With gameplay that can shock, amuse and satisfy in the same slowed heartbeat, Sniper Elite 4 is the best game in the series. While it graphics, story and characters can feel a little flat, the gameplay has always been the focus, and is so perfectly tuned to make the rest seem inconsequential.

Sniper Elite 4 takes everything that worked on previous games and bumps it up a notch, deepening the gameplay and widening the distance while keeping the core of the franchise intact. It's an example of how to evolve a franchise over time.

Rebellion Development took the groundwork laid by Sniper Elite 3 and improved upon nearly every aspect. Its large-scale environments feature an intelligent layout of objectives and abundance of sniper-aiding verticality. While Sniper Elite 4's music and story aren't going to win any awards, they aren't enough to take away from the respectable amount of content and addictive, strategy-based gameplay.

Sniper Elite 4 is one of those games that has something for everyone. Being a borderline recluse, I was attracted to the idea of playing as a lone wolf, but the multiplayer co-op Overwatch game was even better!

Sniper Elite 4 is far and away the best game in the series so far. Mind-bogglingly complex levels, improvements to the series’ storytelling, and some of the most fun cooperative play I’ve enjoyed in a long time make it both the essential Sniper Elite experience, and a grand ol’ time for anyone who fancies taking the hurt to a few Nazis.

Overall, Sniper Elite 4 has so much to offer its players and successfully caters to a wide variety of people. The fact that the Campaign can be played solo or entirely co-op is awesome, making it easy for players and their friends to jump in and out of the story as often as they please. Experiencing each mission for the first time is just the beginning of an on-going learning experience and the more familiar you become with the maps, the better sniper you’ll become.

A hearty improvement on Sniper Elite 3 that embraces freeform play, gets better in co-op, and most importantly lets us shoot things from very far away.

Sniper Elite 4 is a pretty good game - there is no doubt about it. Having struck a good balance between TPS and stealth, it is perfectly capable of entertaining fans of both genres. However, perhaps the time has come for Rebellion to experiment with other eras besides WW2.

When I reviewed Sniper Elite 3, I voiced concerns that the formula might be wearing thin — I don't think so any more. Sniper Elite 4 exists as a palate cleanser experience, mindless comedy I use to reset after playing other games. It's unashamedly silly, and brilliant as a result.

Great sniper game that shines especially with its huge areas, tactical possibilities and fantastic stealth gameplay.

Its stealth and action mechanics may be simplistic, but they're functional and regularly enjoyable. And the maps--with their impressive scale, open-ended objectives, and clever level design--coalesce these disparate systems into a creative and fulfilling whole. There are still some issues with AI inconsistency, a bland story, and some dull competitive multiplayer, but it finally feels like this series is living up to its long-standing potential.

Sniper Elite 4 is a really fun experience. The stay of Karl Fairburne in Italy leaves us the best and more polished delivery of the franchise.

Sniper Elite 4 breathes new life into the franchise with better stealth mechanics, improved mission setups, smarter AI, and great open levels.

Sniper Elite 4 doesn't wholly shed its grindhouse, B-game origins, but it's definitely an ambitious step forward for a stealth series that used to rely more on gimmickry.

Sniper Elite 4 is a good game by many metrics, and is the best in the series so far. It's a good shooter, a good stealth game and has exceptional shooting mechanics, but as a whole it's rarely exceptional. It's one of the better stealth games of the last few years, with several distinctive ideas combined to create a tense game that, while not all that much bigger in scope than its predecessor, feels bolder and more interesting. The generously sized levels and varied objectives offer a unique experience. The slow-motion carnage of the kill cam, in the era of Twitch and YouTube, will undoubtedly remain a big draw, but look away from the skeleton crushing rifle rounds for a minute and there's an intelligent stealth game with tons of content and plenty of replayability.

Sniper Elite 4 is a very safe sequel - it doesn't introduce revolutionary changes but expands and improves on the things that are well known. If something isn't broken don't fix it - that's a good approach. At the same time this game quite often looks like a copy of its predecessor - the same issues are mixed with some cool improvements. All in all, fans should be really happy.

Sniper Elite 4 is great when it comes to the quality of the missions. We can't think of many better shooter simulations. The game is good in many ways, but it would have been better with a great story.

If destroying Nazi testicles is your thing, then look no further. [Issue#260, p.58]

In the end, while there is a flat story with a protagonist that lacks any real personality, they aren’t big enough issues to spoil where it matters most. Sniper Elite 4 releases with such confidence in what it wants to be that it is easy to see why all the improvements make it the best entry in the series. The advancements are in places where it matters most, making use of the current generation to bring larger maps to make way for more gameplay options in its sandbox environment, an implementation that advances the franchise in a better direction, one that could lead way for an impressive sequel that truly knocks it out of the park with the great foundations set in stone with Sniper Elite 4‘s refreshing design for a series that could have remained stale.

Sniper Elite's argument is irrelevant and forgettable, its characters are poorly developed and the general appearance of the game is deficient; however, an outstanding level design and well-implemented mechanics create a favorable and enjoyable game experience.

With the fourth entry of Sniper Elite, a franchise built on delivering on that feeling, developer Rebellion has created a well-rounded and empowering sandbox shooter.

Sniper Elite 4 is the best in the series, even if familiar flaws are still there, namely dumb AI, trashy story and low fidelity graphics. Yet all this is easily forgotten when on the prowl in one of the gigantic levels, looking for targets, using stealth to kill them and watching through the x-ray camera, as their balls explode in gory detail.

Quotation forthcoming.

Playing Sniper Elite series is getting more and more interesting with every new instalment of the franchise. Its clever level design in combination with a brutal XRay camera is a winning combination. But a weak story and sometimes sluggish AI are the main reasons why this AAA game does not deserve a top score.

The fourth installment is much closer to the bullseye than previous ones. If only Rebellion hired a decent writer…

It executes its executions exquisitely, and I’m not yet at the point where I’m getting tired of it.

A scrappy, unpolished stealth shooter that nevertheless snipes at the heartstrings through its slapstick thirst for gory kills and open-ended maps.

Very good tactical stealth action that could be great if it not for the major problems with artificial intelligence. But for lenient players it still offers a pleasant portion of good entertainment, great atmosphere and hedonistic blasting.

A new high-water mark for the series. [April 2017, p.114]

The series has barely evolved since Sniper Elite 2 – it got stuck in World War II and one gameplay blueprint. Even the visuals are outdated. Moreover I simply can’t take Karl Fairburne’s exploits seriously as he singlehandedly clears whole villages full of Nazis, takes on tanks and for the third time shoots Hitler in the nuts in the DLC. Pure nonsense. [04/2017, p.60]

It really is testament to the gruesome enjoyability of those hyper gory killcams that, even after four games, the sniping continues to be satisfying enough to warrant a look in. Sniper Elite 4 doesn’t miss its target, then, but it plays things safe enough to guarantee the kill without any undue risks.