Well, overly realistic war games aren’t exactly high on my wish list given the situation in Ukraine. The fact that Sniper Elite 5 of all things doesn’t cause me a queasy feeling in my stomach shows me two things. First, how well pop culture has educated us to see WWII in a special light, even in a separate room, actually. And secondly: That you don’t become too numb over time and the constant bombardment of news. In the special case of this game, however, mainly the former, because who doesn’t want to gradually get Europe back from the Nazis?
It’s been five years since Sniper Elite 4. In that half decade, I’ve really come to appreciate the series. In fact, for me, it’s the best ongoing stealth series out there. Okay, Hitman still has a say with me some days because his scenarios are even more elaborate, but in Sniper Elite executing a plan is just as much fun as scouting before. I can’t always say that about number 47 adventures. There are just a lot of subtleties in this series that you rarely experience, especially as someone who has played Arma and DayZ for a long time.
Sniper Elite 5 – when shooting becomes an art form
I really got hooked on the fourth part, playing with the comfortable difficulty controls to find a good balance of accessibility and challenge, and starting to love how the game made each and every shot a work of art. If you chose the right settings. In my case it happened gradually. At first I left all the assists on, but set the rest of the mechanics to “Authentic” to get a feel for the influence of the wind and the projectile physics and to experience the harshest possible consequences for my failure. But that was just the beginning.
After that, I gradually turned off the visual aids, which seemed like cheating to me, and then just had to break the habit of reloading the save after each botched shot. The result was intoxicating! I don’t know how much excitement this game draws from each individual attack in any other series with a comparable distribution (a year after part three, the Sniper Elite series had already sold ten million units!). It simply strikes a very special balancing act between accessibility and maximum standards. That’s something that’s easy to forget in all the controversy surrounding X-ray testicle shots.
After two hours with the fifth part, in which protagonist Karl Fairburne ends up in occupied France, it looks like it will continue exactly as I know and love the series. Maximum flexibility, a lot of planning – and if you want, hardcore firefighting taking into account bullet drop, muzzle velocity, wind force and masking your own shots by firing them when other ambient noise is masking their thunder.
who do you want to be Nazi hunter or invisible bogeyman?
Right from the start of the level, which I was able to play twice in a streamed version, the game made it clear just how much it cares about letting the player plan their progress. After a few meters you are at the first crossroads and have to decide from which direction you want to approach the château, in which not only information about a new Nazi secret project is suspected, but also General Möller himself. The latter is soon revealed turned out to be a mistake, but you should still get into his office, which is anything but easy. So you decide which series of forts, villages, and bridges you want to advance through, and each one presents you with different challenges and opportunities.
I really liked how each of the locations on the big map became its own little riddle, for which you could find different, sometimes elegant, sometimes clever, sometimes particularly rabid solutions. In the beginning I played for maximum chaos, using traps like pallets hanging from cranes or conveniently placed gas bottles, only to then flee and look for another angle for follow-up attacks. The classic stealth way, optionally without leaving any fatalities behind, is just as useful as the complete ghost mode, where nobody actually notices you.
Searching for the best path in a Sniper Elite level is great fun, and Château Berengar is no exception. On the contrary, the mission looks gigantic, but also very finely worked out in detail, i.e. inside the chateau. In general, there’s a lot more life in here than last time, including vehicles patrolling the streets (and making good targets for teller mines). If the game keeps up the level and level of detail of the environments, it will keep you busy for many, many hours in each and every mission. Those who like to experiment will always find new ways to optimize their approach, complete optional objectives, and discover all workbenches and intelligence information. I’m especially looking forward to the co-op in this regard, when you coordinate your kills and agree on how to proceed.
These are the new features in Sniper Elite 5
New features include the new ability to switch to an FPS-style aiming view, i.e. looking directly over the front sight of the weapon instead of over Karl’s shoulder. In my tryout session, it went so well as if it had always been that way. This also applies to climbing, which only found its way into the last part and for which I now felt that I discovered even more opportunities. It’s also nice to discover new starting points for the mission, similar to Hitman, which you can choose as a starting point for future attempts. Another feature making its debut is Focus mode, which you can think of as a kind of sixth sense, like the one in The Last of Us. In authentic mode, however, it is deactivated, as is the skill tree for Karl, and that’s probably better that way.
The last of the major additions is Invasion mode, which I haven’t had a chance to try yet, but which I envision as a particularly exciting increase in Authentic difficulty in this game. When another player invades another’s game as an opposing sniper, traps and all, stealth becomes even more important. Sure, when a mission can be over with just one shot.
Technically, the game doesn’t tear up any trees, which can be seen particularly well in the faces. Still, Sniper Elite 5 is far, far from being a bad looking game. The level of detail, the beautiful color palette and the credibly designed environments do a lot for the immersion, even if the engine is already a few years old. Above all, I have to praise the sound. In particular, the sounds of gunshots from Karl’s work tools are bloodcurdling – and in combination with the grotesquely brutal slow-motion shots, inspire insane respect for firearms, which sometimes makes you feel a little different. I’m not even sure if I find that sadistic or violent per se. These guns and pistols scare the shit out of me. An interesting and certainly intended effect.
Time for a first conclusion
So Sniper Elite 5: More of the excellent same – just bigger and livelier than before, it seems: A highly flexible assassination and espionage playground that can do almost any pace. I have to say that after forgetting that this game was coming up for a while, I’m doubly excited for it: firstly because I really enjoyed what I got to see last week and secondly because it’s not even a month away is.
For me, Sniper Elite is the uncrowned king of stealth games. While the majority of players primarily think of the dormant series of Solid Snake, Sam Fisher or – with a little distance – Agent 47, they don’t even realize that someone else has long since quietly taken their place. And that might just be the ultimate stealth move of the whole thing.
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