Sniper Elite 4

Wanted to blow up a Nazi by shooting his grenade in hand or belt? You can do that.
Wanted to crush someone with deadly loads while being 500m away? You can do that.
Want to kill Hitler in a multitude of ways? Including shooting his singular testicle? You guessed it! You can do that.
It's. So. Satisfying!

If you’re going to put “Sniper” in the title of a game, you’d better put serious thought into your weapon mechanics. True to its name, Sniper Elite delivers options galore, but its single-player and co-op campaign wisely doesn’t force you to consider all of them all the time.
One Shot, One Thrill
Before you pull the trigger, here’s a handful of things you might think about: Will you use regular ammo or more precious silenced ammo? Can you score the kill quickly, or will you need to hold your in-game breath to steady your aim? Have you considered the effect gravity will have on your bullet? Is your weapon’s muzzle velocity high enough to hit a moving target with only a small lead, or will you need to aim a few feet further in front of your target to land that heart shot?
Few shooters pack so much consequence into each copper casing.
And that’s just for the standard difficulty. If you crank up it up to “Authentic” mode, you’ll also have to contend with wind speed and direction, weapon spread, more scope drift, ammo scarcity, realistic magazines (losing the bullets you didn’t fire from a clip when you reload early), and more. All of these factors matter, and they make each long-range shot into a miniature math problem. It sounds like it could be cumbersome or tedious, but the satisfaction of learning the systems and, eventually, intuitively “feeling” the bullets makes it gratifying to experiment, fail, and improve. Few shooters pack so much consequence into each copper casing.
There is a side-effect to Sniper’s smorgasbord of options, though. The difference between difficulty modes is astounding, and that corresponds heavily with the level of effort you’ll need to put into your play. As I mentioned at the beginning, Sniper Elite 4 often asks more from you than it actually requires. On normal mode, if you miss a shot and blow your cover you can gun down foes with a pistol or an SMG and you’ll probably be fine. On hard, escaping this scenario becomes much more painful because sniping is harder and enemies are tougher, and on Authentic, every tiny bit of caution is warranted because your HUD is limited. So, unless you’re bent on playing like a masochist, a healthy chunk of Sniper Elite 4’s ideas fall into the “take it or leave it” category.
Lands of Opportunity
Sniper Elite’s humdrum World War II story is spread across eight huge campaign levels. I didn’t finish a single one in under an hour, and many took closer to two. This is far longer than most shooter missions, but because you make your own path and do only what you want to do, they didn’t drag at all.
...When your plan inevitably goes to hell, your preparatory efforts will keep you alive.
Repetition fatigue is also countered by the fact that Sniper Elite 4 packs tons of variety into its eight levels, both visually and functionally. Your European tour takes you to a remote island, a radar facility, a fortified mansion, and a viaduct in the woods (among others). In a game where you spend lots of time staring at the environment and waiting for someone to do something foolish, such as moving, it’s great to always have a refreshing new location to scope out. More importantly, most levels have a mechanic or a geographical feature that differentiates them from the others. For example, one map has a massive railgun that periodically fires off into the distance, and if you synchronize your shots with its blasts you can mask your rifle’s sounds and stay hidden, like real snipers are known to do in thunderstorms. Another map has heavily armed gunboats patrolling its edges, making the typically safe outskirts a riskier route. These modifiers complement the already varied gameplay in a way that keeps you alert and improvising.
I Spot, You Shoot
Sniper Elite 4 has a handful of ways to play alongside a friend – and if you have a chance to play it with a buddy, I highly recommend doing so.
Playing the campaign missions as a pair is much like playing alone in that you can do whatever you want. If you both want to go guns blazing, go for it. You have twice the firepower! But splitting up is a much more interesting and entertaining option, especially when playing with friendly fire enabled.
If you’re both together, you’ll probably make more noise and draw more attention. If you’re split up, you can take turns causing a ruckus, forcing the map’s enemies and vehicles to ping-pong back and forth between you the two of you. Sure, the risk of getting hurt and bleeding out is higher, but that’s a chance you can take. That said, there’s no blueprint for how to “best” play co-op. So many things are possible within the mechanics available that two brains can dive in, dig around, and have a great time. The hands-off approach doesn’t feel lazy; it feels respectful, like a challenge to try something new.
Sniper vs. Sniper
Sniper Elite 4's multiplayer feels more "hit or miss" than its other modes. Taking out targets feels the best when you have ample time to scout, plan, and prepare. This works best against enemies that are unaware they're being hunted, and competitive multiplayer is obviously not the same scenario.
There are a few game types that stand out, the best one being a mode that requires you to kill from range to win. At the end, whoever has the highest total kill distance wins, meaning patience and long-range shots are what really count. In this mode, most players find a decent spot, go prone, and search for a target. It sounds like this could grow stale quickly, but there's a thrill to knowing that, at any second, your slightest movement could tip you off to an enemy sniper. Likewise, when you catch someone moving in some foliage and you line up a perfect headshot from across the map, there's nothing like it.
Control mode is essentially just a capture and hold the point mode, but it does a great job at facilitating different styles of play. On one hand, when everyone is funneling into one area, the obvious decision is to sit back and pick off enemies with ease. However, you won't be able to capture the point for yourself, so you'll need to coordinate with teammates who will rush in and do the dirty work. It keeps the action fast, focused, and tense, without favoring one play style too heavily over another.
The Verdict
A lot of games tout the ability to “play how you want to play,” but Sniper Elite 4’s missions and mechanics actually are robust enough to back up that claim. Picking apart the Nazi war machine piece by piece, using whatever plan comes to mind, is a blast. The way it encourages you to stay mindful, experiment, and get better is a refreshing vote of confidence, even if it doesn’t always reward the extra effort you’re putting in.

