Sniper Elite 5 has blown me away, like a fleet of Allied landing craft attacking the beaches of Normandy. I was in a state of ecstatic bewilderment for the most part of the weekend, murmuring to myself all the while, “isn’t this brilliant?” as it gave level after brilliantly crafted level to sneak about in, turning Nazi skulls into cornflakes. From the mediocre V2, I’ve been enjoying Rebellion’s notoriously graphic stealth series, but I never imagined I’d be writing about it with the type of frantic pleasure usually reserved for someone like Elden Ring.
Looking back, there were indications that Sniper Elite may become something unique. Although Sniper Elite is most known for its ‘X-Ray’ system, which allows you to see the horrible anatomical detail of your bullets passing through opponent bodies, the game has been gradually revealing more of its potential since Sniper Elite 3’s 2014 tour of Africa. The once awkward mobility and fighting have gradually improved, and the landscapes have gotten bigger, more expansive, and more ambitious. For a while now, Sniper Elite has consistently provided amusement. It was good; it just needed a little inspiration.
An unexpected source of inspiration for Sniper Elite 5 is the Allied invasion of France. Video games have examined Operation Overlord the most thoroughly out of all the Second World War theaters; since Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was released in 2002, it has been constantly recreated. I know the Normandy hedgerows better than my own backyard, so the thought of setting up a game there doesn’t excite me much either. Sniper Elite 5 ought to feel more reminiscent of the prior games by all argument. Rather, Rebellion had to be more creative in their level design because of France’s empty fields, and the studio breathes new life into the scene with creative settings and a meticulous attention to detail.
The story of Sniper Elite 5 begins before to D-Day when seasoned assassin Karl Fairburne sneaks behind the Atlantic Wall to meet up with the French Resistance and prepare the way for an assault. The first mission, which takes place on a vast stretch of the Normandy shoreline and gathers all the biggest highlights of the French liberation, sets the bar for all that comes after. Massive radar dish, ‘eighty-eight’ artillery pieces, and a charming countryside with a Nazi commander wandering around while waiting for his skull to be vented are all there to be sabotaged.
Sniper Elite 5 feels like a significant advance over earlier games, even at this early point. The maps not only flow more naturally, but Fairburne also moves through them with greater elegance. He can kill foes in close quarters with swift, vicious melee strikes and weave elegantly between Nazi patrols. It’s important to note that Sniper Elite 5 is more blatantly graphic than in the past. While the X-Ray system is expanded to include melee and sidearm strikes, arterial spray hisses out of people like air from a tire inflation hose.
However, I didn’t really understand what set this task apart from the others until I played the third level, Spy Academy. The iconic level of Sniper Elite 5, Spy Academy, begins with a breathtaking panoramic view of Beaumont Saint-Denis, a magnificently rendered fictitious version of the tidal island of Mont Saint-Michel. Looking across the river, it seems like a haven for sharpshooters. The island’s tiny stone bridge leads to the mainland, where Wehrmacht soldiers patrol openly. Circling Luftwaffe jets give consistent acoustic cover for your shots.
But as soon as you enter the island itself, it’s obvious that this is more than just a shooting range. Effective sniping possibilities are scarce due to the level’s constant uphill growth and the tiny medieval alleyways. Rather, you have to rely on Fairburne’s other abilities and weapons, including melee and quiet pistol kills to take out opponents up close, and carefully setting out teller mines to take down the German motorcyclists that are patrolling the area.
Sniper Elite 5 achieves the ideal mix between sniping and wider-ranging stealth in this way. No strategy is effective everywhere. When it comes to suppressed weapons, Sniper Elite 5 is more lenient, allowing you to mount a suppressor on almost everything. However, suppressed is not the same as silence, and guards must still be relatively isolated or there must be little background noise in order for suppressed bullets to be undetectable. As an alternative, you can use “subsonic” sniper rounds to reduce the likelihood that you would be discovered. These are less precise and powerful than regular ammo, but they are quieter. Kills that are completely quiet can only be accomplished up close, which has disadvantages of its own.
