Sniping Mission

A Sniping Mission is when the player is tasked with using a long-range weapon to attack far-away targets.

Many sniping missions are also Escort Missions. In these, the player, situated over a great distance with a long-range weapon, must eliminate enemies who are trying to prevent an NPC from completing some task, be it reaching the exit, activating the consoles, planting the bombs, or what have you.

Many boss fights incorporate sniping elements, such as famously those in the Metal Gear series. This might occur if you are attacked by an enemy sniper and try to Beat Them At Their Own Game.

Is often an Unexpected Gameplay Change.

Examples of Sniping Mission include:

General Examples

• This is a very popular class of flash game, to the point where some of the newer ones have started lampshading the limits of the system.
• The Silent Scope series was one big Sniping Mission. At the very end of each one... "Bring him down with one shot!"
  • This trope is somewhat inverted when going inside areas such as the mansion near the end of the first game - the sniper goes through the mansion taking people down from about 20 feet away. Amusingly, though the bad guys are armed with semi-auto pistols and SMGs, they never think to rush you...
• Several levels throughout the Call of Duty series (even though your character is never identified as a sniper or marksman, beyond the player character "Soap" in the fourth game being the only member of his squad given scoped rifles... but It's Up to You.)
  • Kind of inverted in the first Russian mission in the original Call of Duty, where once upon meeting a sniper, he covers you. And by "covers you", I mean "uses you as sniper bait."
    • Turned around in the first Russian mission of the later World at War, where upon meeting a sniper, he instead gives you his rifle and uses himself as sniper bait.
  • One mission in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare places you as a sniper with a very-long-range rifle, trying to take out a single target from about a mile away. Once the shot is fired, assuming it has actually hit the target (the ballistics are malevolently real, other than the bullet always lopping off the target's arm no matter where you end up hitting him), you will have to use the gun again to take out a helicopter pilot (though at a much shorter range).
• Tron 2.0 has a level in which you're on top of a tower overlooking a large space. Enemies are trying to reach a specific point through a maze-like path, and you have to stop them with the sniper rifle. Appropriately for a game set inside computers, said sniper rifle is called the LOL.
• The first mission (except for the tutorial) in Hitman: Codename 47 (it can be done without sniping, but it is dangerous.)
• The NES versions of Golgo 13 have incredibly easy sniping missions, especially in comparison to the rest of the game. Of course, Golgo 13 is very, very good at it.
• Every mission in Sniper Elite is a sniping mission.
• Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII sneaks one of these in toward the end of the game.
  • To repeat: Crisis Core, a game about a guy who fights with a BIG SWORD, has a SNIPING MISSION. It's as ludicrous and unnecessary as it sounds.
    • Of course, you could gain points to upgrade the sniper rifle by using your sword to kill robots. Also, it must be remembered that this is also the game that has the completely pointless stealth segment.
• The first Halo game had this for the third level, although it's not really required.
  • The third Halo game also has several missions that give you a vantage point and a sniper rifle to snipe enemies before they could see you, but it was likewise not really required.
  • Halo 3: ODST includes one mission during which you play as a sniper moving along rooftops in New Mombasa, ending in a segment defending your group from alien dropships with missiles galore. In addition, the nighttime segments wandering New Mombasa can become one with a sniper rifle from a supply cache or defeated enemy sniper.
  • Halo: Reach's sniping mission is done alongside the squad's sniper, Jun, and also includes active camouflage and hologram armor abilities.
• Along with the CoD series, the Medal of Honor series also has quite a few sniping missions, and it's also mostly Up to You. Each game tends to have an enormous sniping mission toward the end, including one where you're in a sniping battle against tanks with a bazooka!
  • Sniper's Last Stand, the Scrappy Level of Allied Assault, pits you against dozens of well-hidden insta-hit snipers, then combines it with an Escort Mission in the second half. The last level of the mission, "The Bridge", is also a Hold the Line, where you first have to stop Nazis from detonating the explosives, then call air strikes to protect the tank as it crosses the bridge.
  • The Reboot, however, is notable for having one of the player characters being a sniper, with your NPC ally being his spotter. Everytime you play as him, you will get to snipe some unsuspecting terrorists. And it is awesome.
• Occurs in Hostile Waters. An RTS. In one of the missions, you have to kill a helicopter pilot without getting too near. The only weapon with the neccessary range and accuracy is the Rapier. An anti-tank laser cannon.
• Several times in the lightgun game Ghost Squad, with a time limit on taking out all the enemies. Mandatory in the first mission, and two optional occasion in the third, one with a thermal sight where you have to shoot through walls.
• Pretty much every variation on "The Hunted President" maps from Team Fortress limited the assassin team to Snipers. Although they also had submachine guns, too.
• The game Baito Hell 2000 (or Work Time Fun in US/EU) contained a Sniping game called Happy Sniper. The splash screen ripped off Golgo 13, and the point was to shoot people with a drug which made them happy. The only sniping game you'll ever play where the target is wearing a sombrero and a barrel and has chicken legs.
• The PS2 port of Time Crisis 3 has the "Rescue Mission" mode, with some of its stages requiring you to use a sniper rifle. Time Crisis 4 has something very similar at the end of Stage 1 Area 2.
• There is an interesting (and annoying) minigame variation in Bully, with a slingshot instead of a sniper rifle.
• Unsurprisingly, JFK: Reloaded. Even when you go out-and-out psychotic and shoot seemingly everyone in Dallas.
• Razing Storm's third stage begins with a sniping segment, necessary to allow your allies to transfer the location of the Big Bad to the Kill Sat. Missing a shot will alert on-screen enemies, and unless you react quickly and finish them, this will draw out enemies and make you waste time (and possibly health).
• One shows up in Twilight Princess. You don't really need to snipe your way across, a sword and hookshot does the trick, but it's somuch more fun to shoot a Moblin in the face without fear of retaliation. And let's not forget the awesome music that plays during this sequence...
• In the failed In Name Only sequel to Police Quest, known as "S.W.A.T", you can spend time training as a sniper at the shooting range. If you perform an arbitrary amount of successful training sessions, you'll be promoted to sniper, and will serve as one in the final mission of the game. It boils down to about two or three shots during an entire 10-minute mission. Very realistic... and totally boring.
• The first Sin has a short section wherein you must snipe all the guards on an oil rig before you can board it. An easy mission, as the guards are never close together and have predictable patrol routes.
• Playing through Magoichi's story mode in Samurai Warriors 2 will result in sniping mini-missions.
• Shadows of the Damned has a chapter (4-1) devoted to what basically amounts to a sniping mission. Your character's Living Weapon, Johnson, listens to a sexy phone call, gets incredibly excited, and extends to a six-foot-long cannon. You're then tasked with gunning down slowly approaching Smash Mooks from far off.
• While it isn't a mission exactly, there's a certain trench area in Fallout 3 filled with Super Mutants. The optimum strategy, therefore, is to use a stealth boy and snipe them.
• Mini Robot Wars has a sort-of example with one of its Mission Stages (Sharpshooter). You control a Sniper Minirobot and have to shoot down enemy Machines before they cross the end of the screen. The catch is that you can only attack an enemy when a crosshair appears on them (by clicking the middle of the crosshair), otherwise the Sniper will miss.
• The console version of 007 James Bond 007: Nightfire includes a mission roughly halfway through where Bond faces a good dozen or so snipers while moving through an abandoned nuclear power plant. Except for the few interior firefights, most of the gunfighting consists of patiently hiding and watching for muzzle flashes and where the enemy bullets impact to locate the snipers and shoot them before they get a bead on you.

