• It’s a Dark Souls-esque multiplayer mode.
• But it’s not “just” a Dark Souls multiplayer mode.
• It’s a much more interesting experience because of the context it takes place in.
• Snipe Elite 5 is, at its core, a stealth game about running around as an action movie-esque version of an allied WW2 sniper, shooting Nazis and blowing stuff up.
• Adding an enemy sniper controlled by a human player into the mix elevates this experience ten-fold.
• You’re hiding from the enemy sniper and they’re hiding from you. You might think that this would lead to a lot of stalemates and just waiting around but not really because you’re discouraged from staying in one spot for too long. Spread across the map are telephones that you can use to make the enemy sniper(s) visible to you on the map temporarily.
• Playing as the Nazi sniper is a completely different experience than playing as the Allied snipers. Your fellow Nazi soldiers don’t shoot you on sight (for obvious reasons) and so this allows you to navigate through your own territory much more comfortably than the Allied snipers can.
• The telephones scattered throughout the map can be used by the Allied snipers immediately when the invasion starts to locate the enemy sniper but the Nazi sniper must wait 5min before using the telephones to do the same. This tips the scales in favor of the Allied snipers to counterbalance the Nazi sniper’s ability to walk around the map as they please.
• The Allied snipers have no way of differentiating the human Nazi sniper from other AI-controlled Nazi soldiers at first glance. But, through careful observation they can figure out who the human sniper is and take them out without them ever getting a chance to retaliate. Through the use of the binoculars, the Allied snipers are able to tag the Nazi sniper to track their location more easily and, by doing so, will discover if the soldier they’ve tagged is controlled by a human player or not. However when a human player is tagged by another player they are notified of this and can thus make a swift retreat if you give them a chance too.
• This asymmetry and hiding in plain sight reminds me a lot of Spy Party which is a great thing because Spy Party is one of my favorite games of all time. Anything that can come close to reminding me of it is a winner in my book.
• I’ve only played a few hours, beaten 1 mission, gotten most of the way through a 2nd and played 1 round as the Nazi sniper. But in that short amount of time, Sniper Elite 5 was able to really show me a good time and I’m excited to get back into it for some more fun soon.
• It’s on Xbox Game Pass for the sweet sweet price of 1$ a month (for your first month, just remember to cancel it and sign up later for another month of access to a bunch of mediocre games and some good ones priced at 1$/month). If you’ve got a friend to play with then you have no reason to miss out on this experience.

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