Sniper Elite V2 Silver Star Edition - Xbox 360

Good day folks, hopefully some of you are able to enjoy this day more than those of us stuck indoors due to crappy weather, but either way, hopefully the day is and has been good for you and yours.  Today I want to talk a little bit about a game I recently received (I won it from The Gamers Hub), Sniper Elite V2 Silver Star Edition.

So far, I've not really been doing a whole lot with this game, but as time progresses I'll update this blog accordingly.  Admittedly, being as I don't hardly game on my Xbox 360 much (thanks in large part to not having money, but also that long hiatus from October 2012 until recently when I got the console's motherboard re-flowed to repair it), it's taking a little bit of time to get used to the controls again.  As many know already, I'm primarily a PC gamer, using the keyboard + mouse configuration and only a controller when it appears to fit more appropriately.  On my PC I use an Xbox 360 controller when I feel the need to use one at all, but that's not often.  Anyway, I've pretty well a good hang of the controls for this game already, and am only on the 3rd level (Mission 2 - Mittelwerk Facility Part 1).

Some things that I've found I really like about the game are:

1. Rich environments.  The atmosphere honestly does make one feel as though they are in authentic WW2 locales.  Such details even include noticing that the sky is "raining" ashes, not snow.
2. Plenty of choices on how to approach each mission.
3. Weapon loadout options during mission loading screens (use the right shoulder button to get to this menu).
4. Intelligent AI.
5. The bullet view, especially where it shows the impact and internal organ damage due to where the bullet penetrated the body (this does get somewhat old after awhile though and happens only where scripted to, it's not every time or totally random).

Some things I've noted so far that I am disliking:

1. Environments are too restrictive, not allowing any sort of free-roam opportunity.  This definitely makes the player feel too restricted and thus killing a good deal of the authenticity of gameplay.  In other words, I would really like to pick my own vantage points, be able to break out windows, shoot lights out for night cover, etc.  Come on Rebellion, this is driving me batty!
2. AI is too predictive because they're scripted to only do "this one thing" or "that one thing", "go this way" or "go that way".  There's no randomness.  While I do like that with getting my bearings on the game, it does help me to grow into it, I want a challenge, a realistic challenge.
3. The character played doesn't always do what he's told!  Numerous times already, I've gotten too frustrated because I click the A button when it tells me to and he just stands there, doing nothing but looking confused.  Climb into/onto the window/ledge you numbskull!!!
4. Scripted event triggers.  Yes, a lot of games still have these, and yes, I most certainly hate them... a lot!  Do I sound angry enough by now?  I'm not angry, per-se, I'm frustrated.  I'll be walking around, looking for people to shoot, and not a soul is in sight, but as soon as I walk through "this room" and peek around the corner of the building, suddenly there are 6 guys just randomly walking around where there were literally zero just a second prior.  Literally, a clear street suddenly has 6 random soldiers walking around, seriously?!
5. AI enemies can see me through machines, but can't see the dead body of their comrade - that's right in front of them - as they walk into the room?  Come on now, get real!
6. I understand that they have to place the Gold Bars and Wine Bottles strategically, so that obtaining them is either difficult or by random chance, but so far I've only seen random appearances of them in places where they weren't there the first 1 to 10 times I walked through there, no joke.  So far, I've covered every single square inch of the levels I've played through, multiple times over, and yet I've not found all of the gold bars or wine bottles "hidden" throughout, and over half of the ones I have found were literally randomly-appearing.  This isn't one of those "Oh, I just didn't see it when I walked through there the first time." things, this is one of those "I walked through this entire building multiple times over the last hour, covering every angle of every room at least 10 times, and now this just pops up in front of me out of nowhere!" things.  What's up with that?!
7. An inexcusable lack of physics.  Half-Life 2 came out, what, back in 2004 (almost a decade ago), and has far superior physics in comparison.  I can't move furniture when I walk into it, I can't break anything that isn't scripted to break,  and that's just the beginning.
8. I can't jump.  Yeah, you read that correctly, I can't jump in this game.  You can't either, just to be clear, there's literally no jump button at all, there are only "click A to climb/vault/etc." events, nothing else.
9. Who's bright idea was it to set "Hold B to xxxx" for 2 different things when standing next to a corpse?  If I'm searching the corpse for items, I don't want to accidentally pick up his weapon and toss mine to the ground.  This is also lazy, inexcusable, and best be fixed in the next Sniper Elite game - if there even is one to be released.

All-in-all, I'm having some fun, and for not having to pay for the game, it's a definite plus, but it's not quite what I was expecting after having seen it online and read all the articles, box descriptions, etc.  This game more has the feel of playing Hitman in WW2 than it does a sniper game.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE fan of the Hitman games and have them all so far, but this is supposed to be a sniper game.  What it really is, is a "sniper does everything an entire military force is expected to do, all by himself" game, which is highly unrealistic.  Perhaps after I'm finished with this game, I'll play some Hitman, I don't know, but it's possible.  Or perhaps, since I recently got Alan Wake CE and Alan Wake's American Nightmare from the current Humble Weekly Bundle, I might just dive into some of that.  Bioshock Infinite?  Maybe, Far Cry 3?  Also maybe, I don't know.  Either way, I'll blog about it.  Perhaps I may even get the PC version of SEV2 if I can get a good enough deal on it, then compare it to the Xbox 360 version, since the PC version is supposed to be more detailed and have realistic physics, but we'll see.

Thanks for visiting, happy gaming and have a great Memorial Day (just don't forget why we have this day to begin with)!

Edit 01: 05-28-2013, it appears that the gold bars appear only after specific triggers occur.  Again with the stupid trigger scripts?  Really?  This is just ridiculous.  I'm going to experiment and see if perhaps maybe they also disappear after certain triggers as well, because so far that appears to possibly be the case.  if it's so, then I'm officially failing this game hard.  For now, I'm gonna go play it some more.  I'm past the Mittelwerks mission now, and getting much better at sniping, but have quite far still to go.  Later y'all!