Conversely, no strategy seems unnecessary. If there aren’t any clear-cut opportunities to remove guards covertly, you have a plethora of instruments at your disposal to make them, from Fairburne’s extensive array of equipment intended for both diversion and removal to environment-based artifacts that may be tampered with to produce ambient noise. The “Schu” mine, a non-lethal explosive that may entice bothersome guards for swift, stealthy knockouts, is one of my favorite tools. In fact, Sniper Elite 5 offers a variety of non-lethal weaponry options, such as “wooden” rounds for every class of weapon. One of the few stealth games where taking a deadly approach feels totally acceptable is Sniper Elite. To me, this is like ordering a salad at a restaurant. Still, it’s a wonderful thing to have the choice.
The level that everyone will probably remember is Spy Academy, although there are a number of really well-realized areas that make up the greatest sandboxes this side of IO’s Hitman trilogy. In the fourth level, War Factory, Fairburne sabotages massive blast furnaces and steaming steelworks within a vast industrial complex. Libération, the sixth level, is a rolling valley full of French villages protected by tanks, armored cars, and counter-snipers. It seems like half a Call of Duty campaign compressed into one level. Libération is one of the game’s most flexible levels, offering plenty of chances for sneaking up on opponents, using stealth tactics, or just plain blowing everything to pieces with Panzerfausts and anti-tank weapons.
This is not to argue that Sniper Elite 5 is flawless. Some of the levels are just ‘okay,’ but the bulk are superb. Festung Guernsey is maybe the weakest, seeming too much like a first-level replay with some aesthetically pleasingly alien-looking German fortifications. The storyline, on the other hand, is mainly unimportant and doesn’t try to be complex, while Operation Kraken, the covert project Fairburne is assigned to investigate, creates a danger that is only somewhat intriguing by using realistic elements. Especially on more tough settings, the AI presents a respectable challenge. It can still have the occasional strange quirk, such as cycling between inactive and alert states.
If this was all Sniper Elite 5 had to offer, along with the already-available features like cooperative and multiplayer campaign functionality, I’d just say it’s time for supper. However, I haven’t yet discussed one very important component: invasions. A ‘Jager’ sniper controlled by another player may gatecrash your game if you play Sniper Elite 5 online. Sniper Elite 5 now shifts from a painstaking stealth sandbox to an exciting struggle for survival.
Although the concept of multiplayer invasions is not new, Sniper Elite’s varied settings and extensive equipment selection make it the ideal setting for some very suspenseful cat and mouse action. When using a Jager, you may trip over a teller’s land every time you turn a corner or receive a brand-new orifice from a distance of half a mile. In one instance, I pursued my assailant around an opulent château for fifteen minutes before ultimately eliminating them from the balcony of the structure’s exclusive performance space. After my invader and I disabled each other in a different encounter, the game became a mad scramble to see who could heal themselves the fastest.
For a while now, Sniper Elite has consistently provided amusement. It was good; it just needed a little inspiration.
“Invasions fit into Sniper Elite like lead weight ten grams into the eye socket of an SS officer.” However, Rebellion also refines the method in several clever ways. In order to reduce pointless roaming, the game pings you the approximate location of your opponent. If you camp in one spot for an extended period of time, it will also highlight your respective locations. It also allows you to temporarily put your objective on hold for a few rounds of ad hoc deathmatch by allowing both sides to seek a rematch after the fight. The game either resumes where you left off after you’re done, or it returns you to your last save. This makes it less well-integrated than, example, the invasions in Deathloop, but it also makes it more adaptable and less annoying, which encourages you to leave the system on all the time.
Sniper Elite 5 accomplishes the ultimate aim of any sniper game—that is, to recreate the suspense and drama of Jude Law and Ed Harris facing off in Enemy at the Gates—through its invasion feature. Sniper Elite 5 is that game, minus the Russian location and Rachel Weisz, if, like me, you saw the movie when you were too young to understand it and thought, instead of the more realistic, “Wow, war is terrible,” “I wish there was a game that let me do that.” One of the most engaging games of the year is created when you combine that with eight very versatile sandboxes and the most creative interactive depiction of the Second World War in at least ten years.