Sniper Elite: Resistance

Written by Rob Larkin on 1/27/2025 for PC   PS5   XSX  

Although the first Rebellion Games product I ever played was the old Aliens vs. Predator from the mid 90s on Atari Jaguar, I only truly became a fan of the studio through the Sniper Elite series. It was at a career fair when finishing graduate school that I saw a Rebellion Games booth and realized their offices were in the same town in which I was eager to remain. I promptly applied for a job. They never responded. Well, the Sniper Elite series is still awesome, so I'm not going to hold a grudge. 

While sniping almost always finds its way into first and third person shooters, only two games really stand out for me as making the mechanic the core of the gameplay: Sniper Elite and Sniper Ghost Warrior. Ghost Warrior has leaned into more first person perspective; updating its setting, arsenal, and kit to modern tech; and following the feel of a game more alongside something like the Call of Duty franchise. Sniper Elite stays firmly rooted in World War II, the third person perspective (except when you scope in of course), and not just perching its characters off and above in a nest with a full view of the terrain and targets but plucking them into and through the levels having to alternate between stealth and exploration with lining up those perfect shots.

If you've played a Sniper Elite game then you know what you're in for. Sniper Elite: Resistance very much follows the formula of the franchise. And why not? It's a solid formula. If you played a game in the Hitman series, then you also know what you are in for. The two share distinct similarities, but where Hitman's Agent 47 might like to play dress up and opt for the occasional poison kill or more often utilize the environment to his mark's demise, Sniper Elite's protagonists typically stick to the ol' trusty rifle, don't get any fancy dress, and must take to the shadows in between squeezing off headshots. This entry puts you deep behind enemy lines working alongside the resistance in occupied France - hence the title. Unlike the other entries where you pick up the dogtags of Army Ranger Karl Fairburne, this go you're in the boots of British Special Operations Executive (SOE) Harry Hawker. The plot runs parallel to Fairburne's exploits establishing a beachhead in Normandy from Sniper Elite 5, just on the other side of the front. 

So the first bit of good I'd like to point out is the maps. There is more verticality on offer than previous titles, and the towns and castles of France are pretty neat - picturesque but also functional with narrow alleys leading into open squares. It is an excellent setting for this type of game and almost stands out as its own character of sorts. The maps themselves are large and as you progress through the single player campaign (or opt to go at it co-op) there are a number of objectives that pop into focus. There will typically be some intel to sneak in and gather, which reveals a new objective in another part of the map, maybe some evidence of the resistance to smother, and a contract to complete on a key Nazi officer or someone allied with the invaders. What's neat about this series - and especially this game - is that it borrows the best practice of offering multiple routes to achieve your mission objectives. It's more than just go in sneaky or guns-a-blazin'. There's a safe you might want to crack. You can kill around and someone's corpse is likely a loot away from obtaining the safe key, or you can poke around for a satchel charge and just blow the lid off the sucker. You can go with a minimal body count or leave a trail of your dead in your wake, some of them even booby-trapped with grenades or mines for good measure. 

You have a capable arsenal of tools at your disposal. You can choose and save loadouts of rifle, sidearm, and machine gun to start each level. As you progress and discover workbenches more guns or options to customize them with scopes, barrels, etc. unlock. You will find various ammo types as well such as subsonic ammo for quieter shots or exploding rounds for a little extra punch on contact. You also have a satchel full of grenades and bandages to wound or heal. You can find various tools along the way like crowbars, bolt cutters, and those satchel charges to access certain areas more quickly or quietly, disable alarms, or make things go boom. Those latter collectible items reset every level so even though you might lug that crowbar all across the map little heedless Harry always seems to misplace the darn thing before the next one. You can also grab guns off enemy corpses or scattered around the maps but you cannot hold on to these either. Once the magazine runs out it gets discarded, no reloads. You can't even stow them. If you swap to your silenced pistol that fancy German heavy machine gun falls to the floor. No one's coming home with a Luger as a souvenir. It's fair enough though. An SOE agent obviously strolls into enemy territory with custom holsters for rifle, sidearm, and light machine gun; he can't be expected to custom fashion some leather slings for every other weapon under the sun as well.  

As for the less good, the first level concludes with a cutscene that is just a hot mess. The NPC character models overall, but especially on Hawker our actual protagonist, look pretty dated. Thankfully most of the plot that is interspersed between levels goes to voiceover dialogue instead of cutscenes after that first one, and these are much better. There is also occasionally some clunky movement. Hawker himself seems to really struggle navigating stairs that end into doorways. There are lots of times when he gets confused and instead of snapping a lock off he waives his bolt cutters in any old direction instead. The lock still clatters to the ground so it's functionally the same, just ugly. There were a list of bugs and issues communicated in the review copies that are expected to be fixed at launch and I want to reiterate nothing I saw broke my game, just looked a bit shoddy at times. Also, they were not frequent, just occasional hiccups that I don't think should overly negatively affect anyone's time playing the game, but it will affect one's overall feeling about it. It's not really taking giant leaps forward in the franchise, just pushing out another episode in the series. Which is fine if you already like this series. 

