Kraken a few Nazi Skulls.
Sniper Elite has always been a franchise that I’ve had in my peripheral, but apart from its x-ray bullet cam and penchant for killing nazis, I couldn’t tell you much more about it. My larger experience with the franchise; however, was through its spin-off, the Zombie Army Trilogy series which I absolutely adore. So, with Sniper Elite 5 finally released, I was eager to finally jump in, and see what this series was all about, and honestly, I sort of wish I had jumped deeper into this franchise long ago as it is some good mindless fun.
After rolling credits, I immediately loaded up Sniper Elite 4 to take a look at how much this latest title has improved upon its predecessor over the last four years. While Sniper Elite 5 is certainly bigger, better, and more polished, there is still a mild clunkiness to the series that still remains. This results in several animations not lining up with your actions within the environment, not being able to open a door while remaining crouched, or trivial things such as having to manually pick up items, which was automatic in Sniper Elite 4. While that may sound like I am nitpicking such a minor annoyance, it can be a bit frustrating in picking out intel in a safe when it’s filled with ammo or bandages that you are already fully stocked on. This nuisance also rears its ugly head in the survival mode when you’re having to do it under fire.
Across its French backdrop, Sniper Elite 5 is often a sniper’s paradise, taking an often non-linear approach to its mission structure, and being a haven for experimenting with its weapon and equipment variety. There are a few missions that sadly go against this and the stiff mechanics and basic movement given to you start to impact the experience. Thankfully, these levels and moments are few, but with only eight overall missions, having one or two that sour the experience does limit the breadth of content offered.
When Sniper Elite 5 has wide-open fields or a spacious town granting you the distance to openly snipe, the game is at its best, but a decent amount of the game takes place indoors, in tight areas where the camera is not always your ally. When not locked into your zoomed-in scope, there is third-person over-the-shoulder shooting for your other rifles that is enjoyable but doesn’t feel as slick or fluid as I would have hoped for, especially for a game taking advantage of the new consoles in some capacity.
Also back is the series’ most well-known feature, the bullet cam. Here, you’ll follow your bullets to your target as they puncture and ricochet when they hit a bone, resulting in a bloody mess of what was once someone’s face, shoulder, or various body part. They are a tad more brutal than before and are now included for your side-arm assortment, but their kill cams are less frequent. I found myself trying to line up shots where I could take out multiple people if they were positioned just right, or an explosive barrel, resulting in a glorified mess of blood, fire, and chaos.
Most of my time with Sniper Elite 5 was spent clearing the map, largely without being seen. This came down to a lot of save-scumming, but it was largely me simply wanting to be thorough, and my own impatience often getting the better of me when I would overreach, be spotted, and suddenly a dozen guards are onto me with the alarm blaring in the background. The joy of what Sniper Elite 5 offers is taking on those encounters like a puzzle, figuring out the best path, the guard you need to silence in order to progress. In some ways, this is Nazi Jenga, as removing the wrong piece can cause everything to come crashing down. There is a solid amount of freedom here with numerous zip lines, and vine-covered walls to scale, but there are a few moments where you can feel restricted, some levels that almost suffocate that freedom by taking several fights indoors, limiting your pathing, or the inability to cut into a chainlink fence as you have to find a precut section in order to pass through, despite having that set of bolt cutters from the previous objective. Still, there is a solid variety to keep you busy and ensure that replaying a level will keep rewarding experimentation each and every time.
Taking place around the events of D-Day in France, 1944, we once again take on the role of Karl Fairburne, who is tasked with aiding a covert US Rangers operation to weaken the Atlantic wall fortifications along the coast of Britain. It’s here where he makes contact with the French Resistance, and together, they uncover a secret Nazi plot that may turn the tide of war in the Nazi’s favor: Operation Kraken. This mission places Fairburne, who is dubbed “The Shadow”, in the crosshairs of Abelard Möller, a Nazi Lieutenant General in charge of the operation, and a character that might as well have been a full-on cartoon character.
I have to wonder if the story is something that keeps people’s interest as it’s easily the least impressive component of this whole package. Nearly every single cutscene that attempts to push the story forward is “What do you mean one man is responsible for this!” as Möller will slam his fist on the nearest table and growl, somehow surprised that this keeps on happening. We do have a small cast of characters alongside Fairburne, but they are simply there for exposition, or to drive him around. We get the typical mission briefing alongside photos and documents that is a bit cliche but does more or less get the job done, even if Sniper Elite 4’s briefings via the speed drawings were infinitely more engaging as they often told a story. I would love to see a more cinematic approach to what Sniper Elite is trying to do here as opposed to what feels like a very low-budget effort with very generic scenarios attached to each mission. In fact, you could play every single mission out of order and still get the same experience.
Fairburne’s efforts to stop Operation: Kraken will take you into the French countryside, the spacious Chateau de Berengar mansion, several Nazi war factories, and a few towns that in some way are tied to the Nazi plot. Most locations are spacious and non-linear, apart from a few towards the end that feel a bit too streamlined as well as a few repeating objectives that almost don't feel like they satisfyingly connect to the narrative. While you can certainly beeline it to get to the objective quicker, there are numerous collectibles, special objectives, and kill targets to take care of and intel to gather as you explore the very large environments offered to you. Sniper Elite 5 will take you around 12-15 hours on average, but considerably longer if you are looking to track everything down and tick every box.
Sniper Elite 5’s best feature is without question its co-op. You and another player can take the entire campaign online and team up to stop Operation Kraken. You can lure enemies away for a quick ambush, call out snipers, run and gun together, and just have an overall blast. Due to playing the title largely pre-release, my time with co-op was limited, but truly made the game vastly more enjoyable, but that isn’t to say that solo play was poor in any way whatsoever. I will state that when playing co-op is where I experienced the majority of my bugs, such as infinite reloading on some weapons, thus being unable to even use them, as well as our kill target dying but the objective not completing. Still, co-op is damn fun, worked flawlessly apart from those issues, and took a great game and made it even better.
One feature you’ll either love or immediately turn off is its Invasion mode. This allows an enemy player to invade your map as an Axis sniper and attempt to track you down. You can use special invasion phones scattered across the map to figure out where each of you are, and the invading player can also use their fellow soldiers to alert them to your location should they spot you. This system is very similar to something like Elden Ring, and other Fromsoft games, but it was something that I ultimately turned off as it broke the flow of planning my path and often had me going against how and why I enjoyed the game in the first place.
Sniper Elite 4 had very limited weapon customization, but Sniper Elite 5 improves upon this with various scopes, stocks, barrels, and magazines, to enhance your arsenal, which you’ll unlock by performing various tasks or finding the hidden workbenches littered about. Overall, you’ll be equipping a pistol, sniper rifle, and secondary gun, each serving a purpose depending on how close you let your enemy get to you.
In addition to your own arsenal, you can find or procure dropped or found weapons, but there is an odd catch to this. Swapping to another gun, or even reloading, will immediately drop it. So, let's say you find a panzerfaust, as there is an armored car on the horizon approaching you, but you suddenly get ambushed by a single soldier. Swapping to your sidearm will drop the panzerfaust, and you'll need to return to where it was dropped to retrieve it should you have had to maneuver to survive the encounter. It's a shame there wasn't a reserved slot for at least your most recently picked-up addition.
Fairburne himself will have equippable skills and perks as you level him up, placing skill points in three different categories; combat, equipment, and body. Combat is based on being able to revive yourself with a medkit, throwing back grenades, or automatically searching enemies when you take them down. Equipment is pretty much what it says on the tin, as you’ll be able to hold more ammo, and items such as TNT, mines, or being able to add more items to your loadout. Finally, body is built around mechanics such as the newly implemented focus mechanic, allowing Fairburne to be able to see enemies through walls. You'll also be able to reduce your heart rate by concentrating on a long-held shot or boosting your health in order to take more punishment. Thankfully, this carries over into the survival multiplayer game as well, allowing you to keep your unlocked skill points to spend via that mode.
No matter which difficulty mode I changed it to, the AI was more or less disappointing as is how the detection and continued alert status worked. I don't mind the narrow vision they often seem to have, but I've had enemies run towards me, and duck behind cover and just stay there, allowing me to just walk up and knife them with no resistance. I've had enemies run right past me to take cover or attempt to flee and simply get stuck on something and continue their run animation. Also, you can get spotted, cause them to signal for their allies, hide, and they’ll go back to their normal patrol in no time, despite knowing there is an enemy combatant on the premises. If the alarm goes off, you can shoot it to death, go up and turn it off, and after a short wait, then it’s business as usual. Again, this was across all difficulties, and while it often makes it like shooting fish in a barrel, I'd like to think in 2022 that we'd get a bit of innovation on alerts, detection, and variations to patrols when they know someone is actually there.
Visually, Sniper Elite 5 is far better than what we’ve seen before across the series, but only in one area; its environments. Loading up Sniper Elite 4, it’s evidently clear that we have far better lighting, texture work, and overall use of color and just immensely better shadows, not to mention this is across far bigger levels than even Sniper Elite 4 had. There are some gorgeous locations here that absolutely soar and while indoor locations are pretty standard fare, they are still fine and serve their purpose. Where Sniper Elite 5 falters; however, are its people, especially its soldiers and side characters. Fairborne is more or less fine, having considerably better textures than anyone else in the game, but let’s be honest, main characters are where you put your character budget into. Still, there are parts of this game that feel last-gen for sure, and while I do feel the environments look often incredible, it’s a shame more work wasn’t put into the people that occupy it.
Apart from the story campaign, Sniper Elite 5 has two overall multiplayer modes; survival and its PVP component. Survival sees you taking on waves of enemies as you protect a base, with additional waves having that base move around a set number of times. This mode is very enjoyable as it can often take the sniping and close quarters intensity of the campaign and allow you to tackle it with three other players. Personally, of the two modes, I found this one to actually keep my interest and something I feel engaged to jump back into when I have the team to do it.
The PVP component is your standard affair with Free-for-All, Team Deathmatch, A 4v4v4v4 Squad Match, and a mode called No Cross, where it turns the match into a sniping competition as your entire battle is separated by an impenetrable barrier. Personally, all these modes are fairly enjoyable but may suffer from the idea that with so much competition in the multiplayer space, that it is hard to say how populated the servers will be in a few months. The shooting and overall mechanics are fine, with a TTK that is often measured in milliseconds, and the game being on Game Pass could aid in there being some sort of community built around it, not to mention there being cross-play support, but there isn’t much here to really sink your teeth into, apart from unlocking new characters, or various medals to win. Again, it’s fun but lacks anything unique to it.
Sniper Elite 5 does what it aims to do without being too memorable. Missions are largely cookie-cutter, but it is the freedom given to you during its roughly 12-15 hour length that is the selling point of what this series excels at. The sniping is fun, and the x-ray kill-cam is always enjoyable but is somewhat outdated when it comes to its gameplay feel. Co-op is likely the best thing this game has for it in regards to staying power both in its campaign and the very intense and enjoyable survival mode. I still feel its multiplayer has an expiry on its relevancy, but can certainly entertain if you can find a full match. Despite my issues, I still found a lot to like here, even love, so much so that I’m currently deep in Sniper Elite 4, a game that doesn’t feel too different than this latest entry, which can be both a good thing and somewhat of a disappointment. Still, Sniper Elite 5 is well worth checking out with more than enough to keep you busy, either alone, or lining up a few awesome cooperative shots with a few fellow snipers.
Developer - Rebellion Developments. Publisher - Rebellion Developments. Released -May 25th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Language, Intense Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.