So far I am pretty dissapointed with this game. I was a huge fan of Sniper Elite and played it on the ps2 a ridiculous amount of hours. Due to that game's open ended nature you could go through the missions in countless different ways. Each playthrough felt completely different to me. That game was all about player choice. You could choose which sniping position you wanted before engaging enemies. You could choose your routes through the map, you could choose whether to snipe or engage in some machine gun combat or stealthy pistol kills.
I feel like in SEV2 all those choices are stripped away from the player. I loved in the first game how you had a map that showed possible sniping positions. It showed you objective locations so you could plan which route you wanted to take. In the sequel you get no map to even look at and that is because the game is ridiculously linear. They could only show one line turning for the map because there is no alternate paths or sniping positions to choose from.
I also am infuriated so far by some sections in the sequel where you are forced into machine gun combat. I am only in the 3rd or 4th level of the game, but this has happened way too many times already. The game likes to funnel you into an area or building where a bunch of enemies will be alerted to your presence at once and you have no choice but to fight them at extremely close range. An example of this is on the mission where you have to blow up the bridge to stop the Russian tanks from advancing. You place the explosives on the bridge support and then you have one path ahead of you. You must hoist yourself up into a building and you are automatically surrounded by like 6 enemies at extremely close range. There is no way to snipe these enemies before getting up there. I cannot understand these sections as this is a sniping game and not a run and gun game. Why am I being forced into this awful non sniping situations? It's bad enough with all the forced stealth sections in this game, but being forced to use the machine gun is just the opposite of what Sniper Elite 1 was about.
So far as a huge fan of Sniper Elite 1, I cannot help but feel extremely disappointing with this sequel. The lack of competive multiplayer on consoles is a huge letdown as well. I am conflicted about this series now. I want another sequel, but only if it is done right. This game feels too much like other generic shooters out there now. It's extremely linear and chose to focus on pretty graphics and xray cams instead of focusing on fun and addicting gameplay. Please Rebellion if you make another sequel in this series draw your inspiration from Snipe Elite 1's open ended style of gameplay and not Sniper Elite V2's linear style over substance approach.
