I've never played these games all that deeply. From time to time, I'd pop one in for a few hours, knowing the reputation of this franchise for its kill cam absurdity just for laughs but would move on rather quickly. Sniper Elite is the first one I decided to really dive into and it just feels like a game that is in conflict with itself.
Despite the name, this game is not as sniper focused as I had hoped or remember from these games. There is definitely some parts that are focused on the kill-from a-distance-type game play. But a lot of the game is focused on being a third person shooter, and it's not that fun or interesting from this perspective.
Furthermore, the game from a mechanics standpoint, doesn't seem to know what kind of game it wants to be. It's got the sniper elements and the third person shooter elements but this game seems to force you down the path of being a stealth game more than anything.
Like a lot of stealth games, noise is your worst enemy, Sniper Elite 5 is no different with its stealth aspects, however it seems like any kind of gun noise is easily detected by the enemies, even weapons that are supposed to be suppressed seems to get detected by enemies easier than I anticipated.
In other games, this wouldn't be a major issue but at times, in some of the areas/stages of this game, stealth can get harder to handle. Cities/enemy bases that are swarming with bad guys makes things very difficult to keep stealth in and once you get discovered, enemies seem to move pretty quickly into sounding the alarm, which brings in a bunch of additional enemies.
The enemies are pretty accurate when firing too, so mix in fairly accurate enemies who have a quick tendency to sound alarms to bring in more bad guys, while having weapons that almost always get detected by enemies because of the noise factors, it leads to some frustrating parts of a game.
As I said before, there are so many elements stuffed into this game mechanically and none seem to be optimized in a way to make any of those a successful way to play through the game. It would be one thing if the game gave you options and let you choose how to play, but each way seems to handcuffed and a chore to push through.
Sniping route, well you don't have a ton of great places to snipe from in these stages. Not to mention the noise from your weapon even from a distance will alert people to where you are at. Those bad guys will then, from a distance with regular guns, be able to hit you pretty accurately.
The third person shoot first, ask questions later route, again has the issue of noise detection and the enemy accuracy, but on top of those issues, the game makes ammo and weapon pickups a bit of a pain.
Like other games that are more FPS focused, where you can easily pickup ammo or easily swap out your weapons, this game does neither of these things. You have to manually search every body you come up to, which takes time and when you do search these bodies, there is no guarantee of additional ammo. If you run close to being out, you can't permanently pick up new weapons.
If you pickup enemy weapons, you have limited ammo on them as well and run into the same ammo search issues/process. Also, if you pickup an enemy weapon or any weapons you find lying around and then decide to swap to something else, that picked up weapon will be dropped altogether instead of just being put away. So the run and gun method is kind of a pain for these reasons.
Then the stealth method, as previously mentioned, can be a pain in some areas because of the amount of enemies in an area. The stealth aspects, like tagging and finding enemies, is also not the easiest.
These three routes all being half baked at best just make for some fairly frustrating areas. On top of this, the story is bland, the game is also fairly bland looking, it doesn't sound particularly great, and visually it's fairly generic as well.
Controls are pretty good, outside of some of the stealth aspects not feeling particularly great, and the kill cam stuff is still super satisfying, so it's not entirely a wash with this game but it just doesn't feel like a game I could recommend. Any aspect of this game has a game out there that does it better, so recommending one that does all those things worse just wouldn't make sense. I didn't mess around with the co-op stuff so maybe those aspects are more satisfying but for a single player experience, this game is just not worth it.
Despite the name, this game is not as sniper focused as I had hoped or remember from these games. There is definitely some parts that are focused on the kill-from a-distance-type game play. But a lot of the game is focused on being a third person shooter, and it's not that fun or interesting from this perspective.
Furthermore, the game from a mechanics standpoint, doesn't seem to know what kind of game it wants to be. It's got the sniper elements and the third person shooter elements but this game seems to force you down the path of being a stealth game more than anything.
Like a lot of stealth games, noise is your worst enemy, Sniper Elite 5 is no different with its stealth aspects, however it seems like any kind of gun noise is easily detected by the enemies, even weapons that are supposed to be suppressed seems to get detected by enemies easier than I anticipated.
In other games, this wouldn't be a major issue but at times, in some of the areas/stages of this game, stealth can get harder to handle. Cities/enemy bases that are swarming with bad guys makes things very difficult to keep stealth in and once you get discovered, enemies seem to move pretty quickly into sounding the alarm, which brings in a bunch of additional enemies.
The enemies are pretty accurate when firing too, so mix in fairly accurate enemies who have a quick tendency to sound alarms to bring in more bad guys, while having weapons that almost always get detected by enemies because of the noise factors, it leads to some frustrating parts of a game.
As I said before, there are so many elements stuffed into this game mechanically and none seem to be optimized in a way to make any of those a successful way to play through the game. It would be one thing if the game gave you options and let you choose how to play, but each way seems to handcuffed and a chore to push through.
Sniping route, well you don't have a ton of great places to snipe from in these stages. Not to mention the noise from your weapon even from a distance will alert people to where you are at. Those bad guys will then, from a distance with regular guns, be able to hit you pretty accurately.
The third person shoot first, ask questions later route, again has the issue of noise detection and the enemy accuracy, but on top of those issues, the game makes ammo and weapon pickups a bit of a pain.
Like other games that are more FPS focused, where you can easily pickup ammo or easily swap out your weapons, this game does neither of these things. You have to manually search every body you come up to, which takes time and when you do search these bodies, there is no guarantee of additional ammo. If you run close to being out, you can't permanently pick up new weapons.
If you pickup enemy weapons, you have limited ammo on them as well and run into the same ammo search issues/process. Also, if you pickup an enemy weapon or any weapons you find lying around and then decide to swap to something else, that picked up weapon will be dropped altogether instead of just being put away. So the run and gun method is kind of a pain for these reasons.
Then the stealth method, as previously mentioned, can be a pain in some areas because of the amount of enemies in an area. The stealth aspects, like tagging and finding enemies, is also not the easiest.
These three routes all being half baked at best just make for some fairly frustrating areas. On top of this, the story is bland, the game is also fairly bland looking, it doesn't sound particularly great, and visually it's fairly generic as well.
Controls are pretty good, outside of some of the stealth aspects not feeling particularly great, and the kill cam stuff is still super satisfying, so it's not entirely a wash with this game but it just doesn't feel like a game I could recommend. Any aspect of this game has a game out there that does it better, so recommending one that does all those things worse just wouldn't make sense. I didn't mess around with the co-op stuff so maybe those aspects are more satisfying but for a single player experience, this game is just not worth it.