Sniping Mission

"Now I knew how to get Muller - one true shot from the Flak Tower to his Command Tower."

"But the Russians had closed in, cutting me off from my designated vantage point. I'd have to cross the Front Line, past the attacking Reds, and infiltrate one of the most heavily defended fortresses in Berlin. This is what I train for, just me, my rifle, and a target."

— Lt. Karl Fairburne, Sniper Elite V2

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. Occasionally, it overlaps with Assassination Sidequest, in which you need to assassinate a specific target.

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 in a Sniper Duel.

Is often an Unexpected Gameplay Change.

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General Examples

• Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel has segments within missions of these, sometimes both of you, sometimes one of you covering the other.
• There is an interesting (and annoying) minigame variation in Bully, with a slingshot instead of a sniper rifle.
• 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, as once upon meeting a sniper, he covers you. In this context, "covers you" means "uses you as sniper bait".
    • Turned around in the first Russian mission of the later Call of Duty: World at War, as 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).
    • Earlier in the game, "Blackout" features SAS newbie Soap MacTavish providing sniper support for Russian government loyalists while they try to retake a village from rebels. That is until Captain Price, who's more concerned about rescuing a captured informant, dangles the loyalist commanding officer over a ledge. Price, incidentally, was the sniper in the above mission.
• CT Special Forces, a game that is otherwise Run-and-Gun, have sniping areas where your character drops their assault rifles, mounts their sniper, and must snipe the next scvreen clear of enemies before they can proceed. It's frustratingly difficult in the first game as terrorists can show up from literally anywhere, but the sequels fixed that by giving a green pointer on the scope for spotting nearby enemies.
• Fashion Police Squad has a mission 10 with two sniping sections where Des is positioned in the rooftop, having to snipe fashion into fashion criminals trying to interrupt the show. Fortunately, the sniper rifle shoots fashion gnomes that correct the hair, clothes or shoes.
• 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.
• First Encounter Assault Recon has the level "Urban Decay", where, to proceed, you have to clear a number of abandoned buildings of Replica Snipers armed with Type-7 particle beam rifles, which can vaporize you in one hit on higher difficulties. Luckily, you have the same weapon available.
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2's second mission.
• GunFu Fighter has the mission in Hong Kong where you scale a skyscraper after fighting enemies on ground level. And on the top, clear two adjacent buildings of hidden enemies with your trusty sniper rifle.
• Several times in Ghost Squad (2004), 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. Operation G.H.O.S.T. continues with this mission format.
• 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.
• Halo:
  • Halo: Combat Evolved had this for the third level, although it's not really required.
  • Part of the second level of Halo 2 involves counter-sniping against Jackals armed with One-Hit Kill laser rifles. The other option being to run up close and gank them...
  • Halo 3 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.
• Hitman:
  • The first mission (except for the tutorial) in Hitman: Codename 47 (it can be done without sniping, but it is dangerous.)
  • Hitman 2: Silent Assassin has its second real mission follow suit with a sniping mission that involves guessing who to kill between 4 look likes based off of small traits about them told over radio. It can be done with out a sniper rifle however (in fact as seen here its still possible to get silent assassin ranking taking the direct rout)
  • The following mission involves killing one of the other generals who was at the meeting now that He Knows Too Much and his Russian mafia contact. By far the most efficient way to complete the mission involves sniping the pair of them with a single shot from the top of a water tower across the river from the park where they're meeting.
  • Hitman: Contracts has a reimagining of the same mission. The easiest way to complete it is to invoke this trope. Several missions throughout the series allow for this. And of course, there's Absolution's pre-order Sniper Challenge.
  • In Hitman (2016), "The Vector" mission in the Patient Zero bonus campaign has you snipe people that are carriers of a man-made virus. You're given clues over time on who the carriers are and need to figure out which person is your target based off those hints. Hitman 2 also added Sniper Challenge as a seperate game mode.
• Hour of Victory have a few missions in-between regular gameplay, like one where you're in a bombed-out building and must clear an adjacent structure filled with German snipers (with your own sniper of course).
• Occurs in Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising. An RTS. In one of the missions, you have to kill a helicopter pilot without getting too near. The only weapon with the necessary range and accuracy is the Rapier. An anti-tank laser cannon.
• Unsurprisingly, JFK: Reloaded. Even when you go out-and-out psychotic and shoot seemingly everyone in Dallas.
• Two of them show up in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The plot events are required, but the sniping parts are optional. In fact, the resident Sniper Scope, called the Hawkeye, requires you to demonstrate sniping skill by hitting a wooden pole a pixel wide from where you stand in a little minigame. Before you even buy it.
