neil johnson

I've been a fan of Sniper Elite since I played the 1st installment on a home build PC. Loads of fun, tense, strategic... But mostly fun. SE2 again fun but just lacked the depth of the 1st game. SE3 was not fun it just felt off. Something wasn't quite right with the mix and the game suffered, the reputation of the game at that point was questionable. SE4 IMO is the best in the series. Lots of opportunities to lay traps, stealth kills, long shots, really good range of weapons and equipment. Just tons of fun and I think I've replayed it about 6 or 7 times. Great! SE5... Firstly its not finished. Yep it's a complete game, but it's not polished. It's buggy, ladders are terrible. Invisible walls plague progress in areas where you can clearly access on foot. There are lots of clipping issues in general. AI, to be fair I always play on the hardest settings, so I kinda deserve being shot at by an enemy half a map away, not a sniper I might add. Just a random jager or engineer with a rifle. I think all of the enemy are seasoned/grizzled tracking experts, no matter what you do, if you do attract the enemy by breathing to hard (and they will hear you), expect full on firefight. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it livens up what would be a Terribly paced game. I actually enjoyed the action, but it's highly repetitive and the alarms, the alarms are just nuts. Trigger an alarm and troops just keep attacking until you shut the alarm off by disabling it (shoot or cut the power). It can get annoying. Levels are pretty claustrophobic in places which means you're not sniping, you're fighting in built up areas (FIBUA). This means you're playing a splinter cell clone which gives you opportunities to use a sniper rifle. A far cry from SE1, 2 and 4. I’ve played through the full game twice and honestly I really couldn't care for the collectables element. I used to enjoy wringing every last drop of items from SE4, but this time it just feels hollow. In a nutshell, it's a splinter cell game with an SR skin. Not a polished game, it's playable (just), but lacks depth and fun. No trip mines, which were my all time favourite trap. That really sucks. With updates this may play a little better, needs a bit of balancing on the AI in places. I'll never forgive them for removing trip mines.