Sniper Elite 5

Like previous installments of this third-person World War II stealth-action shooter series, this is an effortlessly fun opportunity to take on a real-life evil empire. Set in May of 1944, the story-driven campaign in Sniper Elite 5 has series star Karl Fairburne sneaking into France toward the end of WWII, hoping to destroy the Nazi's last-ditch effort to win: "Project Kraken." Using stealth and his trusty sniper rifle (as well as other guns, explosives, and the lethal weapons known as his hands), Karl has to take out numerous German soldiers and Nazi officers while locating secret plans and sabotaging their defenses as you explore the game's large and open fields of battle.

But while the game has many ways to play -- including competitive online modes, and a co-op "Survival" option -- it's the campaign where this truly shines. Like Sniper Elite 4, every battlefield is large, open, and full of possibilities. Whether it's missions that advance the story or optional objectives you discover as you explore, you have a variety of tasks to complete, including assassinating high-value targets, sabotaging enemy defenses, and stealing important information. But it's when you play cat and mouse with the observant and trigger-happy German soldiers, and either use precision to take someone out from afar with your sniper rifle, or sneak up behind them with your knife drawn, that this gets really good. And that's true whether you play the campaign solo, with a friend, or in the new "Axis Invasion" option, which allows someone to enter your solo or co-op game as an enemy soldier, or allows you to do the same to someone else. Expanding this series' signature move of showing graphic slo-mo X-ray footage of sniper shots destroying enemies' organs to include knife wounds and other gun shots only serves to remind you that war is hell. But with a variety of missions, tough enemies trying to stop you, and just as many ways to eliminate them, Sniper Elite 5 is an ultimately satisfying action game.