  • The first instance occurs at the Bulbin Camp at the Gerudo Desert, where you can snipe all the watchtower archers (and even the riders) before they let out the alarm, which decreases the difficulty of this segment by a lot.
  • The second instance occurs at Old Kakariko Village from Ocarina of Time, albeit redesigned and in ruin, and it is accompanied by Awesome Music. Almost all Bulbins in this level are archers and are very visible from the starting point. In fact, you will probably eliminate a little more than half of the Bulbin patrol stationed in this town before being forced to move to find the rest.
• Max Payne throws in one of these about three-quarters of the way through the game, which is a pretty drastic Unexpected Gameplay Change because the majority of previous levels consisted of often-cramped indoors environments and gunfights taking place at ranges of less than ten yards. It's also the only level with any puzzle elements: in order to progress, you have to steer an overhead container crane around a sprawling freight yard while trading gunfire with mooks on the ground. Whether it's a Scrappy Level or a refreshing change of pace is a matter of taste.
• 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, That One 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.
• 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 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.
• The PlayStation 2 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. Time Crisis 5 has this in Area 4 where you take out the patrolling guards.
• In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, there are occasional parts where you must help the Galactic Rangers in a series of missions on various planets. The mission 'Assassination' in Outpost X12, Aridia, can be played several different ways. Despite the usual gameplay style of the series, this trope is one method. It's surprisingly fun.
• 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).
• Robotech: Battlecry has a mission where Jack is sent to hunt down Power Armor Commandos, much stronger foes than the typical fighter pods or battle pods that usually populate the missions. Their armor, however, is vulnerable to the Veritech's sniper rounds. While the player can charge in and get into a guns-blazing firefight with the Commandos, it is much less of a hassle to simply stay back and put a high-powered bullet through their helmets when they appear.
• 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.
• 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...
• SiN (1998 has a short section in the first Oil Rig level wherein you must snipe all the guards on the lower level before you can board it. An easy mission, as the guards are never close together and have predictable patrol routes.
• Sniper Elite, Sniper Elite V2, Sniper Elite III, Sniper Elite 4, and Sniper Elite 5 are part Stealth-Based Game, part series of sniping missions. In every mission there's a number of vantage points from which you can pick off enemies from a distance, though enemies alerted by the sound of gunfire or a body will move around quickly and are more likely to spot you. There are also hard-to-spot enemy snipers perched atop the highest places on the maps. Some missions have a specific target as the ultimate objective, as well.
  • In the Overwatch co-op game mode, one player is cast as a sniper and the other as his spotter. The sniper is armed only with his rifle, and the spotter uses binoculars to tag enemies for the sniper to take out.
  • There's also the Escort Mission version in one level — about midway through the Opernplatz mission, you have to save a friendly NPC from execution and cover his escape to your location. Unlike most escortees, the NPC in question has his own gun and is smart enough to take cover when under fire. No matter what, though, he eventually dies from wounds he took during the escape.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:
  • The final part of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, you have to shoot Strelok several times with an EMP rifle to disable his psy-protection gear. It's fairly annoying, as the electric balls you shoot move slower than the bullets you're used to by this point, you have to change firing positions several times over, and while you're going for said new positions, you get ambushed by Monolith stalkers (who are mentally too far gone to go for an Enemy Mine truce), sometimes from both front and back by teleporting squads. Drop in a "Realistic Weapons" Game Mod and it's a full-blown Scrappy Level that forces you to lower the difficulty to proceed.
  • Call of Pripyat has one in the Pripyat arc, where you have to position yourself at the top floor of an abandoned apartment complex and observe a meeting between the leader of the mercenaries and the employer who leads a rogue group of Ecologists who are interested in the whereabouts of Lab X8 and its important documents. You are given an SVD sniper rifle and have the chance to take both of them out with a well placed headshot before they leave the rendezvous point. Interestingly, you can optionally choose to equip the RPG-7 or Gauss Rifle for the mission; the latter is much easier because both of these two weapons can kill your two important targets much quicker than the default SVD.
• In 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 bridge level in Syphon Filter 2 combines this with a Stealth-Based Mission. If any of the mooks spot you, they'll blow the bridge. In the second Airbase level, also a stealth mission, you have to snipe an F-22 pilot, then Falkan before he escapes by chopper. Ditto for the assasination of Shi Hao in the first level of SF 3, and Agent Stone's hit on mafia boss Dimitri Alexopoulos in Omega Strain. The sniper rifle is available in a few other levels of the series, but it's usually not mandatory.
• 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.
• 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.
• Vanquish combines this with a Cable-Car Action Sequence in Act 3-4.
• 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.

