I’ve never really known much about Sniper Elite. I played a chunk of Sniper Elite V2 back in the day and mostly remember it as the game where you could shoot a Nazi in the groin and be treated to a gross X-ray clip of their nether regions exploding – oh, and there are zombies sometimes.
While I knew the game was about sniping, what I didn’t know was that Sniper Elite: Resistance has more in common with immersive stealth sims like Hitman: World of Assassination and Metal Gear Solid 5 than I had initially realized. Given that those are two of the best games of the last generation, you could say I was psyched to find this out when playing Resistance at a preview at Gamescom 2024.
Sneak king
I was dropped into a Nazi-occupied town in France, and given a list of objectives to check off, but first I had to sneak in via the town's high walls. And there are multiple ways of doing this, as per previous Sniper Elite games. You can of course snipe the enemies watching for incoming intruders, you can climb up the towers on the corner of the wall and stealthily take out the guards with some close-quarters combat, and there was even what seemed to be a pathway from a sewer passage that I couldn’t quite figure out. Even from infiltrating this big town and dealing with three enemies, Sniper Elite: Resistance was hitting the sweet spot of choice, moreish sniping, and riotous fun gameplay that made the previously mentioned stealth games so engaging.
Once I was in the town, I was free to follow the mission objectives in whatever order I pleased. I could search an informant's apartment for information, I could head straight for the central castle area for the big showdown, and there was even a Nazi commander I had to take down. The latter of these was also a big highlight for me. While you can easily look from afar and blast his head off his shoulders with a well-timed sniper bullet, you’ll be able to overhear his troops talking about how he hates rats, and, wouldn’t you know it, one of the items you can find in the map is an explosive rat – very Hitman-coded.
Open-world (or in this case open zone) games have a tendency to stick all the information in front of you and leave very little up to player agency, but Sniper Elite said: ‘Here's what you need to do, have fun’. There was no one way to head through the mission, which is exactly what I was looking for.
Canon fodder
A member of the development team from Rebellion who was in the demo room with me explained that while Sniper Elite: Resistance is apparently around the same size and length as Sniper Elite 5, it acts as more of a companion piece to that game. Relatedly, the game’s protagonist Captain Harry Hawker - who fans will recognize as the co-op partner character in Sniper Elites 3 through 5 - has been made canon, with his storyline taking place simultaneous to Karl Fairburne’s missions in Sniper Elite 5.
But despite barely existing, Harry still has access to all the same tools his gruff-sounding American companion has too. There are classic stealth game distractions like glass bottles to lure enemies into a perfect line of sight, for example, and you can also use the bodies of your fallen enemies as lures, or – in a particularly grim twist – rig them to explode with a grenade once an enemy comes close.
And of course, the series’ famous sniping still feels fantastic. Taking your time to line up a shot and seeing it shift into the slow-motion bullet camera knowing you’re about to be treated to a horrific bit of X-ray is always satisfying. Plus, you can even use it for some tricks, like shooting a grenade being held by an enemy. While I did make the decision to pop out of stealth and use my machine gun a few times (helped out by being caught by the enemy) it wasn’t quite as satisfying as the titular weapon and was a quick way to get wiped out.
I never did finish all the content in the Sniper Elite: Resistance demo; instead I decided to test out all of the different ways I could attempt the mission (dying six times and having to restart helped too). I managed to take out the Nazi commander in a few different ways, and infiltrated the informant's house to find some info under a squeaky floorboard. But despite my failures, I had a great time with it.
I didn’t expect to walk out of Gamescom 2024 with Sniper Elite: Resistance being one of my favorite games of the show, and yet its open-world stylings and prerogative to just let the player tackle the task at hand however they want won me over.
Sniper Elite: Resistance is set to release sometime in 2025 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
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