The Sniper Elite series has been running for a number of years now and Rebellion have been refining the series with each release. Sniper Elite 5 is aiming for a release late next month and thanks to Rebellion and local stars Five Star Games, we got to go hands on with it.

One of the major changes for this game is customisation, meaning you can choose what type of guns you start your missions with, which can impact how you play out the missions. Rebellion have said that the customisation isn’t limited to the guns that you start with, you can even change the loadout you are carrying, at workbenches throughout the levels, beyond that though, you can customise each part of the gun, from the accessories to the barrel and even stock. What this new layer of mechanics is aiming to do, is allow players to find the way that appeals to them, meaning that even if you take the same basic gun into a mission, the attachments you put on it, can drastically change how things play out. For the preview build that I got to play, I really didn’t spend much time dealing with the system, purely because I knew there would be more options that I could fully explore, so I picked a nice rifle and jumped into the mission that was open for me.

The mission in question took place around a French Chateau where Möller, a Nazi general is based and leading a mission called Operation Kraken. There was a mission that lead up to this one, but this is where I started. The starting point was the same in both my attempts, the first choice you have to make is listening to the briefing or not and in my first go, I just walked away, only for the resistance cell leader to shout out ‘Rude!’ as I did. I could see the Chateau off in the distance, but there were a lot of nazi’s between my current position and where I needed to be, so I quick smart made the call to go around the outside and it was a somewhat smart decision.

Anyone who has played a game in the series will know that the kill cam, which allows for a slow-motion track of the bullet, before the x-ray viewing of the targets body comes up and shows the destruction, can be quite rewarding. It also proved to be quite distracting in my first attempt, as I was watching those shots so intently, I wasn’t watching who was coming towards me between them and while I was getting surrounded, I am thankful that the game crashed. As someone who plays a lot of early builds of games, this wasn’t a surprise, but it was a bit of a blessing, as it provided me more of a chance to think on what I had done and how I could avoid being swarmed. On the second go, I did take the time to listen to the briefing and turns out that the road I was attempting to sneak across, where there were just a few guards, was also used to transport dozens of trucks each day, which is where the mass of soldiers came from in my first go. Knowing that, I made the call to go that way again, but I opted to lay in wait and give the truck time to pass first, which made things far easier, and with the enemies cleared out, I pushed forward.

Having cleared out this little farm house on the boundary of the map, I felt comfortable enough to explore around it, it gave me a chance to stock up on ammunition, but also gave me the chance to mess around with some bodies and objects. The bodies was a little pointless, given that I had taken down all the enemies around it, but it was fun to rig their bodies with grenades and something I used to great effect later on. What I did find though, was in the attic of the main house, there was a generator and given the choice to either turn it off or sabotage it, I went with the latter. This caused it to start making random noises, which in turn caught the attention of soldiers down the road, it wasn’t enough to bring them closer, however my shooting them from a distance was and with them cleared out, I pushed forward.

This is where I found myself dying for the first time, there was a fork in the path I was going down, up to the left there was a long drive, which lead directly to the Chateau, down to the right it was another farmhouse, I went left. The problem was, even though I had a knife, the soldier I discovered sitting on a bench, overlooking the French countryside, was immune to being snuck up on and his discovery of me, caused an alarm to trip, which brought soldiers running down from the Chateau. That wouldn’t have been an issue, as I just ran back down the path, and hid in the long grass that I left alone earlier and waited for them to come to be, of course, completely forgetting that I had another road to my right. From that direction came a bunch of soldiers, including the commandant of the area and when Karl noted that as the leader, they would have something good, I tried to focus on them, but again forgot the enemies from the left and was quickly killed.

After reloading to a checkpoint near it and then dying again, I went for a different tactic, I went back further and sniped all the Nazis’ that I could and it worked, they all came running as before, but I was able to take them down. From here though, I was being super careful, I didn’t want to die again, the checkpoints were plentiful, but it was a matter of my honour and given that I was making good progress, I wanted to ensure I got through as much as I could. What was exciting was that as I was at the boundary of the Chateau, after taking down a lot of enemies soldiers, I spotted some vines on the side of a tall building and at first, I just ignored them, content to sneak around on the ground, but then I remembered, I could climb them, which I did. This gave me a chance to avoid a few enemies that were around the other side, but it did mean that once I took down the guy who was standing at the other window, I was free to make as much chaos from the tower as I could, so I did.

It was here though that my time wrapped up with the game, and while I didn’t that a lot of time had passed, turns out that nearly 90 minutes had elapsed, which to me is the sign of an amazing game. While I did see a work bench near the tower I climbed, I didn’t make any use of it, as I knew there were still some folks around who would shoot me, but part of me really wanted to revisit one section of the level, that fork area, with some different guns and ammo, to see if I could take them down like I was the DOOM guy. Even the last big decision that I made, I could have snuck around the base of the tower and continued on as I was doing, which honestly, had been pretty successful (as long as we don’t count my deaths) and again, part of me wants to see how that would shake out.

As I left the game behind, I couldn’t help but start to think of what ifs, what if I had a different gun, what if I didn’t go to the left, what if I went to the left and ignored the road and farm from the outset. Given that my time was limited and I was still thinking about what I could have done differently a few days later, it gave me hope that the final game could offer a lot more replayability than I first thought and that has me excited.

The full game will release on May 26th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, with the game launching into Xbox Game Pass on day one.