With its decidedly British styling and stealth-based gameplay, the Sniper Elite series has carved itself its own niche in under 17 years, all with a fraction of the resources provided to other blockbuster shooter titles.
The fifth installment is now available, and it’s the first to be playable on a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, as well as PC and last-gen consoles.
So, what’s new in this new release, and is it worth your time? We make everything public.
Our Quick Take
Those who have already fallen in love with the Sniper Elite series will undoubtedly enjoy this latest installment. We anticipate it gaining a number of new fans as well. It checks all the boxes while also providing plenty of additional features.
For starters, the campaign missions are huge, and, with eight of them in total, there’s a heck of a lot of gameplay on offer. Even the simpler missions took us around an hour and a half to two hours to finish. Plus, there are plenty of side missions and collectibles to locate, so it’s easy to see why you’d want to come back.
That’s before you consider that you can play them in co-op with a friend or attack someone else’s campaign as an enemy sniper in the excellent Invasion Mode. Additional frosting on the cake comes in the form of the many multiplayer modes.
However, in both a last-gen and current-gen game, there appear to have been some presentation concessions made. With pin-sharp visuals and high frame rates on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, it looks wonderful, but it also needs to operate smoothly on PS4 and Xbox One, so the overall appearance is a bit halfway house. Still, the improved kill cameras compensate in part because they never get old.
Sniper Elite 5’s familiarity, both physically and gameplay-wise, is certainly comforting. In terms of modern stealth games, the series is right up there with the most recent Hitman trilogy, and Fairburne’s fifth adventure demonstrates why.
Vive la France
In Sniper Elite 5, you step back into the well-worn shoes of Karl Fairburne, the eponymous sniper also known as ‘The Shadow,’ and a scourge of Nazi generals all around the world. This time, he finds himself in 1944 France, charged with undermining Axis defences in advance of the Allied assault on D-Day.
However, the discovery of enemy documents referencing Operation Kraken leads him into a new route, one that, if he fails, may see a depleted, nearly beaten Nazi force shift the tide of the war. Cue a series of progressively challenging set pieces, each with targets to defeat and data to collect.
This plot is played out across eight lengthy missions, carrying us up to D-Day and beyond. Each also includes alternative side objectives, collectibles, and other high-ranking commanders to assassinate, resulting in a lot of gameplay – especially given the size of the open-world areas this time around.
This is easily the largest Sniper Elite game yet, and you get a sense of its size right once. Each mission map is big and smartly constructed to provide you with a wide range of different paths and ways to fulfill goals in the manner that best fits you. The game favours stealth above everything else, although if you want to try to kill every adversary in the campaign (and have a week or two spares), you could try.
We felt that blending play styles was the most rewarding – after all, this is a Sniper Elite game, so shooting is always on the agenda – but if you want to creep about and take down your rivals up close, you can. You don’t even have to murder; simply incapacitating is sufficient. However, you will miss out on many amazing, upgraded kill cams if you do so.
Graphic Violence
The series is known for its brutal x-ray zooms when an adversary is shot from afar, and this latest instalment does not disappoint. The graphics have been altered slightly between generations, particularly for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S editions, so you get a more visceral glimpse at your targets’ insides before they quickly become their outsides.
Kill cams are now available for handguns and SMGs, and close-quarters combat, such as a knife assault, can also trigger slow-motion effects. You can, of course, increase their frequency (or, if you prefer, turn them off totally), but they truly distinguish this gaming series from many others.
One thing to note about the graphics in general is that the upgrades for the newer platforms appear to have been scaled back slightly – otherwise, the PS4 and Xbox One versions would struggle. There are still small details and a general crispness on newer devices that are amazing, but we’d say that the overall presentation is more of an evolution than a revolution.
Because of scans taken in real-world settings, you notice more vegetation and fine features than in Sniper Elite 4, and the action is exceptionally smooth, operating at 60fps (it seems). There’s just the idea that if it had been a current-gen release alone, we might have gotten even more visual bells and whistles.
All in all, the gameplay is so simple that you’ll barely notice the scenery.
In With The New
That’s because to Rebellion Developments’ embrace of what has made the series so enjoyable over the years, as well as the addition of a few well-received new features.
Its core gameplay of stealth, gunplay, adventure and puzzle-solving is as strong as ever. Nothing beats taking out an enemy from afar while the rest of the team scrambles around, trying to figure out where the shot came from. The new additions, on the other hand, are skillfully added on to make it even more enjoyable. Read more; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2: Everything You Need
Weapon customization is an excellent example of a new feature that fits in perfectly. Before missions, you can now customise each gun rather than just your loadout.
You may customise your rifle, SMG, and handgun with different barrels, sights, stocks, and even ammo. Some can change the weapon’s feel and handling, while others can change the noise it produces and/or its impact on an enemy. You must weigh your options in order to determine what is best for you in that particular task.
You can even select non-lethal ammo or adjust the appearance of a gun. It’s an astonishing list of alternatives, to say the least.
The action is also more varied, with numerous methods to climb or slide your way through the enormous open-world levels. Fairburne can also learn new skills as he progresses by accumulating skill points. Read Also; A History of Knights of the Old Republic Rumors
Invasion Mode, on the other hand, is possibly our favourite new feature. This is an online-only game in which other players can join your campaign as an Axis sniper charged with tracking you down. They can locate you on the map if a hostile NPC observes you, and you can locate them via telephone locations scattered around each mission.
It turns into a cat and mouse game, made much more entertaining by the fact that you still have to finish your job. Of course, you can also invade other players’ games as the opposing sniper.
Furthermore, all campaign missions may be completed in co-op with a companion. Other multiplayer modes include 16 PVP matches and the classic survivor mode, in which you and three other people must battle wave after wave of Nazi soldiers.
This is a large vintage game with plenty of action even after you complete the campaign. We even went back into finished missions to try them from different entry points and with different loadouts. It’s all fantastic.
To Recap
Sniper Elite 5 takes what’s wonderful about the game and improves it with new features including in-depth weapon customization and the online Invasion Mode. Its narrative is substantial, with large open-world tasks to complete in a variety of ways, and multiplayer is as enjoyable as ever. As the first game in the series to be released on both last-generation and current-generation consoles, it lacks some of the full graphic elegance that newer computers are capable of, but you won’t notice once the action begins.
