It’s been five years since the previous feature in the Sniper Elite series. Developer Rebellion created some smaller games in the same universe after 2017, but now gamers who are happy to shoot can finally enjoy being able to defeat the Nazis with a sniper rifle once again.
This time the events take place in France. There aren’t a lot of exciting games to come before fall again, so we take what we get.
The Sniper Elite 5 was developed in the Asura Engine, which has been the basis for all Sniper Elite games since the first time in 2005. A few things happened under the hood that elevate the experience of the latest Sniper Elite adventure.
Gamer.no is back with a review of the game, but a quick look at how the fifth feature in the series performs and looks on PC.
Tam graphics
Sniper Elite 5 isn’t the best game you’ll be playing this year, visually. It looks totally fine. Texture quality varies greatly in the long run, and smoothing edges is not encouraging.
It looks better than its predecessor, but it was missing.
The game’s menus give you some control over the graphics, with the ability to adjust edge smoothing (type not specified), shadow quality, reflections quality, drawing distance, water quality and “ambient blockage”.
Not all the world.
The game distinguishes between four levels of setting, and the “High” level seems to be optimal for blending decent performance and looks. There is very little visual difference between “High” and “Ultra”.
| Setting (1920×1080) | Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC | |
| Average FPS | 1% – low | |
| Ultra | 155 | 108 |
| high | 195 | 141 |
| Average | 219 | 174 |
| a little | 220 | 179 |
The frame rate increases sharply if one reduces it to “high”, so it might be a good idea.
Little difference: It’s hard to see any difference other than slightly weaker shadows and a weaker drawing distance between Ultra (left) and High (right). Frame rate, on the other hand, is 26 percent higher at high.
The game features a form of ray tracing, “blackout fields”, which draw shadows of characters in the game with ray tracing. The setting is triggered when “Ultra” or “High” is on.
Soft Shadows: Opacity fields on the left, on the right.
On Nvidia graphics cards, it doesn’t seem to have any effect on frame rate, but you do see a certain difference.
Well optimized
test bench
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- Healer: Intel Core i9-12900 K
- Cutters: Asus ROG Ryujin II 360
- main card: Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero
- memory chips: Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR5-5200 CL40
- storage: Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB M2 SSD x2.0
- power supply: Asus ROG Thor 1200W
- Closet: Cooler Master Mastercase H500P Mesh ARGB
Our RTX 3090 excavator managed to keep the frame rate above 60 in 4K with everything on “Ultra” by a fair margin. Sniper Elite 5 also supports AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upgrade technology, which can greatly increase the frame rate.
On the other hand, this is only the first generation of FSR. This means you can expect miserable anti-aliasing, with strong flicker on edges and ghosting even in 4K with FSR set to “quality.” The image quality is also noticeably worse.
For example, there is no point in using FSR, ie.
We choose two video cards from the shelf to go for a reference tour in the game start area. Despite the somewhat lax graphics seen with the eyes of 2022, there is no doubt that the developers have provided optimization.
The RTX 3050 itself, Nvidia’s weakest video card with its 3000-series RT cores, can handle roughly 60 frames per second at 1080p.
| Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC | Gigabyte RTX 3050 Gaming OC | |||
| Average FPS | 1% low | Average FPS | 1% low | |
| 1080p Ultra | 155 | 108 | 55 | 39 |
| 1440 pixels ultra | 121 | 87 | 41 | 31 |
| 4K Ultra | 75 | 57 | 22 | 16 |
| 4K Ultra FSR | 100 | 74 | 30 | 23 |
The game is well optimized for multi-core processors, and it is, first of all, the video card that sweats. The image flow and image time were consistent throughout most of the missions we played, without chopping of any kind.
Small mistakes and stupid enemies
The main annoyance of the Sniper Elite 5 is the small bugs. My character tends to get stuck in terrain – often for no reason – which one quickly gets tired of. It doesn’t happen very often, and it might only last for a second, but it breaks the experience.
NIGHT AND DAY?: Only in Low (right) does one really notice the difference from Ultra (left). The photo was taken in 4K, then it looks very similar.
I’ve also experienced getting under the map a few times, so we have to get our fingers crossed that the developer is correcting this after a quarter.
The Nazis had the same problem. I’ve seen many gongs running in the city, both in the middle of the open and in the face of the obstacles they are trying to overcome. It doesn’t help when their AI is already weak.
conclusion
Sniper Elite 5 is by no means a graphics revolution compared to its predecessor, but it does raise the profile a few notches since last time.
The game works well on PC, without stuttering, and one can get a high frame rate on budget video cards with some tweaks in the settings menu.
The developer would have liked to bring in support for the latest version of the FSR upgrade technology, but other than that, there are only a few small bugs here and there that we can point out.
In other words; Fully decent computer version.
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