Sniper Elite 5 Review

"French Front"

Campaign

May 25, 2022 at 5:00am
By Jason Stettner

Some time has passed, and Karl Fairburne returns in a fresh portion of the war in order to take out more of the German threat. This is set in France during 1944 where our lead makes contact with the local French Resistance. This provides many unique scenarios from open beaches among castles to crumbling city streets. It’s varied, filled with distinct challenges and a blast to explore.

Your overall goal is to stop Operation Kraken, you do this through intel collection and a bit of sabotage or well even assassination occasionally. You’re a deadly ghost and it’s time to show these monsters what you’re made of. The story plays out over eight core levels with a bonus sort of level to finish it all off.

The time you spend on each of the missions can vary greatly based on what you do in each of these levels. If you’re taking your time it could be well over an hour, if you’re rushing it could be like twenty something minutes. It depends on your approach.

Are you going in with stealth and completing side objectives or just rushing and blasting your way through? Best of luck on the latter there of course. Each mission is greatly unique in terms of the challenges and style of the environments. Sometimes it’s open fields, other levels are grand castles and you might also find yourself sneaking between the rubble of great cities.

It’s quite neat in terms of just how varied the spots are and also what your goals are. Sometimes you’re taking out targets, other times you need sabotage specific items or just in general find intel within the area. You’re never quite sure what’s going to happen and goals do shift as you figure out more secrets.

You can also approach these missions from other starting points if you find secrets, as collectibles and other hidden surprises are layered throughout. The story here is somewhat light, but it’s enough to give you context into the scenario and carry forward the action. The cinematics were fun, though you can tell this is a slightly smaller production in comparison to other massive titles.

To me, that’s no issue at all and I love the charm of it. There is a new adjustment here outside of playing in coop with another player during the campaign a neat invasion could happen. So you can choose to invaded or also be invaded where a player will join the opposing faction and try to hunt you down. It’s quite fun and a distinct challenge.

Multiplayer

Competitive
The competitive multiplayer portion has players in matches of sixteen taking each other out across a few game modes. The first is no cross, where teams are separated by an impenetrable barrier and need to take each other out from a distance. Then there’s free for all where it’s just a frenzy, good luck. Finally we have variations on team based deathmatches.

The first being team match where we get two teams of up to eight players and the second being squad match where it’s four teams of up to four players. You can matchmake for any of these, create lobbies or do whatever with the setup. I do wish there were more maps for the multiplayer, that being a negative I suppose but it’s still a good offering here for selections.

Survival
This is a cooperative portion of the package where up to four players can work together to survive waves. You protect specific bases and move around a few maps trying to take on the impending onslaught. You can go at this solo, but it’s much more fun to matchmake or setup lobbies with others. This one also needs more map options as there are a few present.

Gameplay

This is a third person shooter where players will scope into the first person when shooting. It’s a neat setup that offers players a better chance of stealth based play. You get a range of weapons, weapon customization and additional items at your disposal. These items include things such as bandages or grenades and mines to use.

Work benches allow you to change up weapons and your unlocked skills will further offer unique abilities. You move about however you please with advanced stealth options to traverse the environments. You have options based on how you interact with the world and the intel you pick up while exploring. Gather special weapons along the way, come across weaknesses in the enemy forces and also hide or remove taken out enemies as you progress.

Use saves to become more creative and fine tune the difficulty to your liking with many choices. There are a number of characters to replay content with, and some hat options too which is cool. The environments are quite beautiful and large in terms of scale. There are many rooms within these unique spaces, offering many choices in how you can tackle the problems that await you.

The loading is near instant and I was impressed by the improvements over the previous entry when it comes to the visual quality and aesthetic style. On Xbox Series X we’re getting a dynamic 4k resolution at 60fps that came across as smooth. There’s HDR support alongside VRR support just in case any frame rate issues may arise but my experience felt smooth throughout. The game has crossplay that can be turned off if desired.

The Conclusion

Sniper Elite 5 is an excellent step forward for the franchise bringing vast environments that are filled with unique challenges to tackle. It’s a blast heading into a level and trying to find creative ways to eliminate targets or complete the missions in general.

Extra objectives make things creative and the whole invasion mechanic was fun to see in action from either side. I’d like them to take these types of elements further for future entries, if a Hitman like replay approach was taken for targets I think the replay value could honestly get quite insane.

For now, I liked the adjustments for more replayability and I believe others will enjoy that as well. The x-ray shots are just as gnarly as ever and sniping is such a treat in this one no matter your skill level. The campaign offers what feels like a chunky experience and that’s rounded out with fun multiplayer modes.

Whether you’re playing competitive or in a cooperative style. I would have liked more maps for those modes though. I think this is a fun time, and a quality experience. It’s a gnarly fun sniping time for the more hardcore shooter while being accessible for the more casual player.

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Sniper Elite 5 Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Tinsley PR

Rating Overall: 8.6