Sniper Elite 5: The First Preview

ign.com:

Prior to the infamous invasion of Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944, covert ops agents prepared the French theater of war behind enemy lines, and this is how Sniper Elite 5 sets the backdrop for one Sniper Elite veteran Karl Fairburne’s return to the PC and modern consoles late next month. Sniper Elite 5 reverts to – and improves upon – the series’ roots by placing you back into the third-person perspective and offering the expansive range of stealth options that Sniper Elite fans have come to know and love since the series started way back in 2005. However, it now has a few extra twists, including deeper weapon customization and expansive map layouts that offer plenty of ways to play, improving on (rather than revolutionizing) what fans already enjoyed about Sniper Elite 4.

Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Sniper Elite game without impeccable sniping simulation – this accounts for everything from wind direction to Karl’s heart rate, and I found it astoundingly easy to change the outcome of a battle by taking certain “irritants'' off the board earlier than later. Which is to say, Sniper Elite 5 seems like it leaves plenty of room for experimentation in how you approach its open-world-esque maps, even if your experimentation just comes down to picking somebody out of a tower half-a-mile away, before then darting into the bushes and military-crawling your way through the neighboring encampment.

I spent several hours playing with these systems, and despite how challenging this combat is due to strikingly intelligent AI opponents, I never got bored coming up with a new strategy each time I respawned. Do I want to create a distraction at the main barricade and hide in the tower, later ziplining down to the forest grove once the coast