Examples of Sniping Escort Missions

• The classic arcade game Crossbow.
• 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.
• Far Cry:
  • Far Cry 3 has a sniping mission where you have to protect one of your friends as he runs away. He's pretty ineffective at anything but hiding, and will get shot up instantly if you're not watching out for enemies.
  • In contrast to the last example, Far Cry 4 has a mission where you're to cover Willis from the control tower of an airport with a .50 rifle. Although Willis will be turned to swiss cheese without your help, he's very handy with a rifle and does a very good job protecting himself. Alternately, due to a glitch the enemies tend to completely ignore you in this mission; you can completely screw the system and jump right into the fray, and the guards will be too busy opening up on Willis to even bother with you.
• 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!"
  • It's possible to kill all of them before they reach cover if you're a good enough shot. Doing this prompts an additional message from Dom.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • The final mission in Portland in Grand Theft Auto III. 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.
  • Grand Theft Auto: 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.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV has a similar mission, but at least the person who you are covering is sane and can shoot back.
  • Covering the Mountain Cloud Boys from the Rifa watchers in San Andreas during the third-to-last San Fierro Mission. It's guaranteed that at least one will die no matter how fast and accurate you are.
  • In Grand Theft Auto V, Trevor provides sniper support multiple times for other characters; first for his accomplice Ron during the beginning of "Nervous Ron" (although being the kind of guy he is, he makes it clear to Ron that he'll also snipe him if he happens to get cold feet at any point), then for Michael and Franklin during "Blitz Play", and finally for Michael and Dave Norton during "The Wrap-Up". Franklin also covers for Michael during "Three's Company" and one version of "The Merryweather Heist", despite his default shooting stat being the lowest of the three protagonists. Michael returns the favor during "Lamar Down", supporting Franklin and Trevor.
• 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.
• Jonathan Kane: The Protector has the docks stage where Jonathan made it across first, but Jennifer who's unarmed is trapped with tons of enemy mooks. As Jonathan player then provides cover for Jennifer via Sniper Rifle until she managed to reach the exit.
• During the Summer section of The Last of Us, Joel needs to protect Henry, Ellie, and Sam from a group of Infected using an old rifle he stole from a hunter. More hunters soon arrive and the objective changes to killing them instead as they take care of the Infected. No matter how quickly you deal with the molotov cocktail tosser mini-boss, Sam will always end up being bitten.
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has a segment where you play as Mona and have to use the Dragunov to snipe off an army of cleaners trying to go after Max.
• Max Payne 3 has an example in the second chapter where you cover Giovanna from a helicopter, and in the third chapter while covering Passos in the stadium.
• In one mission of Mission Impossible 1998 for N64, you provide sniper cover for Ethan in a train station.
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has a doozie of a sniping mission in which, 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.
• 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, because the silenced Walther pistol that is signature to the franchise is more accurate and does more damage, and 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. There is also 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.
• 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.
• 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 their rifle where you can reach it.
• In Perfect Dark Zero's Rooftops Escape mission, you have to protect Jack from both Datadyne troops on the ground and snipers on the rooftops.
• Rage (2011) has two. You have to cover a sheriff while he's negotiating with the big bad of the story, and after the deal goes sour shoot multiple waves of enemies, including counter-snipers. The other one has you covering mechanics from mutants and merchants from bandits.
• 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.
• 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.
• Saints Row had McManus Says Hello, a mission where the player had to snipe down a bunch of Carnales and Colombians. With RPGs.
• Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus has a few missions where you must protect a defenseless NPC (either Murray or a caneless Sly) from enemies as they make their way to a specific location.
• In Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain after retrieving your gear in Taherir Palace, you have to defend yourself and Zohar with sniper fire from endless waves of mooks until your extraction chopper arrives.
• TimeSplitters 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.
• Inverted in Tomb Raider (2013) where you have to navigate Lara across the underside of a bridge while Roth provides covering fire with his sniper rifle.
• 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.
• 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.

Examples of Sniping boss battles

• 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.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has this at the end of the aforementioned "One Shot, One Kill" mission while waiting for extraction near the Ferris wheel — while the intended method is to hide near your CO and snipe the waves of enemies with him, there's nothing preventing you from using a non-sniper weapon stolen prior to or during the fight and holding them off the usual way.
• Not a boss battle per se, but in Freedom Fighters (2003) 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.
• Lupin the 3rd: The Shooting uses a different Mini Game for each stage. Some of which include hitting very small targets that are far away.
• Metal Gear:
  • 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, but 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. This all after he had already drowned in the life reaction pool after the first fight against him. 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, by giving you a special camouflage pattern and his non-lethal sniper rifle.
  • 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.
  • And to round out the series, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain features the battles against Quiet and the Skulls. You can theoretically defeat Quiet with normal weapons and supply drops, but Quiet will Flash Step a mile away any time you get close, making the sniper rifle the best option to take her out. The Skulls are, in practice, just a group of four Quiets with even better aim and stronger rifles.
• The Quill boss battle in Red Faction II. The level after that has you Hold the Line against dozens of enemy snipers while waiting for Tangier to pick you up.
• The Nosferatu battle in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica is the only time in the game you get to use a sniper rifle.
• 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.

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