Sniper Elite 5 hands-on preview – the king of headshots

metro.co.uk:

Rebellion’s WW2 era sniping simulator heads to France in 1944, and it’s more realistic, versatile, and gory than ever.

Any video game franchise that’s reached its fifth iteration must be doing a number of things right, developing a loyal and enthusiastic fanbase with each new instalment. Sniper Elite is not necessarily one of the games industry’s biggest beasts but as a franchise it has been around since 2005, rendering it an institution of sorts. Now, Oxford-based developer/publisher Rebellion is preparing to release Sniper Elite 5 and we’ve had an early sneak peek.

To be precise, we played through one of the game’s missions (twice within the allotted time period of just over two hours) on a PC equipped with an Xbox One gamepad, via the game-streaming service Parsec. Even such a restricted playthrough was enough to illustrate how the franchise has persisted for 17 years, quietly but steadily improving each time.

Before we jumped into the hands-on preview, various members of the development team talked us through what is new for Sniper Elite 5. One key factor went unsaid: the relentless march of technology inevitably brings with it game engine improvements, resulting in upgraded graphics and artificial intelligence.

Rebellion was keen to highlight two particular areas of improvement, starting with the new-found ability to customise every component of every weapon, such as stocks, barrels, magazines, and sights. On top of this is a greater emphasis on authenticity, manifested in the use of photogrammetry to reconstruct real-life buildings and environments as they would have been during the game’s time period – including collaborations with the likes of the Imperial War Museum to further ratchet up the level of authenticity.

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