Sniper Elite: Resistance is the sixth mainline instalment in Rebellion’s long-running WW2 sniper series. It’s the first to have an unnumbered title and only the second second game to revisit a previously covered theatre of war.

Like Sniper Elite 5, Sniper Elite: Resistance is set in Nazi-occupied France. But instead of playing as the series regular, Karl Fairburne, players take on the Germans as Harry Hawker. The campaign is set in 1944 running parallel to Sniper Elite 5.

For those not familiar with the series, the game is a third-person stealth shooter that uses an over-the-shoulder view for hip shooting and pistols, and the rifle optics when sniping. Taking out targets, one by one, from a distance is encouraged as going in all gung-ho with close combat can get a bit overwhelming. Using environmental noises to cover gunfire helps to keep Hawker’s location secret. Getting seen raises alarms and can result in an overwhelming number of reinforcements descending on the player’s location.

The game is broken up into a series of open-world environments each with sequential mission objectives, and optional targets. Players are required to move around the map, preferably avoiding direct contact with the enemy.

The open-world nature of the game promotes replay, as there are often several different options available to players to complete goals. Reaching certain points unlocks alternative start points for use in future attempts.

In previous games, I’ve felt that all the different approaches available to players have been equally curated to make for some exciting gameplay. This time, events seem a lot more random and haphazard and don’t fit together quite as well.

There are nine mission areas in the game. From dams to train depots, to open countryside and towns, the scenarios offer a variety of environments meaning that no mission area is the same. You could be infiltrating an enemy HQ surrounded by farmland or sabotaging an installation in the middle of a quarry. The are also occasional optional additional targets and objectives available for extra rewards.

These large open areas offer players plenty of variety. The freedom that the game gives players can be overwhelming at first, but this translates into opportunities to adapt according to the situation. Many a time, as I’ve been discovered and the enemy alerted, I’ve been able to traverse the map and lose my pursuers.

As well as the opportunity for some impressive long-range sniping, there are plenty of stealth options available for some up-close and personal guerrilla tactics. This is often the best way, with a bit of patience, to sneak about and clear the field, so to speak, when faced with seemingly overwhelming odds.

Multiplayer is catered for via the usual deathmatch (Free-For-All), team deathmatch (Team Match) and squad deathmatch (the four teams of four players Squad Match). No Cross is a mode that has snipers shooting at each other across a no man’s land. There’s also a co-op survival mode with a team facing off against waves of enemies.

The campaign can also be played multiplayer either as a two-person co-op or via the Axis Invasion mode. Invasion mode has a player-controlled enemy sniper entering your otherwise single-player campaign.

The visuals are decent if a bit dated, with the anti-aliasing on PC leaving much to be desired. Whilst the series’ signature x-ray bullet cam impressed back in the day, it doesn’t have the same impact now and looks a bit unrealistic.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is a worthwhile distraction for fans of the series who want more of the same. It does seem to be more of a recycle of Sniper Elite 5 than its own thing, like the publisher has just packaged up some of the last game’s potential DLC and made a standalone entry. Still, it is a fun game with plenty of replay value.

The post Sniper Elite: Resistance (PC) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

American sniper, Karl Fairburne continues his tour of WW2 theatres of war, having previously caused headaches for the Axis powers in Berlin, Africa and Italy.

With the Allied victory in sight, Sniper Elite 5 takes the action to Nazi-occupied France.

After Sniper Elite 4’s somewhat refreshing sojourn into Axis-controlled Italy, this fifth outing takes us to the familiar setting of being behind enemy lines just before the Normandy D-Day landings. It’s a scenario, that is almost as common as depicting the D-Day landings, themselves. Call of Duty: Vanguard covered the same setting late last year.

But here we are again, playing as a crack marksman, alone, and in enemy territory. Rebellion has not really stepped out of its comfort zone with this latest instalment of the celebrated Sniper Elite franchise. And, to be honest, I don’t blame them. Players familiar with the gameplay of the previous games will find themselves very much at home. Sniper Elite 5 takes the winning formula and polishes it up rather than reinventing it, the result is a game that is every bit as thrilling as its predecessors.