Sniping Escort Missions

• The first level of No One Lives Forever. Bruno thankfully tells you where every enemy is coming from before they appear on screen, but experienced (or cocky) players can tell him that they'll handle it themselves for the added challenge.
• In Unreal 2 when your character gets trapped at the top of a tower after the Skarjj sabotage the elevator at the bottom, you have to use a sniper rifle to protect the engineer who is trying to get to the tower and fix it so that you can get back down. Thankfully, although badly outnumbered, your protectee is a Marine with a shotgun who can take down a few enemies before getting overwhelmed, which does give you some room for error.
• The final mission in Portland in Grand Theft Auto 3. The character on your side has to plant a bomb on a ship, but the ship's resident bad guys don't much appreciate the idea. Your job is therefore to sit on a tower a short distance from the ship and snipe at the bad guys before they can kill your guy. Said job is made particularly hard by the tendency of the bomb planter to calmly walk out of cover and into assault rifle fire before you've eliminated all resistance. Interestingly, it is possible to disregard the orders and walk on board the ship with the bomb-planter, eliminating the bad guys with standard weaponry.
  • Vice City had a fairly similar mission. You have to protect an ally during a drug deal.
  • Also, a mission where you have to snipe about 25 Cubans as fast as possible.
    • GTA 4 had a similar mission, but at least the person who you were covering was sane and could shoot back.
• Multiple times throughout the Sly Cooper series.
• Resident Evil 4 has this twice, with the second requiring the user to defend both themselves and the target.
  • Resident Evil 5 plays it straight and inverts it by having you cover Sheva sometimes and she cover you other times.
• The classic arcade game Crossbow.
• Inverted in Half Life 2: Episode 1, in which the Player Character's sidekick Alyx at one point grabs a fallen enemy's sniper rifle and provides covering fire for him.
  • And again in Episode 2. Since Gordon never actually gets a sniper rifle (the closest he gets is the scoped, heated-rebar firing crossbow), any time there's a sniper mission, it'll be inverted.
• The section with Emma in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
• In the first Battalion Wars game, there is an escort mission where the player is only allowed to control the aerial units while the AI controls the land units. The objective is to clear the path to the end using said aerial units, and to make sure at least one of the land units does not die.
• World in Conflict had a mission similiar to the Battalion Wars one, with the AI only controlling amphibious transporters and infantry. You had to protect those as they captured command points, which air units cannot do.
  • One of the Soviet missions has you do this with heavy artillery.
• Red Faction: Guerilla combines an escort mission with a sniper mission with...ARTILLERY
  • And the later levels of the original had you sniping and being sniped by enemies through walls with a railgun.
• Max Payne 2 had the Mission Control backing up the (less competent than usual) hero.
• Call of Duty 4 had a doozie of a sniping mission where, in the end, you must fight your way to an extraction point while carrying your wounded spotter. On the plus side, he can still shoot back if you put him down. Eventually, you will put him down behind a Ferris Wheel as you wait for extraction, and suddenly it's less an example of a sniping mission and more an example of Nintendo Hard. Thank gosh it's a semiautomatic and you can change weapons! (If you know what's coming, you can plant all of your Claymore Mines before the Ferris wheel, after which he'll give you his own.)
  • Unless, of course, you take the easy way out.
  • The second game has one you need to fire to cover one of your troop who's moving toward the enemy hideout.
• Saints Row had McManus Says Hello, a mission where the player had to snipe down a bunch of Carnales and Colombians. With RPGs.
• Gears of War 2 had a small part in a mission where a sniper rifle is placed before you over a rocky ledge, allowing you to see a bunch of enemies over a long, open area - with the main character saying "Anybody need some sniper practice?". The main character would yell out their kill count after each escalating kill, louder. The lines are: "That's one. That's two. That's three! THAT'S FOUR! THAT'S FIVE, MOTHERFUCKERS!
• The last part of one of the missions in Perfect Dark has you sniping enemies through walls as you and Elvis escape from the underwater research base.
