Sniper Elite 5 - May '22

ianh · 27 May 2022 at 10:18

Hi all, as a huge fan of the Sniper Elite franchise I'm really looking forward to this latest version, but less looking forward to the fascination that so many modern games have on "weapons mods/customisation" based around the desires of Multiplayer needs.

Its currently downloading so, post lunch today I'll be starting my first run through!

ianh · 27 May 2022 at 16:28

3.5hrs on the first mission, Stealth all the way.

The voice acting from the 2 female leads is very ropey, I'm fairly sure neither is either Scottish or French and their "fake" accents are very obvious, although the male lead (same one since SE2) is very good as always. Gameplay wise it's more of the same and, as suspected, I really don't like the customisation aspect like adding stocks and scopes to a 1911 pistol etc but I suppose that what we have to deal with nowadays.

ianh · 28 May 2022 at 10:45

Just finished Mission 3 and the map size is insane!!!

I spend 4 hours last night just on that one map and I still only covered maybe 2/3's of it at best! It was also the first "long distance" map, where missions 1+2 had most (but not all) of the combat taking place <100m and mission 3 immediately starts with dozens of 450m shots if you want to play that way. The map is so big that it becomes a bit of a problem for the stability of the game as I had my first bunch of game-ending glitches occur - Binos stopped working (no zoom), unable to fire weapons whilst "aimed" but fire from 3rd person was OK - all of which still occurred immediately after a reboot. The binos one never fixed itself but the "unable to shoot when aimed" was semi-fixable by taking an shot in 3rd person first, then aimed fire would work for 3-10 shots before the glitch came back.

I don't how much of this is down to map "size" or how well it's been filled with enemies, as I think I easily killed 150-200 in that one mission alone and, for a sniper game, it just became a meat-grinder slug-fest really quickly once you got to within 100m of the objective (a massive cathedral) and my stats at the end which had been 100% Lethal, 50% stealth in mission 1+2 dropped into 100% Lethal, 75% Assault as Stealth stopped becoming a realistic option due to the huge number of enemies closely stuffed together.

ianh · 29 May 2022 at 15:05

Well I've only gone and shot Hitler in the Testicle :eek:

The DLC is quite fun but very long if you're waiting for Hitler to move from location to location, most of which I'd already trapped with explosives, poison, environment etc, which made it feel like a discount Hitman game. It was only after a Steam forum post that I realised why they give you so many options for "Non-Lethal" takedowns, the game is trying to make you a Pacifist by giving you extra XP for every enemy you leave "unconscious" rather than killed, which is an odd choice, but I suppose lobbing a bottle into an enemies head 50 times a mission sounded like a good idea to someone.

ianh · 5 Jun 2022 at 11:19

Kronos said:
What on earth does Focus, press the Left Alt key do apart from give the screen a yellowish tinge?

It gives you enemy and "special item" locations that are <15m away in the direction you are looking, so it utterly useless outdoors but its fantastic when you're trying to creep around indoors, doing dozens of take-downs to maintain your stealth rather than risking a silenced pistol shot. I started off thinking was useless until I replayed the end of Mission 2 (trying to get the kill challenge done) and was using take-downs rather than shooting and it genuinely changed how I played the game once I figured out how to use it and I'd say it was easily my 2nd most important "skill" in-game now.

ianh · 5 Jun 2022 at 20:48

Kronos said:
I am missing three collectibles, one is a known problem but the other two were not where they were supposed to be which was on soldiers who were not there.

Sadly thats also a known issue and you have to restart the mission for them to appear (not just save and reload). I was taking a 1840m shot in Mission 3 (replicating something I saw on youtube) and the target will only appear maybe 50% of the time, if they don't appear then I had to restart the mission from scratch.

ianh · 11 Jun 2022 at 13:03

After 31hrs I've finally completed my "Mastery of Rifles" with 300+ headshots over 100m - 50 per rifle type - something only achieved by 0.6% of the playerbase so far, and the RSC1918 was easily the worst to do it with for me, such a poor gun for my type of stealthy gameplay with odd sights which appear to aim high compared to others.

ianh · 11 Jun 2022 at 17:14

Mobius 1 said:
The M1A1 carbine was my go to for quiet kills. I think you can get it down to a 36m sound radius.

Yeap, with a 12x scope as well, utterly ridiculous IRL but great in-game.

ianh · 23 Jun 2022 at 11:20

I'm now slowly going through all the acheivements/medals etc which can feel a little draining at times but it does force you to change your playstyle quite drastically at times. I'm usually a "stealth" player who likes to take hours per mission yet having to get 300 kills with each secondary weapon (1800 kills total) meant I had to Rambo each level in minutes instead, otherwise I'd be playing til I'm 90!

ianh · 29 Oct 2023 at 09:56

I eventually fell out of love with SE5 after a year or so but still play SE4. I'm not quite sure if there was a single "thing" which made me stop plating SE5, as opposed to say a collection of tiny annoyances, but the patch size vs amount of new content definitely started to be my biggest issue. I live somewhere rural-ish in Norfolk, with the nearest towns being a 20 min drive in each direction, so my internet isn't the fastest and having to download 30-50Gb every 2 to 4 weeks (at 12hrs+ each time), for less than 1Gb of actual content once unpacked, was extremely annoying.