Sniper Elite 5 is more liberal with suppressed weapons, for example, letting you attach a suppressor to pretty much anything. In this way, Sniper Elite 5 perfects the balance between sniping and more general stealth. Instead, you must rely on Fairburne's other skills and equipment, taking out enemies at close range with silenced pistols and melee kills, and carefully deploying teller mines to eliminate the patrolling German motorcycles. The narrow medieval streets, combined with the level's continuously upward progression, make effective sniping opportunities rare. Spy Academy – based on the island of Mont St Michel, is one of several standout levels.Īs you infiltrate the island proper, however, it becomes clear that this is no simple shooting gallery. Wehrmacht soldiers patrol openly on the narrow stone bridge connecting the island to the mainland, while circling Luftwaffe planes provide reliable audio cover for your shots. From across the water, it seems like a sniper's paradise. Sniper Elite 5's signature level, Spy Academy opens with a glorious panoramic reveal of Beaumont Saint-Denis, a stunning fictional recreation of the tidal island of Mont Saint-Michel. Arterial spray hisses out of bodies like air from a tyre inflation hose, while the X-Ray system is extended to both melee and sidearm attacks.īut it wasn't until the third mission, Spy Academy, where I fully grasped what raises this above its predecessors. It's worth noting that Sniper Elite 5 is more unashamedly gruesome than ever before. Not only do the maps flow more organically, but Fairburne is more elegant in his traversal of them, able to weave gracefully between Nazi patrols and dispatch enemies at close quarters with quick, brutal melee kills. There's a giant radar dish to sabotage, a bunch of 'eighty-eight' artillery guns to scupper, and a picturesque village where a Nazi general wanders around waiting to have his skull ventilated.Įven at this stage, Sniper Elite 5 feels like a marked improvement over previous games. The opening mission sets the standard for all that follows, taking place in a sprawling chunk of the Normandy coastline that compiles all the greatest hits of the French liberation. Sniper Elite 5 kicks off before the events of D-Day, with veteran brain-popper Karl Fairburne slipping behind the Atlantic Wall to rendezvous with the French Resistance and lay the groundwork for the invasion. Instead, the fallow fields of France force Rebellion to be more resourceful in their level design, and the studio reinvigorates the setting with inventive locations and an intricate eye for detail. By all logic Sniper Elite 5 should feel more derivative than the previous games. I'm more familiar with the hedgerows of Normandy than I am with my own back garden, and find the idea of playing a game set there similarly unexciting. Of all the second world war theatres, Operation Overlord is the most exhaustively explored by video games, replicated endlessly since 2002's Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Sniper Elite 5 finds that spark in an unlikely place: the Allied invasion of France. It just needed a spark of inspiration to make it excellent. Sniper Elite has been dependably entertaining for a while. The maps have grown larger, more open and more ambitious while the once clunky movement and combat have become steadily more refined. While known mainly for its 'X-Ray' system, which lets you watch your bullets pass through enemy bodies in grotesque anatomical detail, Sniper Elite has been slowly unveiling its potential since 2014's tour of Africa in Sniper Elite 3. With the benefit of hindsight, there were signs Sniper Elite might turn into something special. Availability: Out May 26 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. I've enjoyed Rebellion's infamously grisly stealth series since the middling V2, but I never thought I'd be writing about it with the kind of breathless excitement reserved for the likes of Elden Ring. I spent most of my weekend with it in a state of delighted befuddlement, constantly muttering 'isn't this brilliant?' as it delivered yet another incredibly designed level to creep around while turning Nazi skulls into cornflakes. Like a fleet of Allied landing craft storming the beaches of Normandy, Sniper Elite 5 has blown me away. A consistently entertaining series steps up a gear to provide a true great of the genre.
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