As is the way with any game from Rebellion, it takes a while to get used to the weird, slightly stiff, way the game’s movement control mechanic works. It’s been like it for years across the Sniper Elite games and even the developer’s fun Strange Brigade game.

Teaming up with British commandos and the French resistance, Fairburne must make his way from the coast inland. He is initially charged with taking out the Nazi coastal defences and early warning system ready for the Allied D-Day invasion. It becomes clear, however, that the Germans are plotting something big. Whilst trapped behind enemy lines, Fairburne decides to go after Ubergruppenführer Abelard Möller and find out what he is up to. This leads him on the trail of a top-secret Nazi project called Operation Kraken.

For a sniping game, I spent plenty of time running away and hiding from Nazis.

Sniper Elite 5 is all about patience. Gung-ho heroes will quickly find themselves the subject of a very effective manhunt.  Unlike in other games, the enemy will hunt you down rather than just duck with their little head peeking out ready to receive a shot of lead. The AI is notably crafty. The Nazis are not shy to raise the alarm and will seek to flank you if they know where you are.

This includes the odd tank and armoured car which you need to be particularly careful with.

There are plenty of weapons to choose from. As well as his sniper rifle, Fairburne carries a sidearm and a machine gun. The pistol can be silenced for stealth kills, with the machine gun reserved for when things go pear-shaped. As I mentioned, the game’s AI is very astute and will investigate loud noises. In some circumstances sneaking up for a melee kill is the best option. All the weapons can be upgraded if you have the parts via workbenches handily dotted around the game.

The visuals are a bit last-gen. Not bad last-gen, just last-gen.

It’s still a very polished game, it’s just the character models could do with an overhaul. That being said, the series’ renowned, and very gory, slow-motion x-ray bullet cams are still a treat, offering a gratuitous, but guiltily satisfying, moment of triumph when a carefully aimed bullet hits its mark.

The huge maps offer diverse gameplay that is as much about stealthy infiltration as sniping. Players will find themselves in open countryside dotted with checkpoints and artillery batteries, as well as Nazi installations and fortresses, and occupied French towns. These open maps of Sniper Elite 5 are the game’s strongest attribute. With players able to navigate to targets as they wish, it’s a unique experience every time. The detailed environments require thought and care when traversing.

On completion of each level’s main mission, you must guide Fairburne to the exfiltration point. A summary page then details the approach that you used to carry out the assignment.

With each map easily taking a couple of hours, the game has plenty of longevity. The game invites players to revisit the levels by unlocking alternative starting points to spice things up. There are also collectables and side missions that you may have missed the first time around.

After nine missions having revealed and dealt with both Operation Kraken and its Nazi mastermind Möller, the credits roll. The tenth mission is premium, day one DLC. I’m not a fan of this sort of profiteering. But it is a Sniper Elite tradition to release a DLC pack that has you going after Hitler, and that’s exactly what the Wolf Mountain level has you doing.

The game is further extended via some inspired multiplayer modes. The campaign can also be played co-op by either hosting or finding a game. For an interesting bit of PvP, Axis Invasion allows players to infiltrate other players’ campaigns as an elite German sniper. Survival is a horde-style mode that can be played solo or with up to four other players facing off waves of enemies.

There’s also a more traditional 16-player multiplayer deathmatch that can be played free-for-all, with two teams or four squads. Matches can be modified with different rule sets for extra variety. The multiplayer mode support cross-play, which can be turned off, if you wish, for platform-specific matches.

Whilst Sniper Elite 5 doesn’t change much of the formula of its forebears, it is probably the best in the series to date. The massive open-world maps are full of detail and competent enemies. The game invites players to approach the game as they like, making for some intense gunfights and nail-biting stealth, depending on what floats your boat.

It’s a game that’ll have you continuing to play, and returning to, long after the credits have rolled.

The post Sniper Elite 5 (PlayStation 5) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Just when I thought that the era of “remastering” games was over, Rebellion have polished up their aging Sniper Elite V2 for the current gen of consoles.

