Sniping is the core of PC shooting even if you call them all camping cowards who should be shot (at close range). The mouse means we can aim precisely or spray the street with equal ease, making it a major challenge for developers who have to reward skilled play without breaking the balance. Make “Murder from miles away” too easy and everyone’s head keeps exploding, which is counterintiutively boring, but make it too hard and you’ve got a load of idiotically invincible linebackers running around waving huge guns like crotch-substitutes at an orgy.

That’s their subconscious function anyway

Sniping is a vital element in shooter design (despite being the opposite of the word “vital” as in “to do with living”), and the recent fascination with realism makes even more important. Even if that’s a very special definition of “realism” which involves carrying ten tons of ammo and resurrecting from the dead, as long as you have lots of detailed shading on boringly repetitive guns when you do it. We’re looking at how some of the best multiplayer games deal with the Sniping Problem. Surprisingly few of them chose “run away” or “wear a helmet.”

NOTE: These aren’t the best sniping games (though some of them are).  They’re games that represent very different attitudes to shooting people from a mile away.

1. TF2

TF2 servers are better balanced than a Zen monk holding a Ming vase on a tight rope. Some cunning design decisions make the Sniper part of the most aggressive ecosystem outside of Mur-dorr, the Violence Planet, in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-But-They’re-All-Guns. The usual problem with gaming snipers is that by definition they must carry a gun capable of instant kills. In real life this forces them to hole up somewhere for half of forever in the hope of their target passing by, but on a server there’s nothing to stop the sniping idiot running around shooting it like a ludicrously large six-shooter with bigger bullets.

Ideally a pistol shouldn’t be as long as the person holding it

But in TF2 our Australian friend can’t noscope. He needs to charge up a headshot for an instant kill, and the scope sticks him with tunnel vision more restrictive than right-wing earthworm. He can cripple an enemy advance by dropping the Heavy, or even better, blue-balling the Medic, but his back is wide open to anyone who can kill at closer range. Which is everyone else in the game. Spies are the natural predator but there’s nothing more fun than Scout-bashing a Sniper’s spine in.

Grevious Bodily Fun!

2. Counter-Strike

TF2 reduced the Sniper’s awesome kill power to balance the game.  Counter-strike servers take the exact opposite approach. They “balance” sniping in the same way capitalism “balances” being extremely rich. The AWP is the most lethal weapon in the history of gaming and has killed more players than Bowser’s spiked-flooring contractor. When asked “Doesn’t that mean that someone good with an AWP could kill everyone?”, CS answers “Yes. So get good with it!”

The cause of more electronic deaths than the MCP and Skynet combined.

But even the most awesome force in gaming history has an equal and opposite reaction. The AWP is an incredibly powerful and effective weapon, and the opposite is weak and ineffective whining. A full decade after the first headshot, players still complain that defending an objective by using a sniper rifle to pick off targets at long range - that is to say, using a sniper rifle to snipe - is in some way “cheap” or “camping.” If you want to run around all across the map go play a CP map. In the meantime, being shot through the head sucks. Buy a helmet.

3. Crysis

Crysis servers technically have a sniper attachment, in the same way “Meat is murder” PETA campaigners can technically be listened to - it’s far more effective (and fun!) to just run over and punch them.

Or punch other things at them!

Shooting people from four miles away is fine for frail fleshbags, but when you’re wearing a nanotech tank it’s not just hiding your light under a bushel, but sealing that bushel in concrete and dumping it in the North Sea. The single player campaign might manufacture a few artificially heavily-emplaced locations to force a headshot or two, but it’s usually faster - and always more fun - to sprint at them like a pissed off Flash who’s allowed to kill people.

4. Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers embrace the idea of fields of fire, making the sniper even more effective despite his being more of a furrow. Heavy machine gunners can suppress entire teams by blazing across an open street, which is what makes one man who can take him down a team player. The exact opposite of the sniper’s normal role.

I hereby rename this street Death Street!