  • In Agent and Special Agent difficulties, the Carrington Villa level starts off with you covering a negotiator with a sniper rifle. Perfect Agent makes you the negotiator - with no one covering you.
    • The Perfect Agent isn't nearly as hard as it sounds, since you start with a gun disguised as a laptop. And can potentially kill one of the snipers on the roof so they drop they're rifle where you can reach it.
• Time Splitters: Future Perfect has you providing sniper cover for secret agent Harry Tipper while he attempts to steal some enemy uniforms. Also later on, when you escort your past self in the first mission.
• 007: Nightfire had a level with a major sniper-escort section where a Bond has to provide sniper support from the tower of an airbase. Subverted however because the silenced Walther pistol that is signature to the franchise, is in fact more accurate and does more damage, the fact that AI Bondgirl being escorted will react to gunfire by taking cover behind an object that provides maximum exposure to all present hostiles, really helps to punch the whole level down into a Scrappy Level, a second sniper section shows up later in the same level.
  • Thankfully, the console version drops this in favor of an intro/training mission where Bond snipes the cars chasing Dominique through Paris. If a new profile is started (which automatically begins this mission), the game automatically locks onto the gunmen or tires to make it a turkey shoot, and it's still quite easy with manual aiming.
• In one mission of Mission: Impossible 64, you provide sniper cover for Ethan in a train station.

Sniping boss battles

• The duels with Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid. The second, though, is easier if you use your remote guided missile instead.
  • Or Stingers.
• The second fight against Vamp in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Different from the other two because Vamp does not have a sniper rifle, he is instead attacking your escort with his knives, and of course if she dies it's game over. It's not a very difficult boss battle, though.
  • It's also entirely pointless. In what is the series' best case of The Battle Didn't Count, even after Raiden successfully shoots Vamp several times in the face and prevents Emma's health bar from even reaching the half way mark, she is critically wounded, and you are taken to her death scene. Way to waste your time.
• Possibly the duel with The End in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater; although he wields a sniper rifle against you, you have options other than sniping him back, such as sneaking up behind him.
  • Or advancing the clock on your PS2 a few weeks so he dies of old age.
  • Despite the cheap methods of defeating The End, the game rewards you for going the extra mile and NOT draining his life bar, but to actually break his stamina bar.
• And to round out the series, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots puts you up against Crying Wolf, who uses a rail gun with a sniper scope (that is, when she's not trying to trample you). Like the fight with The End, though, you can use other weapons against her. Defeating her results in you getting the rail gun, which will be essential (due to its lethality) for an upcoming segment.
• While not a true boss battle, you have to bring down a sniper in a building who's found you and your comrade in the Call of Duty: World at War mission "Vendetta." As your comrade will only act as bait twice, a way to overcome this through a gameplay exploit is to remember which window he calls out, quit and resume the mission from the main menu. Immediately put your crosshairs on that window, hold your breath when he asks if you're ready, and hopefully the sniper will walk right into the shot. You also have to kill a German general at the near-end of the mission before he can escape off-screen to the right side, although there's an Achievement/Trophy for landing the fatal blow with a pistol, and he has at least one more marksman covering his escape.
• Not a boss battle per se, but in Freedom Fighters you're expected to assassinate the Soviet General leading the occupation of America by sniping him from a nearby guard tower. While you can opt to walk right up to him and shoot him in the face, you'd have to fight your way through his heavy machinegun-wielding Giant Mook bodyguard and more than a dozen Elite Mooks to get to him.
• Scarface the World Is Yours. An assassin with a sniper rifle is a secondary playable character. Easier to ignore the rifle and driveby the target.
• The Nosferatu battle in Resident Evil Code: Veronica is the only time in the game you get to use a sniper rifle.