Sniper Elite 5 review – crack shot

metro.co.uk:

Rebellion’s WW2 sniper sim returns with bigger open world levels, more weapons, and even more ways to assassinate Nazis.

There’s something about sniping games that’s unreasonably compelling. Find a vantage point, search for enemies or props to shoot, to cause an ‘accident’, line up the shot while taking into account distance and wind, gently squeeze the trigger, and then wait. The exquisitely agonising few seconds before you find out whether your bullet successfully connects with a head hundreds of metres away, or triggers an alarm that will probably result in your death, is just about as tense as gaming gets.

That loop is something the Sniper Elite series understands very well. To heighten it, when your perfectly aimed bullet does connect, it’s celebrated with the series’ trademark X-ray kill cam, showing in graphic detail how your round punctures lungs, livers, brains, and testicles – the shower of squelchy viscera and bone fragments serenading your skill with a rifle. It shouldn’t be so savagely addictive, but it is.

Sniper Elite 5 tells more Nazi-killing stories featuring the game’s longstanding hero Karl Fairburne, aka The Shadow. Once again you’ll be winning the war one bullet at a time, this time in pursuit of a German wonder weapon, codenamed Operation Kraken. It’s a mission that takes you from the rainy fields of Northern France, through underground U-boat pens to a final showdown with Kraken’s inventor.

As usual, the main problem faced by British developer Rebellion is how to spice up the core sniping with enough variations to the game’s rhythm and pacing. Sniper Elite is not in any way an action game, making the sections where you’re operating at short range or relying on close-up stealth, nowhere near as much fun