Capture point maps make excellent use of this rock-paper-everything-else battle: the sniper can kill the gunner, but the gunner can kill everything, and the sniper has to watch out for an entire enemy team moving up under the suppressive fire. The central square battle on Donner is the first time you truly understand the phrase “Cover me!” In most games randomly spraying your machine gun is about as damaging as a camera flash, and less likely to even worry the enemy, but DODs heavy machine guns really can kill dozens of people in seconds. Like real machine guns.

Which is why taking them out is so important it’s even in the achievements.

5. Halo

Halo revolutionized console shooters (although the PC Halo servers are pretty fun as well), but that revolution was all about ending the importance of accuracy. After Master chief first marched through an enemy army and restored himself to full shields a few seconds later, health bars have been more endangered than bald polar bears.

You had to use things to heal? We were living like cavemen!

Console combat compensates for the inaccuracy of thumbsticks by turning into a grinding battle - every assault rifle is effectively a Pyro: hold the enemy in your sights for long enough and you’ll win, if he gets away he’s fine. While there are sniper rifles they’re included like the AOL homepage is included online - grudging relics of an older time and simply not very good.

He didn’t even notice that.

Parting Shot

What does all this tell us? We’ve only covered a fraction of the sniping games, barely mentioning the graphical joy of the ghillie suits in Modern Warfare or the ludicrous image of an Unreal Tournament player trying to hide, but the conclusion is clear: sniping is a PC player’s privilege, and it’s all kinds of fun.

There’s a lot of excitement about Crysis 2, and not just because the graphics make reality look like it’s running on an old computer. Crytek created a marvel with the original Crysis, and more importantly they understood exactly what you should do with a videogame engine: run it at full power and crash it through exploding aliens while on fire! Instead of shutting down servers and pushing players away from their precious product (as happened with sequels to the fantastic Modern Warfare), Crytek officially host an incredible modding community.

This embrace of innovation has created so many brilliant, funny and impressive additions to the game you’d swear it was Team Fortress – except everything’s made by the players. We’ve hunted through the assets available to highlight five fantastic features you can fire up right now.

1. StarCry Weapons

Despite millenia of art, we’re betting the phrase “Beautiful Chainsaw” hasn’t been used before

If you enjoy only one mod, make sure it’s this one: the StarCry mod contains more futuristic weapons than a Starfleet armory, because those pansies keep trying to use diplomacy. Nanosuit-armored special forces suffer no such limitation. It’s an incredibly detailed paradise of nerd-killers, with everything from the Lancer through Halo’s Plasma Rifle to the Zat’ni’katel – the science-fiction gun so ridiculously science-fictiony that even its own show (Stargate) shortened it to “Zatgun.”

Be honest: Bungie never made it look that good

There’s even a sacred bolter, and if you recognize that while playing Crysis then award yourself one million nerd points and the Emperor’s praise.

2. Space Marine

The above bolter may be brilliant, but it’s positively anaemic compared to the real thing. We all know that guns can be used as melee weapons when they’re out of ammo, but bolters can kill enemies through terror.  Or by collapsing the planet the enemy is on by their sheer size.

This isn’t a weapon, it’s a Cathedral To Shooting Aliens

The bolter is the iconic weapon of the Warhammer 40K universe: a future setting where writers realized that a mere “war” or “planet” was a piddling little place for a conflict, so they traveled forty thousand years into the future and populated the galaxy entirely with things trying to kill each other.

Such a future requires incredible warriors. While the power-armored soldier is now so cliché that a mute one with a beard was considered an incredible character, these are the ultimates. Which technically means “last”, which is true, because put these guys against any other armor-wearers and pretty soon they’ll be the last ones standing.

This guy could give Master Chief a wedgie – not just underwear, we mean he could pull the Spartan armor up and out.

3. Mario Mix

The joy of fan-made modifications is that people will happily build what the developers wouldn’t have thought of, wouldn’t have time for, wouldn’t legally be allowed to do, or sometimes all three with crazy on top.

The Mario-meet-Crysis is such an outrageous crossing of concepts it should cause a concept explosion, but after the initial shock you realize it’s genius. The nanosuit’s “Speed” and “Strength (with jump)” modes might as well directly to  B and A!