I've been on a bit of a Sniper Elite kick lately, and I've played through every main game in the series over the last few months. While I've overall enjoyed each of the games, I feel pretty comfortable in saying that Sniper Elite 4 is the best in the series and is in many ways better than the more recent Sniper Elite 5. If you're only looking to get one game in the series, I recommend getting this one, especially if you can find it on sale as is often the case.
The movement and traversal in this game feels smoother here than in any other SE game. Shooting pistols and SMGs feels better in this game than in any other SE game, especially in terms of audio feedback. Somehow the guns sound better in this game than they do in SE 5. While not pinpoint accurate, SMGs here actually feel manageable in full-auto. I hate how the other games make them feel completely unwieldy. I get that this is to encourage you to snipe more, but it always felt like they went too far with the insane recoil they have in the other games.
I really like the way that this game handles silenced weapons compared to the way that SE 5 does it. SE 5 lets you put a silencer on pretty much any gun, but as a tradeoff makes it so that silenced shots can still be heard by nearby enemies. This might be more realistic, but it feels stupid and unsatisfying when a dude 50 meters away with his back to you can hear your silenced pistol shots. Here, you simply find silenced ammunition hidden in the levels that you can equip to your guns and that actually makes them completely silent. This encourages exploration, and leads to this interesting gameplay mechanic where you're not sure whether to waste silenced ammo and find a soundmask.
The stealth/alertness/visibility system also feels much more intuitive and predictable in this game compared to SE 5. SE 5 would have many situations where enemies would just act completely strangely in response to seeing you, or enemies halfway across the map would somehow know exactly where you are for no reason. Here, it makes sense when enemies can and can't see you and they react appropriately to your shots by diving for cover and trying to spot you.
I also think this is the best looking SE game visually, but that might be up for debate. I like the charming, somewhat cartoonish look of the older games, and SE 5 certainly has some impressive vistas, but overall I think this game looks the best both in terms of environments and weapon and character models.
The only negative about this game is the fact that weapons that were present in older games (like the Garand) have been removed in SE 4 to be sold as DLC. This sucks and it's a blatant cashgrab, and there's really no defending it. It doesn't ruin Sniper Elite 4 for me, but it is a massive drawback.
Overall, I still really recommend this game (especially compared to SE 5 with its completely buggy stealth system and its obsession with weapon attachments), and if you're never played a Sniper Elite game before, I think this is the best place to start.

Killing Hitler with a testicle shot is alone worth it.

+movement similar to a worms
+shooting from worm positions
-The ai are dumb as the rocks you throw at them

Less of a sniper game, and more like Metal Gear Solid 5. The maps are big open world sandboxes with objectives that you're free to accomplish any way you like. The graphics, sound and gameplay are all great. My only complaint is that the game seems to actively discourage you from sniping. It almost always seemed that stealth was the best approach.

Always an American who saves the world, classic WW2 story for a game.
But it's awesome as a sniper, gameplay is great and graphics is fantastic.
Buy it for X-ray bullet scenes worth the price.
Currently $8.99 on sale, it's too cheap to buy!