Sniper Elite 5 has one of the best sandbox missions I’ve ever played
It’s easy to write off the Sniper Elite series. It’s replete with slow-motion x-ray kill cams of testicles rupturing and eyeballs leaping out of shattered Nazi skulls. At a glance, it’s a relic of the early aughts video game obsession with gore, excess, and self-serious protagonists. Until recently, I never touched the series. But Sniper Elite 5 launched on Xbox Game Pass a few weeks ago. Now? I’m enthralled.
Sniper Elite 5 is indeed gory and excessive, and its protagonist would be right at home at a poker table with Master Chief, Leon S. Kennedy, and Cliff Bleszinski. But it’s also home to exquisite acts of level design. Its sandbox missions are so good, in fact, that I already count them among the best of Arkane Studios, IO Interactive, and Eidos-Montréal. They’re nothing short of mesmerizing, and I’ve spent the better part of the last three weeks scouring their every nook and cranny, continually marveling at the craft, cleverness, and audacity on display.
There’s the first mission, “The Atlantic Wall,” which sprawls across Normandy’s bucolic coastline, now made treacherous by the defenses of the Nazi war machine. There’s “Occupied Residence,” a series of dirt paths snaking through farmland on their way to a hulking chateau. There’s “War Factory,” a tangle of pipes and vents and furnaces. And then there’s “Spy Academy.”
Sniper Elite 5’s third mission opens in a quiet forest clearing, but the vista soon widens to a panoramic look at Beaumont-Saint-Denis. It’s a massive tidal island, with medieval walls rising out of the surrounding bay, their ramparts obscuring the lower reaches of a town, which slopes up to the spires of a gargantuan abbey. It’s all covered in algae and shrouded in fog. The view alone is staggering.
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