2012’s Sniper Elite V2 cemented Rebellion’s WWII third-person sniping franchise as one of the greats. In 2014, Sniper Elite III swapped Berlin for WWII’s North African theater of war, and further refined the gameplay. Sniper Elite 4 released in 2017 sending players over to Italy and offering a larger, more open world environment in which to operate.

Both Sniper Elite III and 4, were both released on Xbox One, PS4 and PC, and still stand up well. It does, sort-of, makes sense to spruce up V2. But in this age whereby Xbox One X owners got a 4K version of Red Dead Redemption with a free patch, shelling out extra cash for a remastered version of a six-year-old game does sit as well as it once did.

The game is set in Berlin during the last few days of the Second World War. With the Nazi war machine on its knees, both American and Russian priorities have started to change. The country that controlled the German’s V2 rocket technology would be the country that won the next war.

Players are dropped into the devastated German capital as the enraged Russian army drives itself through the city. US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative, Lieutenant Karl Fairburne, has been inserted behind enemy lines to assist in the defection of German scientists to the US. The Russians have the same idea. Fairburne fires the first shots of what would, arguably, be very few fired between the US and the Soviet Union during the next 45 years of tension.

Jumping into the game, the visuals are most definitely current-gen. But this is a remaster, and not a remake, so whilst the textures are better, the 3D models and lighting are not quite up to the quality of other recent titles. The animations don’t look as smooth as they could be. But don’t let any of this put you off, the game looks fine.

As with the original, Sniper Elite V2 requires a degree of patience. Each level usually sees Karl making his way to a target, either for an assassination or to plant charges. Drawing attention and engaging in a firefight is best avoided. Slipping past enemy soldiers or carrying out stealth kills is the best way forward. Karl can throw rock to draw enemies out of the way. There’s a handy gauge which notifies players if they any in the enemies’ line of sight and about the get discovered.

Sometimes engaging the enemy is unavoidable. Karl carries trip wire explosives, mines and dynamite to set up trips and escape routes. When things really go wrong a well-placed grenade will do the trick. For up-close-and-personal wet-work, Karl’s sidearm comes into play, and for a nice bullet spray the machine gun is the tool of choice.

But the real gem is Karl’s sniper rifle. The Sniper Elite games have some of the most satisfying sniping that you’ll find in a game. Bring the sight up to your eye and press the focus button to refine the shot with a red diamond that takes into consideration bullet drop and the wind. Pull the trigger and if you are lucky the camera will follow the round as it penetrates your target. The big selling point is the way the game rewards a great shot with a particularly gruesome X-ray bullet cam showing exactly what sort of internal damage your action caused to your target.

The remaster also includes the game’s original DLC: Neudorf Outpost, Assassinate the Fuhrer, The Landwehr Canal and Saint Pierre. This adds a few hours to the game and give players the chance to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

The game features both co-op and multiplayer modes. Whilst co-op would be good with like-minded friends, I couldn’t find a public game for either mode. To be truthful, despite its graphical overhaul, there’s better multiplayer games out there to play.

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered maintains everything that made the original great, but with a fresh coat of paint. Its age is still showing a bit, but the solid gameplay plus all the included DLC makes it a recommended purchase for fans of WWII shooters.

The post Sniper Elite V2 Remastered (PlayStation 4) Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

“Sniper Elite 4 pulls of tactical stealth shooter with almost perfection”.

Sniper Elite 4 was not a game I had on my radar. Having not played the prequels, I got the impression from the name that I was in for just another military shooting game, this time with a focus on sniping. Boy was I wrong.

Sniper Elite 4 instead heads down the tactical stealth shooter route and pulls it off with almost perfect execution.

The game takes place in WWII in Italy. The story isn’t particularly engaging and the characters aren’t to memorable but it does the job for a more gameplay orientated game.