Also true to the series is that the save mechanics are very forgiving and can let you save scum your way undetectably through any level or tricky spot you choose. Not being scum myself, I still frequently found when I died or wanted to retry a section a number of assets appeared to be lost from earlier save states - most notably the location and presence of dead bodies left behind. Maybe it's just the Strangers at work and we're actually all trapped in Dark City, but I'm pretty sure this was meant to be France. This is again a hinderance on immersion, but doesn't really effect the game so much. Frankly the game is probably too forgiving when breaking stealth and does a pretty poor job overall of creating a real element of danger or consequence to being found out. Yes, enemies nearby will come streaming into battle and alert more to reinforce but the ones at the next objective marker or on the other side of the map remain clueless. So if you overcome whatever peril you have immediately placed yourself you can tackle the next section with a relatively clean slate. There were apparently no radios along the French front lines so if you're out of earshot of a skirmish it's like it never happened. 

The other disappointing bit is I found the game lets you crutch the actual sniping mechanic a little too much with the in-game assists. There are a lot of physics in play with lining up and dropping the perfect shot but the game just gives you a magic white reticle that shows exactly where your shot will land and even toggles red when the crosshairs are placed on an enemy. It's a tad too easy to pull off any snipe and the lack of good scope options, at least initially, make the leap to turning the magic reticule off a bit too far of a skill jump. Maybe it is just a skill issue and I'm nitpicking where fidelity to historical accuracy is, limiting my opportunity to judge wind, velocity, and distance myself with some scope markers, or maybe I just haven't played enough to unlock all the more advanced scopes where I might find that one that actually gives me what I'm looking for. But jumping into the game, you lean too heavily into various super powers: spidey sense when an opponent sniper has you in their crosshairs, magic reticles, wall hacks on tagged enemies, eavesdropping on intel conversations from absurd distances... making Hawker more like an Avenger than a soldier. I want to give the devs the benefit of the doubt here and just assume the game is probably more fun with these powers than without. And some of them can be switched off if you want to test your skill, I'm just clamoring for some more middle ground between being overmatched to ubermensch. I want to earn those kill cams, which of course return and are as awesome as ever. 

Its familiar territory for the series, but there are a few wrinkles to this entry. Invasion mode is back. Making its debut in Sniper Elite 5, Invasion mode where if you enable it or even specifically invite someone, an enemy sniper can load in to your map. Telephones can aid the invaded by giving tip offs as to the invaders location. The invader can command soldiers and the reward for either player is bonus XP for scoring the kill. XP is useful for building out your skill tree which mostly just let you scavenge more, or sneak more quietly or recover more quickly. I honestly kept forgetting about the skill tree entirely and probably still have a bunch of points banked ready to be spent on character upgrades. It's not critical to the game's progression at all. I wasn't able to really test out Invasion mode because, through the multiplayer appeared to be operational in my pre-release copy, any lobbies appeared to be entirely absent, at least whenever I was playing. I'm not too bothered by that because I wasn't impressed by the concept even back in Deathloop where I first experienced it. I'm thankful I can just keep the option off as I'd rather just play through my levels without unwelcome distractions, but if its your thing it's there for you.

And as far as the lack of pre-release multiplayer, if anything material changes in my opinions once the full release goes live in a few days I will update this review. But my expectation is the multiplayer will be more or less the same as previous titles. There are the classic PvP modes on offer: an every man for themselves Free-For-All as well as a few team based modes, and my personal favorite from previous experience, No Cross. In No Cross the teams line up opposite some sort of impassible barrier, perhaps a river or canyon. It takes the close quarters battle out of the equation and becomes a tense cat and mouse face off of patient cover and skilled snipes. The other neat thing about Sniper Elite multiplayer is how scoring can be tweaked from classic points tallies like "most kills" to more sniper specific tallies like "total kill distance," rewarding a single long range pick off over multiple frantic up close firefights. 

However, the one truly unique mode that is added in Sniper Elite: Resistance are the Propaganda Challenges. The set up is simple enough: collect posters hidden in each mission map to unlock challenges that revisit those maps. Some are stealth based where you try and rack up kills for points, others pitch you on high with a rifle and number of targets across the challenge. They all play out against the clock, with certain kills like headshots or officer takedowns rewarding not just points, but bonus time as well. Each level is set to a default loadout to keep things fair and played against a bronze, silver, or gold medal score to strive for the highest marks. They are a neat distraction and a great way to jump in for a few minutes rather than drag through an entire level if you haven't the time to spare. Unless the pursuit of perfection takes over and get trapped loading in "just one more turn" after another trying to polish off all the golds. 

Overall, Resistance mostly plays the Sniper Elite hits. It suffers slightly from a bit of same-ness to it, but its a formula I've liked for a while. There is a new elements here with Propaganda Challenges and the best bits of previous games load in as well. I think one of the standout traits of this entry is the locale of occupied France. This makes for some pretty great maps and missions. So if you've played Sniper Elite titles before and liked them then this is an excellent new edition to the lineup. If you only played Hitman titles before and liked those there is a similar style that could be a lot of fun. If you've never played either but just like shootin' stuff from far away the Sniper Elite: Resistance has you covered.