Maybe I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve with that title, but I don't care. Aside from controls which are maybe a bit more complex than need be, this game delivers exactly what it promises: sniping action that requires planning and patience. Accounting for bullet drop and wind is immensely satisfying and the levels provide many interesting opportunities to do it. The game has excellent pacing (for the most part) and tends to cycle through slow crawly bits and exciting action set pieces at a good clip. There is also a good mix of scenarios where you can organically select your strategy and ones in which there really are only one or two ways to handle the situation. This goes back to the excellent pacing, since they let you have freedom without allowing you to completely ruin your own gameplay flow. Aside from the aforementioned controls, the main reason this gets a 4 star rating is that Sniper Elite 3 is simply better. It has the same philosophy of level design and pacing, but has more expansive levels and a higher degree of polish. To my mind the games rank in descending order 3, 1, 4 and then WAY down at the bottom 2 (which is fine but far too linear and makes some serious design missteps). One final note, the player character in Sniper Elite 1 is much more interesting (and less annoying) than the smug American bell-end in the later games. He is very calm and quiet, much more like I would expect an ace sniper to be. I was very disappointed that we didn't see more of him later on in the series.