You play as the sniper Karl Fairburne. While the game categorises Karl’s role as a sniper, I get a more special agent vibe. Sure your main weapon is a sniper rifle but your arsenal comes packed with a deadly variety of explosives, a rather useful pistol, an unsubtle secondary weapon (Shotgun or SMG) as well as some Jackie Chan level martial art skills.

The story is split up into a variety of campaign missions, each set in a massive open area for you to roam around. You are given a whole heap of tasks in each mission involving killing, destroying or finding something. How you do it is completely up to you.

One of the key triumphs of Sniper Elite 4 is choice. From the moment you are dropped into the Level, where you go and how you choose to undertake the objectives is up to you. You forge your own path. I never felt the game was forcing or even encouraging me down a certain path. There was no conveniently laid out enemies, waiting for me to take them down a certain way. Everything just felt open and natural. It was left up to me to assess the situation and decide how I want to approach it.

It isn’t just the choice that was great about each encounter, it was also the uniqueness. Every encounter was different primarily due to the different environment but also due to the layout of the enemy.

My favourite moment in the game was when I found a nice defensible spot up on a mountain, looked down at a small town full of enemies and started picking them off one by one with little care of anyone noticing me. Some of the enemies took cover and started trying to shoot me back, others decided to try and swarm my position. Just moments before in my last encounter, I decided to sneak into a camp, take out as few people as possible, complete the objective and get out of there before anyone notices something is up.

For the stealth side of things, there are a whole host of mechanics and game design features that I look for in a good stealth game: Once you tag an enemy, they become visible even when obscured by objects, not realistic I know but it makes everything a lot less tedious. There is a slight delay between a person discovering you and them alerting everyone in the vicinity, giving you time to quickly take them out. When a sound is made, only people who should be able to hear it actually hear it. People don’t automatically know where you are in strange or unreasonable circumstances. There is an excellent autosave feature, enabling a quick redo when things don’t go your way.

I’ve never shot a sniper rifle before but to me this game seemed reasonably realistic. Your bullet drops significantly over long distances making it a critical thing to account for. To make things a bit easier on the non-hardcore difficulty settings, when you hold your breath, an aim assist marker appears showing you exactly where your bullet will hit. Unrealistic I know but the game would be much much harder without it. Also you only have a certain amount of time you can hold your breathe for, so you will find yourself making the occasional shot with no aim assist at all.

One of the more unique aspects of the game is the slow motion X-Ray kill cam. Typically when you fire your bullet you get to view your bullet hitting the target in slow motion. Not only that, there is an X-ray like view, allowing you to see their bone structure and organs. As your bullet penetrate their organs or chatters their bone, you get to see it all its gory magnificence.

There is a certain extra level of satisfaction and pride garnered when you get to see your bullet hit its mark. It is undoubtedly brutal though. At one stage I had to put the game down because it was a bit too full on for my current state of mind.

This is one of the few games where I find hard to find flaws with any part of the gameplay. Maybe a bigger variety in tools may open up the gameplay even more but doing so while being faithful to the time period would understandably be difficult. Admittedly the game can be reasonably slow paced which means you have to be in a certain mindset to play the game but such is the nature of tactical stealth games.

The aspect of the game which I haven’t really touched on is the modes. Mostly this is because I wasn’t taken to anything outside the campaign. You can play the campaign online co-op which with a friend which I could see as being a blast. Trying to coordinate with a random person online however, not so much.

The multiplayer strips away everything good about the game by focusing on none of the games strengths. Instead of being about tactics, the game relies more on luck.I find each match tends to boil down to finding a good hiding spot then hoping you see someone else before they see you.

There is also a survival mode, here wave after wave of enemy AI is sent at you. Once again, the tactical and stealth components of the game is absent leaving what feels like a very generic multiplayer mode. I just found it boring.

Sniper Elite 4 pulls of tactical stealth shooter with almost perfection. By far, it is the best game in the genre I have played. By playing to none of the game’s strengths, the PvP multiplayer lets down the otherwise strong campaign mode. The brutal kill cam may not be for the light hearted but overall I find it hard to not recommend to anyone who is a fan of tactical stealth shooters.