Being a sniper in a videogame varies between being incredibly easy and incredibly difficult, depending on the game. Try to play with a sniper rifle in Destiny or Call of Duty, and you’re faced with the need to hit unpredictable targets that are often running at full speed across the map, but strike from the shadows against AI enemies who’ll then scramble to take cover and return fire, and it becomes a lot easier.
It’s that easier side of the scale where we find both Kill Shot Bravo and Sniper Fury, two recently released mobile games that have both distilled sniping down to the handful of seconds before you fire and the immediate aftermath. It’s the epitome of bitesized gaming, with a mission taking just a few moments to complete.
Each mission drops you into a sniper spot somewhere on a large and expansive level, giving you a small slice of it to view each time as you revisit the same locale numerous times. It’s then up to you to spot, zoom in, aim and shoot to kill your target, with some fairly obvious and intuitive controls, as you fight against your gun’s natural motion.
That first shot, whether a hit or a miss, alerts any other enemies and targets on screen, sending them scurrying. Sometimes you’ll have a specific target to kill, sometimes they’ll have body armour, they might start to fire back, or maybe they’ve got a target that you’re trying to defend from assailants. Either way, the final kill and the final bullet is rewarded with a slow motion bullet cam, as in the Sniper Elite series, but without getting to see the skeletal shattering within.
In this core sniping mode, Sniper Fury comes across as the more polished and varied of the two with more ways of mixing up the objective, but both change things up regularly with new enemies and the odd boss target thrown in for good measure. However, Kill Shot Bravo just isn’t quite as easy on the eye as Sniper Fury, with flatter textures in places and some odd character models, not to mention that it actually quite distastefully has you shooting at clearly marked medics.
Both are also wrapped up in distinctly similar and formulaic forms of monetising the free to play games. You’re constantly pushed by the need to upgrade your guns or buy new ones, in order to be more accurate or deal more damage, while taking on a mission will use up energy which has to recharge over time, and there are interwoven currencies which can be bought to unlock extra stuff or skip some of the timers that can crop up.
Frankly, both are quite messy and confusing because of it, with pop ups for optional purchases and a cluttered main menu, but the monetisation has rarely got in the way of me playing. I ranked up often enough that I don’t have to worry about running out of energy, and even then, the gameplay’s best consumed in short bursts. Additionally, it’s not too difficult to complete levels with underpowered guns, however, I can see that changing as you head deeper and deeper into the levels on offer.
Wrapped around this core of sniping and F2P are the ideas that help the two games stand apart, though. Sniper Fury has assault missions where you’re armed with an assault rifle and have to tackle similar missions, just at closer range, but also adds a small base building element, where you can set soldiers earnt from regular play to try and fend off attackers.
Kill Shot Bravo’s more ambitious though. There are on-the-rails missions with a shotgun in hand, which make for a much bigger change of pace and is more pleasing to use than the recoil-filled spray of bullets that the assault rifle-based modes are in either game. There’s also an alliances system, where members of an alliance can lend their character as a spotter and help mark targets, but what’s much more intriguing is the PvP multiplayer.
In keeping with the rest of Kill Shot Bravo, it’s designed to be played in just a few moments, as you go head to head with an opposing sniper. As you scan your rifle’s scope over the scenery, hunting for the small camouflaged figure in the distance, a little ping happens every few seconds, to tell you if you’re getting close to your target, with the first player to get an accurate shot off rewarded with a kill cam.
In the end, both Kill Shot Bravo and Sniper Fury are relatively light games that are easy to drop in and out of for a few moments at a time. They get the sniping right, try to keep you on your toes with different objectives and styles of play, and try to put their own stamp on this with a few different modes. However, neither are really going to do more than distract you for a few minutes while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil or the bus to arrive. I guess it just depends if you’re desperate to shoot things during those few minutes…