Early prototype of nanosuit control interface

4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Crysis

This one’s less complete than the Venus De Milo’s touchdown dance routine, but we had to include it. Even unfinished it involved more effort than the average office worker’s career. The creepily-detailed Crysis engine captures the reality of mutated reptiles: they’re not cartoony. They look like sort of thing that touches the back of your neck in nightmares.

Note how the incomplete models are displayed on marble pillars in place of legs. That’s not just because it’s a convenient replacement: it’s because they’re insane works of art.

5. Red Mesa

How about something complete you can actually play? Well, that is the trick with fan-made additions – and it’s an awesome one when you can pull it off. Behold the glory that is Red Mesa, a Crysis-conversion taking your nanosuit into HEV territory, with a sister-site to the infamous Half Life research base.

It’s not only complete, it’s up to Episode 2 already.  Proving that a dedicated developer, and fan support, raise the very real possibility that one man will get to Episode 3 before the entirety of Valve.

Not one of you hasn’t watched the Iron Man 2 trailer twice by now, because gamers love high-tech hardware (and that suitcase is the most impossibly cool thing since TRON’s lightcyle).  The entirety of PC gaming operates on a sliding slope of super-accelerated graphics cards (with Crysis climbing the peak, Valve serving the whole slope, Counter-Strike 1.6 having fun in a flooded low-resolution valley two miles below the foothills), and the mouse isn’t a pointing device - it’s a lifeline.  But more isn’t always better, seen here with four failures which would embarrass Buck Rogers.

Twiki - making C3PO look useful since 2491/1979

1.  Battlelight

Razer are the only gaming hardware firm to hire a masterful modern artist - you or I couldn’t communicate “absolute contempt for customers” in three-dimensional sculpture.  They manage it with only a few hundred grams of plastic crap.  And a twenty dollar price tag.

“The Essential Battle Accessory” is an electronic existential crisis: it’s designed for custom gaming keyboards, but intended for people who still need light to search-and-peck for letters like some simple Disney chicken which got an office job (through wacky hijinks/to save Old Farmer John’s mortgage).  Oh, did we say custom gaming keyboards?  It only works with the Razer Tarantula keyboard (which has a custom dock for it), making this less “custom addition” and more “a piece they ripped off their own hundred-dollar product and to sell separately.”  I’m not saying there’s a blackboard in Razer HQ marked “Idiots!” which gets ticked every time someone orders a Battlelight, but I’m fairly sure one just sold because I can hear the high-fives and hysterical laughter from here.

2.  Cyborg R.A.T.

Gamers are incredibly vulnerable to the “Cyberman Pimp” effect: if something’s electronic, shiny and expensive it doesn’t matter if it’s also stupid, overpriced, and - because Cyberman crotches are made of non-stick teflon plating - utterly pointless.  That’s the case with the MadCatz R.A.T. series.  Mice so pointlessly upgraded we should count ourselves lucky they don’t inflate hot air balloons or detect pregnancy.

Either that’s really the best mascot they could come up, or they didn’t want the mouse to be the stupidest looking thing in the ad.

The R.A.T. series is a line of four mice, numbered 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 because even numbers just aren’t XTREME enough.  And if anyone encountered a Cyborg R.A.T. 1 they would have taken the chance to destroy this series before it could spawn.

The only discernible difference is that the price jumps $30 each time, and the makers glued different pieces of plastic between the literally cutting-edge buttons and the extraordinarily shaky-looking palmrest.  The Cyborgs’ big deal is the customisable length and weight, which we’re sure is useful if you’re the Incredible Hulk or Martin Brundle, but for those of us whose extremities don’t change wildly on a daily basis it’s like buying a jockstrap which changes color when you thrust - technically impressive, really stupid, and it’ll be staggeringly difficult to find anyone else who wants to see it.

PS: Nothing, nothing that advertises “interchangeable pinkie grips” is one-quarter as tough as it thinks it is.  That sounds like something offered by the Osteoperosis Flower Arranging Club

3.  Gaming Vest

The 3rd Space Gaming Vest is a labor-saving miracle of modern technology, as any user has paid to beat themselves up.  Saving passers-by the bother of doing it for them.

When your “Gaming Vest” advertises “Game Compatibility” you might not be aiming for high IQs.

