Sniper Elite 3

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 82%Very Positive · 82%2014

The verdict

A fun WWII sniping and stealth game with a great X-ray kill cam and open desert maps. Skip it if you want polish, since crashes, clunky controls and broken co-op are common.

Great for

Patient players who like stealth, long-range shots and X-ray kill cams, ideally on a deep sale

Main risk

Frequent crashes, alt-tab problems and broken co-op on modern PCs

What players love

Satisfying sniping and X-ray kill cam

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“The signature slow-motion X-ray kill camera is as visceral and satisfying as ever, now featuring vehicle and multi-target penetration.”
Steam review · 36.4 h played ↗

“Calculating distance, accounting for wind, holding your breath… and when you land that perfect shot, the game rewards you with the famous X-ray cam”
Steam review · 11.1 h played ↗

“The series' famous X-ray feature is done really well.”
Steam review · translated · 10.5 h played ↗

Good stealth and sound masking

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“Excellent stealth system. I can't believe more games dont have audio masking.”
Steam review · 9.3 h played ↗

“the addition of a relocation mechanic, making it so enemies will check the last location you've been heard or spotted at while you slip away”
Steam review · 10.1 h played ↗

Open maps with freedom of approach

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“The open maps give you more freedom than I expected, and I like that you can approach most situations in different ways instead of just running in and shooting everything.”
Steam review · 140.5 h played ↗

“Instead of the linear corridors of the previous game, you now get expansive, open-ended maps with multiple paths to your objective.”
Steam review · 51.4 h played ↗

Big improvement over Sniper Elite V2, holds up visually

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

“Compared to *Sniper Elite V2*, this is miles better.”
Steam review · 30.1 h played ↗

“To my surprise the game turned out to be well crafted for a 2014 game.”
Steam review · translated · 12.7 h played ↗

Fun co-op and worthwhile DLC

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews

“the co-op remains peak Sniper Elite. Tackling the campaign or the dedicated Overwatch missions with a friend is easily the best way to experience this game.”
Steam review · 51.4 h played ↗

“the DLCs are very much worth it, my favourite being the third part of the Churchill trilogy ‘Confrontation’”
Steam review · 23.4 h played ↗

Fresh North Africa setting

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews

“North Africa is a rare setting in WW2 games so the environment certainly feels fresh.”
Steam review · 25.6 h played ↗

“Africa isn't as overused as war-ruined European cities, so the game feels fresher and more unusual than earlier entries.”
Steam review · translated · 17 h played ↗

What players complain about

Frequent crashes and instability

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews

“Great game, but focus time or moving to sniper nest will trigger a crash about 25% of the time”
Steam review · 27.4 h played ↗

“Up to an hour of time spent sneaking through a level just for it to crash when you loot a random body or use a bandage.”
Steam review · 14 h played ↗

“In the middle of mission 3 the game just crashed and refused to launch again.”
Steam review · translated · 3.2 h played ↗

Dumb, inconsistent enemy AI and detection

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“The enemy AI is incompetent at tracking down the player, even on the highest difficulty, but extremely accurate with their SMGs and iron-sight rifles at long ranges once you get spotted”
Steam review · 37 h played ↗

“If you leave that circle, the enemies immeditaly stop panicking and return to "suspicious" status”
Steam review · 11 h played ↗

Weak stealth tools, more action than sniping

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“You have very few tools to kill enemies stealthily, and the game punishes you if you don't kill everyone with those very limited tools”
Steam review · 11 h played ↗

“they give you specfici "nests" to snipe from but if you choose to use them you immediately get detected.”
Steam review · 11.5 h played ↗

Co-op is broken or unreliable

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“we could not invite each other to a cooperative lobby at all, kept saying it timed out.”
Steam review · 1.1 h played ↗

“Co-op also has no saves and the mission fails when one of players drops out due to crash.”
Steam review · 18.9 h played ↗

“The game is good solo, but co-op is poorly done, especially the save system.”
Steam review · translated · 2.1 h played ↗

Clunky controls and movement

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“The control of your character in this game is Horrible.”
Steam review · 19.1 h played ↗

“I kept fighting against myself just to stay prone, dude kept wanting to crouch instead.”
Steam review · 6 h played ↗

Alt-tab and no borderless window

Mentioned in ~1 in 17 negative reviews

“you can't switch tabs while playing this game if you switch you need to restart the game”
Steam review · 3.9 h played ↗

“it has the extra issue of lacking a borderless windowed mode, which feels like a basic requirement of every game”
Steam review · 15.1 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

OSMicrosoft® Windows® Vista (Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7 (Service Pack 1) or Windows® 8 or Windows 8.1. Windows® XP is NOT supported.

ProcessorDual-core CPU with SSE3 (Intel® Pentium® D 3GHz / AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4200) or better

Memory2 GB RAM

GraphicsMicrosoft® DirectX® 10.0 compatible graphics card with 256 MB of memory (NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 series / ATI Radeon™ HD 3870) or better

Storage18 GB available space

OSMicrosoft® Windows® Vista (Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7 (Service Pack 1) or Windows® 8 or Windows 8.1. Windows® XP is NOT supported.

ProcessorDual-core CPU with SSE3 (Intel® Pentium® D 3GHz / AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4200) or better

Memory2 GB RAM

GraphicsMicrosoft® DirectX® 10.0 compatible graphics card with 256 MB of memory (NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 series / ATI Radeon™ HD 3870) or better

Storage18 GB available space

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