At times, the aggressive AI can make it very tough to line up proper aim when you're under intense fire, and it gets a lot more overwhelming further along in the game and on higher difficulty settings. Regardless of your settings, if your shots are poorly aimed and hit non-vital areas, it takes several bullets to fell your foe. Shots get trickier to make as you add in other factors to deal with, like wind speed, gravity, distance, and the shakiness from breathing, and it feels even more rewarding to land them accurately this way. The realistic shot physics are a cool touch, and they can be toggled up or down to affect the challenge level dramatically. It's gruesome to be sure, but V2 dishes out the most satisfying sniping I've ever encountered in a game. When it finally connects, the awesome X-Ray kill-cam shows the brutal effects your bullet unleashes on your foe's internal organs and bone structure. Fatal shots to the head, heart, lungs, groin produce spectacular and graphic death sequences that follow your bullet's trajectory from different camera angles as it zips across the battlefield in slow motion towards your target.

In sharp contrast to the vulnerability you experience battling on the ground and in the open, V2 makes you feel like a death-dealing God every time you look down the barrel of the sniper scope. However, pitching caution out the window at times can be fun too, and V2's new checkpoint system and automatic health regeneration makes experimenting with risky moves less punishing than the original. As such, sneaking up to choke enemies from behind, using your silenced pistol for close range headshots, and masking the sound of your gunfire by timing it to coincide with loud background noises, and dragging dead bodies around to use as bait are all smart tactics at your disposal when you're not busting skulls open from afar. You're a specialist trained for stealth and long-distance precision, not an infantry grunt. In any other shooter these would be faults, but they're a perfectly appropriate fit in V2. Limited ammo reserves, limited health, and the sluggish lag time when changing weapons all but ensures speedy death for the unwary. The same goes for being surprised by your foes in close-quarters. Getting caught out in the open with your pants down can be disastrous, since it only takes a few blasts of enemy gunfire to wipe you out. You're just one dude against heavily armed forces.

This is a sniping game after all, and I appreciate that the fact you're toting a high caliber scoped rifle isn't merely an afterthought. There are still a decent number of all-out firefights that have you hustling on-foot and frantically spraying SMG fire into soldiers charging at you, but relying too heavily on such tactics gets you killed more often that not.

Setting charges to blow up bridges, rescuing prisoners, igniting armored tanks from afar, and sabotaging your foes round out a rotating array of objectives that bolster the more straightforward assassination-focused missions. V2's lengthy campaign delivers a satisfying trek through a well-designed medley of war-torn cityscapes ripe with tactical opportunities for assassination and covert sneakery. The raw essence of what it is to be a sniper is captured here marvelously, and it's this focus that keeps the setting and gameplay from falling into familiar WWII shooter genre ruts. But to be honest, I care precious little about the specifics of why and who once I slink through a stage and find a good vantage point to start popping off shots. Your mission is to take down or co-opt key scientific personnel to cripple the German V2 rocket program before crucial intel falls into the hands of the Russians. Taking place at the end of the second World War, this third-person shooter puts you once again in the battle-hardened shoes of US sniper Karl Faireborne as you venture deep behind enemy lines into Berlin.

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