Sniper Elite: Resistance Review

Sniper Elite: Resistance was my first full-scale foray into the series, and while I'd put a few hours in here and there in previous titles, I hadn’t fully committed to one from start to finish. Coming to the end of Resistance has me wishing I had. It’s not a perfect title, but it has a very unique feel, one which I found myself loving as I worked through it.

Sniper Elite: Resistance runs parallel to Sniper Elite 5, giving the player the reins of Harry Hawker, a frequently recurring character within the series, who hadn’t had a protagonist role until now. Harry works alongside the titular Resistance in France to clear the German occupation of the country and dismantle a mysterious new super-weapon that they’re developing for use on D-Day. I wasn’t blown away by the story or any of the characters; everything felt somewhat typical for the setting and not enough time was spent with any of the characters for me to grow attached, beyond Harry, who mostly had occasional quips throughout the missions. To be frank, though, this wasn’t a huge blow to the experience While typical, the story was really well-structured and worked well to string the game's varied missions together without them feeling completely disconnected, and while relatively one-dimensional, I found Harry to be quite the charming protagonist. There is some more depth to the story-telling within collectables hidden around each mission, with classified documents, personal letters, and more scattered around which adds just a little extra depth to the world. Beyond the collectables, each mission also has workbenches hidden on the map, which allow you to customise your weapons mid-mission, and also reward new attachments.

The gameplay is where this title shines, and it shines bright. Each mission leads Harry to a new location within France, with varying objectives in play to dismantle the plans of the Nazis. Before going deep into the mechanics and objectives, I need to highlight the absolutely fantastic level design. While the visuals of many of the missions are relatively similar, the layouts and design beyond that are incredibly varied. These missions take place on decently large maps, with a series of objectives, some optional, which can be tackled in any order. The objectives themselves are sadly somewhat uninspired, often consisting of finding some intel or destroying something, but navigating the levels themselves makes for a lot of chances for creative play. And they’re not all bad; each mission has a Kill List target — an optional objective to kill a particular enemy — and these are incredibly interesting. While you could just put a bullet in them and call it a day, each target has a unique kill, which is far more rewarding, giving you a new weapon for your troubles. Missions and weapons all have their own Medals too; specific challenges which emphasise creativity and replayability.

At its very core, Sniper Elite: Resistance is a stealth game, but this doesn’t mean you’re hard-locked into one specific playstyle. During my playthrough, I had a lot of fun with a lot of different styles of play. Playing like a ghost, going unseen throughout the majority of the mission and accurately picking off anyone that came in my way, felt the most intrinsically rewarding and satisfying, but I can’t deny I had a lot of fun sprinting around a destroyed village acting like I was in a Call of Duty montage. You’re given a lot of tools for whatever playstyle you want to work with, from different ammo types and mines to decoys and bottles for distracting enemies.

I do have some issues with certain aspects of the level design, primarily regarding navigation and finding gear. Some boxes and gates will be locked, along with safes being either unlocked with a key or able to be destroyed with a satchel charge. Locked boxes and gates can typically be opened with either a crowbar or bolt cutters, which will be scattered around the maps. The glaring issue I found here though, was that you can also open most of these by simply picking the lock, which takes a short time longer, but not enough to be particularly problematic, or to incentivise the player to look for the key items instead. In my experience, even when I did look for these items in particular, there was always one of them within a 10-20m radius, so it never felt like I was being rewarded for exploring, even if there was a good reward, such as a workbench.

Carrying over from Sniper Elite 5, the campaign also has the Axis Invasion function, which I sadly didn’t get to engage with much due to the pre-release nature of my copy, but the small amounts in which I did, I loved. Axis Invasion functions similarly to the invasions in the DARK SOULS series, where another player invades your world as an enemy, in this case, another sniper. This leads to a huge scale cat and mouse game which adds a whole new dynamic to things. Beyond the campaign and Axis Invasion, there’s also a multiplayer mode, which I was unable to try out, Survival, which tasks the player with defending areas from waves of enemies, and the Propaganda Challenges. I’m somewhat mixed on the Propaganda Challenges, as I think conceptually they’re a lot of fun. Primarily, they’re score-related challenges, tasking the player with killing every enemy in the area, with different challenges being on different maps. There are three different styles: Stealth, Combat, and Sniping, each of which rewards the player for engaging with it in a specific way, such as Headshots for sniping, and Ghost Kills in the stealth challenges. Individually, they’re engaging and a fun way to reuse the campaign maps, but my issues stem from the difficulty, and the method of unlocking them. I played through the whole game, including the Propaganda Challenges on “Sniper Elite Hard” and during the campaign, this was a perfect difficulty for me, not easy, but never impossible. The challenges however were an absolute breeze, even for the high scores. My other issue came from unlocking them: each mission has a single poster somewhere, which, once collected, unlocks the associated challenge. The problem comes from the sheer sizes of the maps, making some of these awkward to find on a first run, which in turn makes replaying the mission for these posters incredibly tedious, requiring you to comb through the maps with a fine tooth comb.

From a technical standpoint, I was impressed. While the visuals aren’t pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, it’s a good-looking title and is optimised super well, which is a blessing during the modern age of AAA gaming. I had practically zero issues with performance, with no crashes and no noticeable stuttering at any point in my playthrough.

As an entire package, Sniper Elite: Resistance was incredibly solid, with a strong campaign, varied modes and a wealth of replayability. While I had some minor issues during my time with the game, they’re primarily nitpicks.