The gaming vest is for players who’ve so internalised the feeling of being beaten from all sides they want it in their spare time.  They’d probably need it to maintain an erection but life has mercifully spared them any risk of finding out.  Being thumped in the chest by a subwoofer was only ever fun when punk rocked, and even that was “fun” as defined by people who think spiky hair and spitting counts as a lifestyle.

Hitting you in the chest has always been the saddest attempt at virtual reality, even before the whole concept  mercifully euthanized by Michael Douglas in Disclosure.  He had virtual reality and a simulated Demi Moore, back when both were hot, and used them to do some filing.  And that’s still a better use than the Beat Yourself Vest.

4. Destructor Gaming Surface

Say what you like about Razer, which I did in part 1, but they’ve got the biggest gonads in history or had their shame surgically removed to sell plastic harder - either way I don’t want to mess with them anymore.  The “DESTRUCTOR GAMING SURFACE” should be where The Chosen One plays Laser-Ball against Dark Lord Sha’Tar for the future of everything, and anyone slapping the title on one square foot rubberized “gunmetal Razer Fractal (TM) coated” fiber deserves some sort of overstatement award.  And bonus points for sneaking that “Fractal (TM)” bullshit right into the middle of being mocked.

Particularly powerful is the claim of official support from the Fnatic, Team World Elite and Team EG clans.  As if there was any chance of gamers saying “No, actually, we don’t want to finally make money from gaming and rub our relative’s faces in it because this mouse mat doesn’t meet our stringent standards.“

The combination of incredible graphics and low price (especially during the regular Steam sales) has created an active Crysis modding community. Crysis servers aren’t stuck with people playing Predator killing each other over a tropical island - and the fact we can write that as some sort of limited activity reminds us of why gaming is so awesome. Nomad’s Nano Suit (effectively “Lone Hero’s Sciencey Cool-Stuff-Excuse”) isn’t the only high-tech component of Crysis. In fact, it’s barely the beginning:

1. Back To The Crysis

In the single coolest and most pointless (two terms which often go together) modification ever made, CryModder Tirido has built a time machine out of a DeLorean out of a Crysis vehicle out of a physics simulation. And it is glorious.

Only and utterly YES

The mod shows off Crysis’ spectacular shading and light-level alterations, otherwise known as “different times of day.” Activating the time circuits throws your vehicle through the fourth dimension, and can be enjoyed from any viewpoint as many awesome times as you like. Particular attention has been paid to the interior of the car, complete with time circuits and the flux capacitor itself. This is the sort of thing only a love-based mod can achieve: Tirido probably spent longer on something you have to enter a vehicle and turn backwards to see than most web developers spend on their whole sub-standard flash game.

I don’t think Nomad’ll have as much trouble with Biff

2. Turbo Cars!

If the above got your engines started, install this mod to keep them running. And driving underwater. And exploding things with infinite ammo. At turbospeed. Climbing into a Crysis car is awesome fun, climbing out of it again a second later because it flipped on a pebble less so, which is why Duck delved into the code and removed everything that could reduce your speed or toughness.

Pick a car, any car. Also: UFO

The Turbo Cars mod turns your Crysis server into the ultimate demolition derby, with super-strong soldiers and vehicles racing around with unlimited explosives. Want a jeep that’ll actually survive? Feel like flying over roads apparently paved with C4 by other players? Turbo Cars is wish fulfillment and a fun night out for any clan.

3. Real-Lifesis

What Real-Lifesis loses in unwieldy appellation, it makes up for in style. Note: our website can’t actually show you how good it looks but we’re going to try:

No, you need to go see this full size.

Real-lifesis rebalances the manifold options in Crysis to more truly recreate real life (or rather, a real life where you’re the ultimate killer outnumbered but never outgunned for revenge to the death!) It doesn’t actually add any extra code, but like an artist working with well established paints, or more accurately an engineer tuning an incredibly powerful engine which happens to power pictures, Real-lifesis offers amazing visuals. Which Crysis players like, or they’d have installed something else.

4. Eyefinity Crysis

For the more traditional method of upgrading PC graphics (spending an atrocious amount of money) Maxishine Xtreme Gaming hooked a Radeon Infinity up to three 2560 x 1600 monitors, already more pixels than most people have ever seen, to top out at a truly staggering 7680 x 1600 monster. Then they loaded the graphikingiest game they could find. Crysis.

