break from their typical FPS games, but it may not fulfill everyone's itchy trigger finger.


-Woody, GameVortex Communications
AKA Shane Wodele

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows 98/ME/2000/XP; DirectX 9.0 or higher (included on DVD); 1.6 GHz CPU; 512MB of RAM; ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce3 class graphics card (or better recommended); 16-bit DirectX9 compatible sound card; 2GB Hard Disk Space; DVD-ROM; Keyboard; Mouse
 

Test System:



Dell Vostro 1700 Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7100; Dual 1.8 GHz Processors; 2 GB RAM; NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

Windows SAS: Secure Tomorrow Microsoft Xbox 360 Call of Duty: World at War

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated