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Sniper Elite 5: A long shot falls short

Summary

Sniper Elite 5 is the latest release in the Sniper Elite series, a Sniper-Stealth action game series set in WW2 which takes you to the ruins of Berlin, the lush mountains of Italy and the sands of North Africa. This game takes you to the towns of occupied France during the D-Day landings where your mission is to stop an evil Nazi plan to miraculously win the war in one foul swop. Again. You'll crisscross over France in 9 levels taking you from secret Nazi labs to occupied French chateaus, liberating the country one shot at a time. I will be reviewing the base single player aspects of the game for this review.

And here we see a wild Karl Fairburne hunting its favourite prey

Story

In all honesty, the storyline is, as usual for this series, unremarkable and sparse. You play Karl Fairburne, a cookie cutter WW2 game hero with all the personality of a cardboard box. You have an eclectic mix of allies who, really, do nothing notable to aid your story outside of cutscenes and also have unremarkable personalities. The story here is the weakest in the series, and that’s saying something. By the end of the game I had long since stopped caring about Karl, about evil bad evil Nazi bad guy Abelard Moller (who was so uninspired as a villian I half expected him to have a long mustach to twirl while he ties someone to train tracks), about my allies and about much of anything except the gameplay.

Gameplay

Unfortunately, this is another area where Sniper Elite 5 takes a step back from its predecessor, Sniper Elite 4. While the graphics are excellent, with breathtaking sights and graphics that truly live up to current gen, in terms of gameplay, you can clearly see what influences this game: the new Hitman series. Stealth now has a stronger emphasis, close quarters combat scenarios are more present and the enemy AI has been improved since earlier installments of the series (though I’ll get into that a bit later).
Unfortunately, Sniper Elite 5 feels like the result of copying your friend's homework without understanding it and being called out by the teacher for it. Stealth feels a little empty, the game levels vary between that wide open sniper friendly good-good and tight, cramped and frustrating interiors in maps that theoretically sandbox but, in practice, are more linear than not. It feels like an inferior copy of Hitman, all of the slow, meticulous and, at times, frustrating gameplay without any of the cleverly designed levels, without any of the fun options, without the soul of Hitman.

Karl prepares to give some unsuspecting soldier a surprise lobotomy

You can see the flashes of the game Sniper Elite wants to be, the actual, ya know, Sniper game. The opening of Mission 3 is a dream where you have the opportunity to camp up, mark targets and, at your leisure, snipe every single enemy you can lay your eyes on and getting to enjoy the serie’s staple, the slow motion bullet time where you get to see the gruesome result of your accurate shooting (even that starts to grow old when you see it for the hundredth time). It was some of the best fun I had all game. The sniping remains top notch as ever and the mechanics are tweakable to your desires. If you want more gamey sniping, more forgiving shots or for them to be laid out for you, they can be. If you want a more realistic, authentic experience with unforgiving wind and bullet drop and a harder challenge, you can be.
The guns are far more customizable, allowing you to modify and tweak your rifle to find just the right balance for your rifle. This comes, however, at the cost of less rifles total. Personally, this bugs me a little as a good variety of rifles is one of the things I loved about previous entries, but I can live with it and it's up to you to decide if this weapon system is a step backward or forward. The sniping, as ever, remains fun and enjoyable.

Karl hiding with sandbags that have as much personality as him to blend in

The rest of the game, unfortunately, fails to live up to it. That mission I mentioned earlier that opens with that fun sniping section is a prime example, starting fun but getting into progressively tighter and tighter environments and less and less sniping. An extremely fun opening descends into a tight stealth section with enemies and frustration galore. Sniper Elite 5 clearly wants to be a stealth game, so let's examine its stealth. Spoiler alert: it's pretty mediocre.

The measure of last resort or first response?

Stealth feels frustrating, especially on higher levels. It's not bad enough that silenced guns are not actually silenced, an admittedly realistic if frustrating mechanic, Throughout much of the game, and especially on later levels, enemies take more damage, headshots don’t necessarily kill enemies in one shot as their helmets absorb the shot and you need to hit them just right, especially at range. Enemies move in unnatural, unpredictable patterns, the AI vacillates between frustratingly omniscient and observant and bafflingly stupid, spotting me from up two levels and across a large, cavernous room, but then running right in front of me to take cover with half their body exposed to me. As I said before, AI is improved from previous installments, but it's still….rough at times.
And if you get into combat, good luck. Enemies do massive amounts of damage, spot you at the drop of a hat and are apparently using secret Nazi lazer gun technology, based off their accuracy. Overall, the stealth and combat feels underwhelming. It's a cheap copy, a store-brand version of Hitman with a clunky combat mechanic bolted to the side of it.

Conclusion

Overall, the game has its ups and down. There are flashes of good fun, parts of the game where you can just sit back and snipe, and many, many parts of the game where you slog through uninspired and underwhelming stealth sections. If you want an enjoyable sniping game, especially one with the bullet time mechanics, play Sniper Elite 4. If you want to play an intricately designed and fun stealth game, play Hitman. Sniper Elite 5 fails to reach the heights of either game, aiming to be a blend of the action sniper game of the past installments and the stealth assassination game of the Hitman series, but missing the mark. There is fun to be had, certainly, and I would recommend the game if you can look past its unfortunate flaws, but I would wait for it to go on sale. If you can look past the clunky combat and frustrating stealth to enjoy its strengths, this is the game for you. Just make sure you scout this game properly before rushing in.

I've sadly never played a Sniper Elite