Right you are, including about the 'rambling' part, only I prefer it to the 'rabbiting burrowing' type of gaming.

options

SEV2, compared to the first game in the series, has much more in it, is like 2 times or more Sniper Elite the original.
It's only natural for things to evolve, to build up and that is a good thing.

However, my biggest overall surprise was to discover that although SEV2 has much more in it than SE, it leaves me less options?! What a paradox! Even more, for some features there are no options, 0 to choose from, just a 'narrow one-way road'.

That I still don't get. Why one would compute "one cow=one teat=4 liters of milk" and stick to that result? no one informed him that a cow has in fact 4 teats to be milked?! It seems to me like the concept-man of SEV2 has never actually seen SE playing, but only knew of it from 'hearsay' and drew it on his knees. No offence, but this is the way it looks to me.

In this respect of many additions with less options the SEV2 by comparison provides, if fixes are possible to expand one's options, would do much more for players satisfaction than just adding new and new stuff, for that can not cover the previously accumulated frustrations so widely expressed.

One of the missing options I found in SEV2 and did not seen yet reported here, as for exemple the missing button to suppress player's voice in a mp game and other were signaled, is the abort option during the connect sequence.
Sometimes you need to abort connecting because the phone rings or whatever...only you can't.

My worst experience was during an attempt to connect to servers list and it started nicely, as it should, only the flames revolved on and on and on; 'let's wait, something must happen eventually, be patient to see' – I said to myself, only after about 5 more minutes the rotation was still not over, so I cracked and pushed the ultimate pc salvation: Ctrl-Alt-Del keys. At least in two more occasions I had to resort to the same solution to discontinue that flaw loop, but I had more sorts of unpleasant experiences during connections I was not able to cancel for the option is not there!

Something similar I had in SE when I tried to connect to a room and the bottom loading bar was progressing so slow, that I already knew the connection would fail (and it almost always did), only there was no way to terminate it before it played out...slowly ...so SEV2 kind of maintains that 'tradition', only I would've liked it if it didn't!


( I always thought that ever since the prehistoric times, when the cave-man initial started to use fire to cook a meal and invented the first high-tech item in the whole world's history (other than weapons, of course!), mainly the the rushlight, the clay oil lamp, the option to turn it on and to turn it off was already embedded, as it was in all the rest of the devices developed since, until the present days when I find out to be removed from a certain SEV2 display...maybe the "off option" it's been in service for far too long and is only right to have it removed as obsolete ...and I have yet to learn a lot about stuff. 'Mea culpa'. )

Kill Tally in SEV2 works for me like butter on bread. It felt like a 'Christmas gift' when I found it. It's challenge is great, you do not linger and can not get bored. It is a little repetitive, yes, only the quantity makes out for the lack in quality of the soldiers that storm upon you.

If I count the play on every map available, at every difficulty plus the coop over the net, I find 'kill tally' to make a whole game just by itself.

I found nothing like it in SE and this is one of the additions that made me appreciate SEV2 as a much bigger game than SE.

There is though one small aspect that ruins my joy to play 'kill tally' over and over, a flow upon witch I broke my head trying to understand it, but could not find the reasonable reason for it...
(maybe someone would care to explain it to me?)

The problem in 'kill tally' is that I can not play with the rifle of my choice.

If I payed for my DLC and I choose to shoot the Kar98, why can I not use it in this section? This part of the game is not in the single player main story, where it would make some sense not to let me use something nonscripted... I would to argue that too by the way, for if I would want to replay the game second-third-X time, I think I should be allowed to use any weapon I want.

The fact that I can not play kill tally with the rifle of my choice, prevents me to use it as much as I would, in order to warm up and to practice and to just enjoy playing SEV2 in a dynamic manner, that meaning to play something different than what can be found in almost all mp games, where everyone goes yellow belly down into dirt, staying, watching and waiting for someone to move, to 'make a mistake'... (with me along everyone else as the worst camper kind of player...)

The SEV2 multiplayer uniforms in my eyes are just peachy, a beautiful work, up to date as everything else belonging to graphic department.
SE also has it's sets of uniforms and you could compare the two I guess, but the differences are just way too great to make any sense to do that.

There are though 2 things about these uniforms that sit just like a lump in my throat right when I am about to enjoy a festive meal. Here it comes:

In SE the player can choose his uniform. It is a nice option to have, an intensively used one I noticed. Players choose their uniforms for aesthetic reasons or for practical ones, strategically.
For example I noticed a certain style players preferred to play on the russian team in the light colored uniform with a black docker cap, although it was the most noticeable uniform, for they positioned themselves in places where only the top of the head was occasionally visible, only not so visible that black headpiece was when he was like at the second level in the house into the metro map, that black cap over the dark background in the shadows of the room was hard to spot, easy to miss...so a good choice of uniform for a map for sure gave the player an edge.

