Also available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows Sniper Elite is one of my favorite series, and that's something that most of my friends don't expect. I'm usually not a great sniper in games, and I hate stealth games. Sniper Elite is nice, though, because it has some really robust and well fleshed-out options to tweak difficulty, and it doesn't force stealth; if you want to play like an idiot (read: like me) and just start blasting Nazis away as loudly as you want, go for it. It'll be harder as the enemies swarm you, but you're welcome to do it. It's got great co-op, too; I played through the whole thing with Grant, one of my best friends from elementary schools. Sniper Elite 5 picks up where the previous games left off and follows the trend of each game focusing on a different theater of the war. Sniper Elite III took place in North Africa, Sniper Elite 4 took place in Italy, and Sniper Elite 5 takes place in France. On the one hand, that means that you have to put up with French characters. Gross. On the other hand, it means that it's all Nazi killing all the time instead of having Italians interspersed. I mean, yeah, the Italians totally earned the slaughter they got in World War II, but no enemy is quite as satisfying to shoot in the head or the heart (or the testicles) as Nazis. You hunt down a Nazi general running up the secret Operation Kraken, discovering what the operation is and putting a stop to it before it can pose a risk to Allied plans or threaten the United States directly. Graphically, Sniper Elite 5 is a bit of a mixed bag. Based just on graphics themselves, it obviously looks better than ever since it's using pretty much all of the PS4's and Xbox One's capabilities, and it can leverage some of the extra power of the PS5 and Series X for those versions. I, personally, didn't like the kill cans quite as much, though. It didn't put as much focus on the visceral bone-shattering carnage of the sniper rounds. A little more detail on the x-ray views actually kind of obfuscates the few of bone and organ damage. It's not worse, per se, but it's not a change I particularly cared for. Even with that, though, it's an absolutely excellent close view of Nazis getting what they deserve. One of the things I love about this game in particular is that there are a TON of customization options for your weapons. As you go through the game, you'll unlock new sniper rifles, new secondary weapons, new handguns, and various attachments for all of them. You can change the sights, the stock, the grip, the barrel, and even carry two types of special ammo - subsonic rounds to stay quieter, armor piercing rounds to penetrate material better, soft rounds for more body damage, etc. It makes it worth playing through and doing the challenges and hunting down the workbenches in the levels to unlock the various weapons and attachments. Sniper Elite 5 is an awesome game. It's perfect for co-op, tons of fun solo, and lends itself to lots of styles of gameplay from super secret squirrel stealth to Rambo murder rampage. It looks great, it sounds great, and it plays great. My only real complaints are that the story isn't quite as interesting in my opinion as Sniper Elite 4, and I didn't like the x-ray kill cams quite as much as in 3 or 4. Those are both very opinion-based criticisms, though. If I could change anything, it would be to have the story just fleshed out and expanded a bit. It just didn't feel quite as epic as the past game or two. Still, though, I absolutely recommend this game to anyone who at all enjoys sniping gameplay. My Rating - A |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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