I’m exactly halfway up the wall in an exorbitant castle in the French countryside when my cover is blown up.
As I hang suspended from vines grown out of their trellis, bullets topple the area around me, hitting concentrated holes in the musty rock. Oddly enough, not a single snail connects me until I have scaled the wall and entered the building, after which I take a huge amount of damage from… somewhere? I take cover, sew up my wounds and wait for things to calm down. Someone outside the screen with no line of sight on me sounds an alarm. I have no idea what’s going on.
The vignette above is a perfect diorama of Sniper Elite 5, a tactical third-person shooter that is both helped and hindered by that chaos. It is, clearly said, a game that is equal parts tactile and rough, tight and crooked, clever and crazy. This review would probably have made up a shopping list with minor complaints if I had not been ready enough to constantly remind myself how much fun I had.
For what it’s worth, I do not rate the word: “fun.” It’s an almost useless descriptor, usually lazy and inaccurate, but in this specific case, it’s the most accurate term I can ever use.
Sniper Elite 5 takes place in Nazi-occupied France towards the end of World War II. Despite all the gravitas this context should require, Sniper insists instead on force-feeding you bombast. The contrast between being a ghillie in the fog and seeing an X-ray of your brand’s skull at the time of the collision (think of Sam Raimi’s worst impulses from early aughts) is both instantaneous and inexcusable. Should a firefight break out, it will ironically be more akin to the messy, disorganized warfare in actual history than the hyper-refined tactics we have come to expect from contemporary war media.
Basically, it’s all a lot foolish. And as is the case with most games that lean on their stupidity – instead of being ashamed of it – Sniper Elite 5 finds it fun to lie dormant in his heart.
Mostly, Sniper Elite 5 is a fairly standard third-person shooter. You are equipped with a sniper rifle (duh), a handgun and a submachine gun as well as a range of equipment, including grenades, mines, medkits and decoys. The “ideal” way to play is to slowly but surely slip through each level, discreetly selecting opponents with well-placed crackshots from across the board. There are multiple routes to each destination, which encourages experimentation and encourages replayability for driving optimization – so far, so good.
It is Sniper Elite 5 on paper. Sniper Elite 5 in action – at least on your first trip through each of its cards – is something completely different. It is rare that you will carefully choose lone guards while sneaking through the shadows like the spectral sniper of Nazi nightmares. On the contrary, you are far more likely to accidentally warn a wandering enemy as you clump and knuckle your way through the French countryside. Sure, you can take him on guard enough to knock him unconscious or invalidate him with a silent gun – but once in a while, this junk Nazi will gather all his Nazi friends to ruin your day. This is when the action of Sniper Elite 5 good and truth strike, for better or for worse.
As with most stealth games, the enemy’s alertness is a reversible state. You can, if you are wise, lose your pursuers by twisting and turning through cities and thickets, and eventually resume your status as the Shadow, which is universally feared by the Nazis. In the same way that pro-Hitler propaganda has convinced foot soldiers that they are winning a losing war – a detail subtly baked into the barking of the enemy – news of your deeds travels like a steppe fire through France. In this way, the atmosphere during the game is extremely effective, with enemies gradually beginning to fear you as a sort of Grim Reaper character as you progress through the campaign. There is also a real sense of place on your missions (Guernsey, the Loire Valley and more), which is further enhanced by the raucous group of resistance fighters helping you along the way.
But it’s hard to be impressed with even the best bits of Sniper Elite 5 when almost everything it tries is better done in other games. I often worry that comparative criticism risks almost immediate redundancy, but a game based on sniper and sniper in 2022 is inherently charged with the Sisyphean task of staying next to Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. They are completely different games in many respects, but I would be a liar if I claim that I did not think of my days in the desert as Snake while posting pictures in French forests like… Karl?
Pure stealth games are an endangered breed these days, so reminders of the big ones, especially in quiet moments between firefights, can make comparisons feel inevitable. Sniper Elite 5 can not handle its chaos and potential for emergence near as good as anything like it Hitmanwhile even more streamlined experiences like Assassin’s Creed feel much more competent when it comes to controlling stealth and enemy alertness.
It is important to note that even some of the parts of Sniper Elite 5 which is not derived from stronger stealth efforts does not quite meet the goal. Although the level design is excellent, and it gives you the kind of freedom that makes it worth playing these games again, the animations are pretty damn creepy – literally the first character you encounter throughout the game looks like he belongs for several years In the past. The voice acting is also unconvincing, making an already stressed script even less authoritative. You can skip all the scenes in the game and not miss much. You could remove the manuscript and Sniper Elite 5 would not be radically different for that – it would still be the fifth main entrance in a self-proclaimed prestige sniper series, sniping Nazis as an elite shooter, but for the fifth time.
All of this is especially exciting when you think about the facets of the game that seem to have gotten the most attention. Physically correct X-ray animations that clearly delineate the trajectory and damage of a bullet are extremely impressive and an integral part of the series. They are also inherently free and a strange treasure to keep alive in a game where so many other areas are on life support. In an industry where the stakes are getting exponentially higher with each passing year, it has become more important than ever to know what your game does and does not need. In this regard, Sniper Elite 5‘s scope is pretty dewy.
But there are also strengths that the series all do well to learn from in the future. The level design is perfectly conducive to your identity as a rogue one-man army and allows for some incredible deadballs, like sniper duels across churchyards, to guide you through ammunition factories along railroad tracks and hold towers against dozens of opponents. All this is underlined by the fact that the sniper himself is excellent – lowering your heart rate to pick up an unsuspecting sentinel from the shadows never gets less satisfying tactile, while high octane ones are without a doubt the most exciting part of the game.
There is also the brand new invasion mechanic to consider and it is amazing. Basically, you can infiltrate other players’ campaigns like a Hunter and start a cat-and-mouse game that allows you to stop their progress in the same way as games like. Dark souls or Deathloop. It’s not as elegant a system as its counterparts in these games, but it’s a solid effort – especially when you get a message from someone you know who says, “Was it you who just shot my face off?” Sniper Elite 5s the worst moments become much more apparent by how good its best is.
In the end, the name of the game alone is probably more than enough to inform you what it’s all about. It’s a third-person shooter with first-person sniper that puts you in the boots of Brittany’s most skilled death shot. It may sound silly, but Sniper Elite 5 is a game that cares about its titular calling, and as the fifth contribution in the series proves that – for the most part – Rebellion has become quite good at designing virtual sniper experiences.
It’s worth returning to the previous word – “fun.” While much of the design seems rooted in the past if there is a feeling that lasts after a session on Sniper Elite 5it is that Rebellion hopefully has a solid plan to do something truly innovative and worthwhile with Sniper Elite 6. Until then, it must be enough with a fierce silly fun.
Sniper Elite 5 will be released on May 26 on Windows PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game was announced on Xbox using a pre-release download code provided by Rebellion Developments. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find further information on Polygon’s ethical policy here.