The Second World War has still not said its last word. Rebellion is once again capitalizing on this sad historical conflict with a new Sniper Elite, its shooter, which has now become a classic almost solely because of its gory killcams. It must be said that seeing his bullet perforate the testicles of the Nazis is something quite satisfying. No, I’m not very sick. Stop!
In the line of sight
For this fifth episode, the studio has chosen to send the sniper to new fronts, in France. The Nazis are everywhere, the war is raging, and we have to clean up.
Sniper Elite 5 does not tangle brushes with a deep storyline and striking characters, but is rather content to unfold a series of objectives for us by posing, here and there, a few uninspired cutscenes which we will not remember much. Same story with the secondary characters that we will meet, all smoother than each other. It’s nerd, especially since that’s what he will miss the most in this opus. That and optimization, but we’ll get to that.
So we trudge through 9 open-world missionsa bit like a Hitman, with the difference that here we are in a complete region that we will survey at our leisure by chaining objectives and headshots.
All very different, each environment will show us the country (a piece of our good old France of 44). We will pass from the coasts of Collines-sur-mer to the northern countryside, passing through Mont St Michel here renamed Beaumont-Saint-Denis. Never mind, it’s perfectly successful, completely in the theme and we go about it. Moreover, Mont St… sorry… Beaumont-Saint-denis is THE success of this opus. Visually, the monument is already perfectly well reconstructed in every detail and especially in terms of level design, it is certainly the most interesting map since it is very vertical and oddly exotic.
The other eight cards are not left out and also offer nice things, but seem more conventional (city, forest, camp, bunker, etc.). But overall, Sniper Elite 5 offers enough different environments and situations so as not to make the player sink into boredom. We therefore follow our missions without flinching by aligning the shots and enjoying the show. We’re not going to lie to each other, we’re mainly here for that, and the show is guaranteed.
A generous and replayable campaign
Ballistic fluoroscopy
Since yes, as said in the introduction, Sniper Elite’s main interest is its killcams. A trademark that has allowed Rebellion to establish its license at the table of very nice AA games, and this fifth opus confirms this position.
Killcams are legion and you can even adjust the frequency, speed, etc. Here again, the angles of view are successful, we see our bullet go through the body of our poor victims with an X-ray view. Bones shatter, organs burst and the whole thing is accompanied by unsavory sound effects. It’s downright exhilarating. On the other hand, these finish moves leave absolutely no trace of physical trauma on our victims. Killcams sometimes make a fuss of it according to our shooting angles with exploding skulls or tearing off faces, but there are no marks on the corpse after the fact. Yes, it’s a detail, but it’s noticeable (ok, Dexter).
The killcams are still successful, as are the shooting sensations. As before, you will have the choice between several adjustable difficulties which will allow you to play it completely arcade or, on the contrary, in shooting simulation mode. Thus, in higher difficulty (which I recommend for optimal sensations), you must take into account the lift of the balls, the direction of the wind as well as our breathing. Fortunately, by holding your breath, time slows down a bit and a target displays the destination of your bullet. It makes things a little simpler, but not easy since the shots always require great precision and it’s exhilarating. Sniping fanatics can finally opt for the Authentic difficulty which removes all on-screen aids and thus reinforces immersion, but as much to tell you that you have to have a keen eye.
Next to the snipe, the game offers stealth mechanics, views and reviewssuch as the possibility of discreetly eliminating (by killing or not) enemies, hiding corpses, deactivating alarms or even hiding in ferns, are all back and the AI is still as cheap as in previous games. . The Nazis are totally stupid, if not omniscient, and the laws of artificial intelligence sometimes force them to do totally surreal things, like shooting non-stop on the ground, right where the game marks our last known position, or staring dumbly at a wall outside. infinite, because they managed to see us through it for the first time. This kind of thing is recurring, it breaks the immersion and the interest of the infiltration. Well, in any case, we won’t really have time to go overboard since in 90% of situations, everything ends in a bloodbath at long distance, that’s kind of the goal at the same time.
We will also have access to a whole arsenal (sniper rifle, submachine gun, pistol, etc.)we can customize by recovering equipment mods in the different levels. Just as you can improve your character by accumulating xp, in particular by completing the very, very many secondary objectives, see appendix (destruction of bunkers, elimination of priority targets, etc.), which abound throughout the game. earned can then be spent in 3 rather anecdotal skill trees which will allow you to increase your health, your stamina or even your elite sniper abilities.
The real problem with Sniper Elite 5 lies in its aging technique and above all, its disastrous optimization (on PS5/PS4, test version)
Error 44
Said like this, Sniper Elite 5 looks nice and it isespecially since it will be possible to do the co-op campaign from A to Zthat missions benefit from good replayability with certain objectives that change, or challenges here and there, and that there are even a competitive multiplayer mode where you can invade another player’s game, much like in Deathloop or Elden Ring.
You will then appear as a Reich shooter and you will have to kill the host of the game. If this game mode seems incidental, it is nevertheless rather fun on one side as on the other.
Nope, content and gameplay side there is nothing wrongclearly, but the real problem of Sniper Elite 5 lies in its aging technique and above all, its disastrous optimization.
On PS5, the software is visually dated. At first, artistically, Sniper Elite 5 does not break a duck’s three legs. Obviously everything is more or less realistic, but the compositions are not crazy and do not seek to flatter the retina. But, as a bonus, the graphics stick out their tongue a bit, the animations are dated and the textures clearly lack finesse. But that again, it can pass. Optimization, on the other hand, will make more than one rage.
At test time, despite the deployment of a patch, the software has crashed countless times. No crash, no, no, but one character stuck in the background, in an invisible wall, in a non-existent hitbox, etc. When it’s not other worries, like the fact of suddenly cross the maphaving a priority target planted in a wall, and therefore unkillable, scripts that do not launch, etc. Even more recurring bugs in cooperation elsewhere (PS5/PS4) where we had to restart the whole game several times. During the big fifteen hours of play, we often had trouble holding back our tension, especially since if the bugs don’t stop us from playing, they screw up the immersion, such as collision problems that cause bodies to disappear into the background, a character who refuses to climb a step, blocked by an invisible wall, or audio tracks that launch without anything happening on the screen. In short, technically it’s a shipwreck and we hope that patches will quickly correct the situation.
