I’m refilling Karl Fairburne’s steel-toed boots, this time in the latest slice of Sniper Elite 5 DLC. I’m camped behind a dilapidated brick wall off the coast of Marseille, it’s dark, and the island I’ve just traversed in my tiny two-person speedboat is teeming with Nazi soldiers. They are, naturally, armed to the teeth and on the lookout for someone hell-bent on foiling their nefarious plans. The fact that I have now broken the necks of several of the surviving soldiers’ comrades en route to locating Hermann Kraus has made my presence even less welcome, but my orders to execute the chief Nazi engineer in the archipelago are quite unwelcome. firm.
After weaving through the narrow corridors of a hillside Mediterranean villa, jumping over drainage pipes and scaling webs of flowering vines, I’ve quietly made my way to Kraus’s quarters. He’s deep in conversation with a subordinate, and I consider letting them finish, sneaking up behind them and slitting their throats. Instead, I flip the script. I throw a grenade into the low-ceilinged room. Both men fold like a deck of cards. Smoke and flames pour out of open doors and windows. And then all hell breaks loose. Sniper Elite 5’s new paid expansion is a mix of new content, but nonetheless underscores what makes Sniper Elite 5 great.
The cost of war
Priced at £11.99/$14.99, Sniper Elite 5’s Landing Force Mission and Weapon Pack DLC certainly isn’t great value for money, but if you’re looking for more of the exemplary duck-and-cover mayhem found in the base game , then I think it is worth your consideration. Season Pass One might be a better shout, which includes this latest deal, a ‘Wolf Mountain’ quest the day before, and three as-yet-unreleased slices of DLC, for £29.99/$34.99, but I’ll let you be the judge. of that.
Meanwhile, Landing Force is the dream of the sneaky fighters among us. With claustrophobic interiors and plenty of tight passages on top of hills, dropping enemies is almost always the best approach here, not least because navigating a quick escape in such tight confines is often far from straightforward. As described above, I speak from experience on that. Things open up after the early encounter with Hermann Kraus, but by then I was firmly in the detective mindset, to the point where I found myself almost exclusively stalking enemy soldiers from the tall grass under the cover of darkness, in instead of stalking enemy soldiers. shooting them from a distance. I barely saw the show’s signature slow-motion kill cam, apart from the rare occasions it portrayed me puncturing lungs with a steel blade from behind, or snapping tendons in my neck with my bare hands up close.
“The Landing Force DLC is definitely another solid slice of what has already proven successful.”
However, the downside of such a stealth-friendly map is its linearity. To promote moving between cover points on the attack, there are often fewer open areas, meaning the player is less able to approach kills from different angles. As with any sandbox mission, Landing Force still offers a degree of variety, but given the strides Sniper Elite 5’s main offering made over its predecessors in terms of options and multiple paths to success, this portion of DLC is feels like a side step to that end. , if not a throwback backwards. Thankfully, the level itself is so well designed and believable that these perceived restrictions feel natural and organic and, more importantly, never forced. You can go all guns blazing if you want, but doing it in a tight space that has so many blind corners, where masking sound is next to impossible, isn’t a smart move.
As for the expansion’s weapons, the introduction of the DL Carbine rifle and PPSH submachine gun are welcome, but since both firearms have appeared in previous Sniper Elite games, they feel more like new skins here than new material proper. saying. Despite being set in Marseille in western France, some players have pointed out that Landing Force’s map is reminiscent of the Italian-set missions from Sniper Elite 4, and certainly structurally speaking, I’m inclined to agree. .
However, I’d still place Landing Force among the most intriguing and engaging adventures in Sniper Elite 5. Like the base game, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it doesn’t even expand on the new features introduced there, but it’s definitely another solid slice of what has already proven to be successful. The download size (44GB) and price may be sticking points for some gamers, but those desperate for more Sniper Elite action won’t be disappointed.
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