Sniper Elite: Resistance Review

Methodically making my way through an almost idyllic French vineyard, I time the shots of my sniper rifle to coincide with the loud rocket launches nearby. Their noise drowns out my firearm, allowing me to stealthily kill multiple Nazi patrols before reaching a nearby sniper tower. From this advantageous position – and with a few mines placed as welcome gifts at the base of the stairs – I abandon stealth, decimating the local garrison, some of which abandon their fortified position to desperately – and foolishly – rush mine.

After watching countless slow-motion X-Ray kills and dismantling a V1 rocket launch facility, I run towards one of several exfiltration points, patting myself on the back. There’s no doubt that Sniper Elite: Resistance belongs to Rebellion’s storied series, which has kept exploring different theaters of World War II over the years. But, much like its decision to remain in France – telling a parallel tale to 2022’s Sniper Elite 5 – the small number of changes it brings to the formula translates into a follow-up that’s a little too safe for its own good.

New protagonist Harry Hawker sounds different than usual series lead man Karl Fairburne and wears a stiff facial expression pulled right out of the uncanny valley – a flaw shared by the few other forgettable NPCs you meet or slaughter along the way – but plays more or less identically. An expert with a sniper rifle even before investing in weapon and character upgrades – which haven’t been significantly altered – he’s able to move and take out opponents stealthily but also hold his own in a firefight.

The freedom to approach objectives, however you please, is still present, while unlocking different entry points into missions contributes to replayability, especially if you’re a completionist who wants to hunt down collectibles. For my campaign playthrough, I opted for a blend of stealth and loud action that proved perfectly doable without too much hassle on Sharpshooter (medium) difficulty, save from moments when the missions featured armored vehicles alongside higher concentrations of enemies.

The enemy AI oscillates between cluelessness and efficiency. While it can spot you from a decent distance, I did find groups of soldiers running right past me despite being fully aware of my position on several occasions. In other situations, getting noticed at the wrong time led to distant snipers shredding me with bullets that caused bleeding, making it easy for an officer and two of his underlings to teach me a swift lesson about overconfidence. This happened without tweaking the customizable difficulty settings – also present in SE5 – which, thankfully, allow you to tailor your experience to your liking.

Prior to each mission, you select Harry’s loadout and customise individual weapon parts, provided you first unlock them by finding workbenches while you explore levels. Sniper: Elite Resistance does boast some new guns, but the stat differences and trade-offs between them are, sadly, not interesting enough to encourage collecting everything.

Aside from firearms, the suite of support tools – including bandages, medkits, teller mines, or bottles – remain part of your arsenal, helping you patch up and set up traps for opponents rushing for their allies’ bodies or alarms, as well as distract oncoming patrols so you can get out of their way. Just like in Sniper Elite 5, access to several ammo types provides flexibility – I’ll always be grateful for armor-piercing ammo whenever a tank shows up – but does little to alter the formula.

The missions themselves throw a range of familiar objectives at you. But whether you’re collecting documents, sabotaging enemy operations, eliminating optional kill list targets, or checking up on a few French resistance members – who are woefully missing from most campaign missions – it’s all rinse and repeat.

As I mentioned when previewing Sniper Elite: Resistance, its X-Ray kills have a timeless quality to them, and watching bullets penetrate flesh and shatter bones in gruesome detail never gets old. However, as exciting as landing such shots – especially at great distance – is, this mechanic alone struggles to carry the whole game.

I am playing as Harry Hawker, in a different part of France, thwarting a new nefarious Nazi plan orchestrated by leaders bearing different names. I’m told that unless I stop them, people will die, and D-Day won’t follow its historical course. But every step of the way, I still feel like I’m guiding Karl Fairburne through the previous entry in the series, which already felt like it was losing steam.

The addition of Propaganda missions – unlocked by finding posters while playing through the campaign – doesn’t help much either. These are short, timed affairs in which you’re tasked with eliminating foes within a set time limit while playing as a member of the French resistance equipped with a specific loadout.

At best, they are fleeting distractions, but they primarily appeal to those who get a high out of chasing high scores. There’s undoubtedly skill involved in making the most out of your firearms and environment so that you keep adding seconds to the timer with each dispatched enemy.

But even so, this is far from a defining addition for a new entry in the series, so much so that I couldn’t force myself to actively seek out posters as I kept progressing through the nine main missions.

Sniper Elite: Resistance also brings back campaign co-op, Invasion mode - which allows players to invade each other’s campaigns - and several multiplayer modes that support up to 16 players.

Although I didn’t get to check them out for this review, they’re certainly nice to have and help make it feel like a “complete” package. At the same time, I’m sure you’re noticing the running theme here – SE5 shipped with these features, so, much like the campaign, they likely won’t feel all that different.

Performance

On an i7-13700K, 32 GB RAM, and Nvidia RTX 3080@1440p, Sniper Elite: Resistance ran without a single hitch with all settings on Ultra. Although I have nothing to complain about in terms of technical performance, the review build did suffer from what felt like excessive sharpness or heavily aliased textures, which caused distracting shimmering as I moved through some of the game’s environments.

Occasionally, it also had terrible cases of texture pop-in, including when opening crates, with interactable items materialising after a delay of a second or two.