(got to go now, topic to be continued some other time)
(maybe???)

The second thing related to SEV2 uniforms that is disturbing my digestion are the one on German set plus the one on the Russian that are heavy winter uniforms! They look great, no doubt about it, only they are so out of place in the set...not to mention how much they look out of place in all the maps between grass and leaves and flowers... only looking at those characters gets me sweating! It is so embarrassing for me to play in one, I feel like I was some kind of brain dead guy to dress that thick in a pleasant climate, it's so totally unrealistic... at least if you would have 'thrown in' one winter snowy map, one form Ardennes for example, then it would make some sense to have those siberian suitable winter uniforms, but then the others might look out of scenery...
One good feature I have to observe though: the two characters at least do not wear gloves, for if they had, I could as well shot myself pulling the trigger of one DLC rifle with the thumb of the foot...

The conclusion would be that one winter like map could be enjoyable for players!

Speaking of 'out-of-control-reflex-movements' of the game's character, SEV2 has another one, that 'stick-your-head-out-the-chimney-so-someone-can-smoke-you', an independent automatic movement when the character in prone get's his neck close to some kind of frame base, he rises half up and out, to see below. It is an other distinct novelty that sets apart SEV2 from SE1.
The movement itself that is a true beauty, no matter if you see your own character doing it or the one of someone else.
It may be very useful too, I wouldn't know, I consider it 'dangerous' and tend to avoid it. This is why I would have liked to have along with it some kind of warning for the imminent trigger of that automatism, a kind and friendly blinking text like "watch out sucker, for you're just about to put your ugly head out to dry like a moron" ...or just a 'last inch' small icon alert like those red-X icons notifying you that you can not lay down right there or you can not get up in that spot, so stop trying!

(The movement in question gives me the same sensation I get when passing by an outdoor grill stall, the appetizing smell makes my mouth pumps overflow, only I remember how bad 'the runs' were last time and move along!)

SE1, like all the shooter games, has 3 stances for the playable character: lying flat on the ground, squatting and standing up.
SEV2 brings a forth one to the table, that automated movement to raise face above the window threshold, kind of squatting+1/4 or 1/5 to full standing. So here we have 4 levels of elevation of the shooting character we play with. Nice job SEV2 team to offer your players something extra.

Now, in reality, a person in prone could keep the chin touching the ground or arch the back and raise the face up to the knee level of a standing person > that could mean easy 3 different levels of elevation only in prone position. From a 'default' squatting position a person can lower a little bit more his head and also can start straightening the knees and legs, raising up bit by bit until gets to upright position and that could mean easy 6-8 other intermediate levels. From stand up position a person can also lift up on the tip of the toes and get yet another eye level, one higher than normal.

If this real capability of changing the head&eye elevation throughout the whole height of a person would have been translated in SEV2, if the playable character would have not just those simplified 3+1 levels of height to shoot from, but 12 levels or more... the passing from one to the next being done of course by scrolling up or down, like in SE1 you can tune the character's speed by scrolling... well, the mp difficulty of SEV2 might had been multiplied maybe by a factor of 10, for so many places in maps almost unusable now would be brought into the play by becoming excellent shooting spots with minimum exposure.

Such flexibility of the eye&shot height level could open the game to other possibilities, for example there would be no need to artificially level all characters to the same human height, what you have in all the usual shooter games, where all playable characters are as robots differentiated only by looks, for like in real life, the characters could be shorter or taller, totally looking different and still maintaining the equilibrium, for if the short character could not shoot from behind a high obstacle a tall one could, so would be in reverse that the tall one could not shoot from under certain obstacles only the short one could.

In my opinion, from a player point of view, implementing this one into SEV2 would have been
the best of the best

(as for me, this is just like ice cream: I am in fact glad that this did not take place in SEV2, for it would only encourage players to hide even more, would favor only the underground dwellers...and soooooooooooo many of those sunken players are out there in multiplayer, only I can't see that good and can not play with them as it is now, so what would I do if SEV2 got worst by increasing concealing shooting opportunity... maybe some other game will take this action and I'll see it how it works...so it is to me personally like ice cream, for I LOVE ice cream , only I can not touch it because it hurts my throat&tonsils, so I just love it from a distance...kind of a distance glancing love, like a sniper!)