I am not one of those purists, though, so I ultimately judge Rebellion’s latest by the new gameplay opportunities it opens up. Suppressors are plentiful, and – much like Activision’s series – wrapping a pistol grip in tape somehow makes the weapon handle better. Sniper Elite 5 might upset some pursuits as it abandons the limited, historically accurate approach for more liberal, almost COD-like weaponry. Every weapon and ammo type clearly lists this stat, and the many weapon upgrades you unlock over the course of the game can alter this behaviour further.Įven without suppressors, you can control how you’re perceived quite easily the HUD makes the enemies’ intentions (and state) clear, so you’re never unsure whether they’re hunting you, or have given up the chase and returned to neutral. To make the fantasy feel even more immersive, there are Sniper Elite 5’s new gunshot audible ranges. This is done by disabling alarms, and trapping the roads that lead to it. I found the best way to stealth my way into a base is to isolate it from the rest of the map. While enemy AI is more limited compared to Kojima’s classic, it can easily flank you and communicate your position to nearby units regularly. An officer you randomly killed at the start of the mission might offer a key code or note about a hidden stash you’re going to need later. Similar to MGS 5, Sniper Elite 5’s levels present a rule consistency that makes them feel believable. The map only reveals those locations once you’ve discovered them. There’s almost always a workbench to unlock, a stash of ammo, or even just a garage to pick up a crowbar just in case you need it later. Sniper Elite 5 consistently trusts you to wander off and take your time to create those opportunities. But if you kill your mark in the specific way the game wants you, you’ll have a unique reward waiting for you. How you do it is up to you – and indeed, the AI is dynamic enough that you may accidentally down your target if they decided to patrol near you and things got loud. Kill Lists, on the other hand, task you with taking out a particular high-ranking target. Complex indoor levels make scouting ahead and planning much more difficult. The more you explore, the more context about your ultimate goal you’re going to gain. You’ll regularly come across maps, notes about collapsed cave-ins that offer unusual entrances, codes for various safes, and even tools like bolt cutters that let you access otherwise off-limits areas. I made it a point to leave the main objective until the end, and the game feels to have been designed with that in mind. Side missions might not offer the same spectacle as your main objectives, but they often unfold in ways that inform how you tackle the main targets – and give that edge when it’s finally time to take your quarry down. The same goes for side missions, and the Hitman-inspired Kill Lists. There’s almost always more than one way to go about it, too, and the map teases you by positing that there is, in fact, more than one way to skin a cat. Your objective’s general area is circled on the map, but the circumstances are never clear until you actually get there. Missions start by throwing you right into the action, with only a vague indication of where you should go. The pre-mission briefing usually has the information you need to achieve your goal, and you can certainly mainline it and extract shortly after.īut this is a decidedly uneventful way to play, because the game places such a huge emphasis on exploration that it turns it into some Hitman-meets-MGS baby that’s ready to reward you for poking your head into every barn and crowbarring your way into any suspicious-looking building in the French countryside. You’re dropped into a large – though not quite open – map and given a general objective. Sniper Elite 5 has a fairly straightforward setup, but the way it’s executed this time is what makes the difference. I expected a good stealth game (and a satisfying sniping sim-cade) but I wasn’t ready for how ambitious, and often brilliant, Sniper Elite 5’s mix of stealth and action is. Sniper Elite 5, however, launches into Game Pass – and that was all the convincing I needed to download Rebellion’s latest and play it now, rather than pick it up on sale down the line like I usually do. The trailers and gameplay we got to see ahead of launch showed incremental upgrades and general refinements over its predecessors, but nothing that immediately stood out as something I needed to try. But I wasn’t particularly looking forward to Sniper Elite 5. I’ve played them all, though rarely at launch, and I’ve enjoyed them all to varying degrees. I’ve been guilty of skipping over the Sniper Elite series, and I know I’m not alone.
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