So, I did get the new Sniper Elite 5 game, and especially after having replayed the 4th entry in the series recently, the 5th one seems like a mixed bag. Don't get me wrong here, it's still a very enjoyable game with some welcome improvements, but it seems like it's nowhere near the level of polish and intuitiveness as the last one.
First off, let's look at the pros: The maps are far bigger and far more open than any of the previous games by far. This also means they are far more populated, which also ups the difficulty, in that there are far more enemies to converge on you if your position is discovered. Certainly a welcome improvement. There are also a lot more opportunities in each map to create distractions, booby trap, sabotage, and sound mask your shots with them than in previous games.
Another Pro is that some of the new shooting mechanics are also welcome improvements, as bullet travel time, bullet drop and windage are far more noticeable than in previous games. Another great feature is that there are more new ammunition types that have a much greater affect when using them.
Another great pro is that they added more realistic properties to suppressors in the game by making suppressors a component that needs to be added to your gun either before a mission or at a workbench, as they cannot be added or removed on the fly, which is nice. The suppressors also still make noise that can be detected by enemies, and depending on the type and ammunition you use will affect the sound level they make and the range they can be detected at. Secondary weapons are also far more useful than in previous games as they can also be equipped with suppressors and be customized. The ability to use mounted and dismounted MG42s, is also a really cool addition.
Okay, so on to the weapon customization, which is a pretty big give and take. It was certainly something that should have been in the last game, and a very welcomed feature here in this one, but there are some serious issues with it. As far as the good aspects, there are the suppressor properties mentioned, and there are also some really neat little historically accurate options to add to some of the guns that change the characteristics/properties of the guns and how you use them.
On the flip side of this is that there are also a lot of dumbass additions that make no freaking sense whatsoever. First there are the attachments that affect stats for no reason whatsoever. Why the flying fudgesicle would a gun's stock or magazine affect my freaking rate of fire or damage? Why the hell are basic aspects to the gun not accurate and/or why don't they use real modifications that were available at the time? Why the hell are other guns crap being added to the wrong guns when they don't even have stuff that would have been actually available to them as mentioned earlier? This is horrendously bad considering a basic google search would have given the dev team some easy options to add instead of butchering the look and feel of the guns in the game, and would have taken less than 5 min to research. Note to the devs: It's not fun when you do that, it just makes you look like a bunch of lazy freaking idiots.
Then there are the blatant cons: The game is nowhere near as polished as the previous entries in the series. I can't tell you how many times I was frustrated by my character doing actions I did not want him to do or just not doing the thing I asked him to at all, get stuck or fall through the environment, blatantly not perform the action I wanted to quick enough, or somehow switch ammo types without me wanting to. To be fair, this had been an issue with previous games in the series, but it was far more noticeable this time around and I had recently played the last two games in the series, and I did not have anywhere near as much trouble with the controls in those games.
Another con is the fact that the list of weapons you get access to is really freaking small. I understand they wanted some kind of unlock system, but with how few of weapons they have, it feels really restrictive and dumb. Especially when they start you off with some exotic experimental British rifle right off the bat, but with no access to basic rifles like the No4 or No3 SMLE, M1 Garand, MAS 36, or Mosin Nagant, NONE OF WHICH ARE IN THE FREAKING GAME AT ALL! I would gladly get rid of all the retarded, fictional weapon customizations, or the crazy experimental guns in favor of having more weapons, especially the basic, most readily available ones in the world at the time, you dolts.
That's not all for the cons though. Now the series has always played a little fast and loose with historical accuracy, but this one seems to go all in on the woke crap. For example, in previous games they would still try to be somewhat historically accurate by using real programs, events, and technology, but simply sensationalize/ramp up it's effectiveness/impact/importance. But in this game there's a number of problems. First off, the story revolves around a black woman who is a French resistance fighter who does field ops better than you, which is pretty lame. Especially considering there were no notable black female field operatives in the French resistance that I'm aware of (note: plenty of intelligence gatherers, but no field operatives I know of). I was never overly invested in the story of the games, as even the last one was pretty dumb as they insisted you were working with partisans in Italy, but Italy never had partisan groups, only communists. So I guess historical stupidity is par for the course here, since they are already doing it with the weapons.
Another minor gripe I have is that despite the maps being bigger and more populated, they feel far less interactable. In the last couple games, you could do all sorts of damage to the enemy even if it wasn't your objective. You could blow up artillery pieces, AAA batteries, trucks, and all sorts of bits to the environment if you wanted to, but now, it takes much more effort to blow up trucks, you cannot blow up AAA unless it's a secondary objective, and you have no ability to destroy all those artillery pieces everywhere. Another thing to tack on to that complaint is that you can no longer shoot out or break all the lights, with only some being able to be broken. This really kills some of the stealth elements, and replacing the throwable rocks with bottles was another stealth-breaking choice that just hampers the player compared to previous games.
Lastly, there is the weird. Among the new features is an option to perform non-lethal takedowns on enemies and also the newly added non-lethal ammo. Now, usually I would say these are essential additions to any stealth-based game, but in this case I think it really defeats the point here. The game revels in the gore displayed when shooting and taking down enemies, as well as the fact that all your enemies are Nazis, so who in the hell are they appealing to with these (likely never used) features? I sure as hell never touched that stuff.
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| Note that there aren't two thumbs here... |
In summary, despite all my very heavy criticisms here, the game is still darn fun. But with the amount of stuff that's broken, and the fact that there's a much smaller armory, and less content outside of the much bigger maps, I'd wait until the game is on sale or they include all the future DLC in the base price rather than pay for it all now.
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