You bet we’ll include their links. They earned them.

This isn’t for everyone, or indeed anyone when you compare the total cost to almost everything else in the world, but it’s fun to know that this happened.

5. Gears Of Crysis with Bullet Time

It sounds like someone smashed a load of games together, but James-Ryan beat even the fictional US super-secret military by upgrading the Nano Suit. As well as the usual strength, speed, armor and cloak, you can convert its abilities into bullet time - to better appreciate the beautiful physics of blowing things up - or even Gears of Crysis mode, where you stand outside your armored self and admire a man wearing the national budget of most counties beating up foreigners. In high definition.

We live in the greatest gaming age that ever was: people can not only plow hours into online entertainment, enjoying every second, they can then show their love by livening up our internet with fantastic fanart on the subject. Even after you filter out the idiots who think a screenshot serves as art (it doesn’t, no matter how many photoshop filters you apply) there are plenty of pictures to decorate your desktop until you connect to your game server.

Gamers dressing up as the gamees is a tradition dating back as far as disposable income, but what about the characters themselves? Can they cackle in costumes for all hallows eve? Since we don’t waste opening paragraphs around here, the answer is “Yes”, and we look at seven skins to spice up your servers:

1. The Creepy Counter-Strike Skull

Counter-Strike servers are already stuffed with Skullz and Killaz [sic], usually embedded in usernames between clan tags and half the number row’s symbols. Modder “Laca” enables the anti-terrorists to become even scarier than “someone with an assault rifle out to kill you” by skulling things up under the creepily human eyes.

2. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Those playing on Medal of Honor servers shouldn’t suffer because of the age or authenticity of their game - so “Vdog777” has built an in-character costume, and is far better at 3D modeling than coming up with a name. The French resistance fighter adds another option when you’re dressing to impress (and shoot several times in the head) those fashionable Nazi chappies.

3. Team Fortress Halloween

Halloween costumes are something fun and awesome, so of course Valve are involved. We’re only talking about this because we enjoy it, anyway, as anyone on any TF2 server has already enjoyed the new koth_harvest_event map, exploding pumpkins, brand-new hats (to pile on top of all the other awesome headgear), and the incomparable ghost costume of Zepheniah Mann.

PS We love our Gibuses, though proper grammer sometimes makes for odd pronunciation.

4. The Classic Spy

Just because you’re ten years behind the times doesn’t mean you can’t dress up - though it can mean you wish you were more advanced. That’s the lesson behind the awkwardly-named |WS|*Nikon’s smooth spy skin, disguising a Team Fortress Classic server’s Spy as: a TF2 spy!

5. The Red vs Blue Crysis

In the most insanely complicated meta disguise outside of Major Smith in Where Eagles Dare, “not so l337” lets Crysis commandos disguise themselves as the staff from Red vs Blue, who in turn are played by Spartans, from Halo. It would be impossible to add more layers to a costume without forming a human pyramid or dressing up as a double-decker bus.

6. Day of Metal Gear Defeat

Dr. Cloud understands exactly how to guarantee an Allied success on Day of Defeat servers: staff the side of the angels with an endless army of Solid Snake clones. With the Axis forces represented by far inferior GRU cannon fodder it’s quite likely the sheer psychological pressure will force them to fold (despite their advantage in heavy machine guns).

7. Left 4 Dead

The most popular costumes over the last week come from the Left 4 Dead pre-order exclusive demo, with our four favorite survivors sporting spanking new skins.

Bill: Everyone’s favorite armed uncle-figure swaps Vietnam flashbacks for a love of candy, and an incredibly convincing Coach fatsuit.
Zoey: The apocalypse’s only female pulls an incredible double reverse-Michael-Jackson, both turning from white to black AND staying alive to play Rochelle.
Louis: The hard-working everyman goes even further than Zoey to become Elllis’s engineering Suthan bo-ay.
Francis: Why hate everything at random, when Nick can hate and distrust everything as a scumbag conman?

The best bit? Game servers can be dressed up every day of the year!