There is no denying that World War 2 has been a gold mine for game developers. Countless stories can be told from the era, and pretty much all of them—while a little depressing—offer paths for catharsis or some sort of story about overcoming adversity. Nazis are truly the best video game villain at the end of the day because everybody agrees that Nazis are the bad guys. There really isn't much gray morality to contend with when it comes to World War 2 stories. The bad guys were unequivocally bad, and you can be good simply by smashing them. Brutally.
Rebellion has stretched that truth into a whole portfolio of games, with a particular focus on one franchise, where you earn bonus points for blasting off some Nazi nuts. We're talking about Sniper Elite, the Nazi-sniping series, where you can even take down Hitler with a nut shot if you're feeling particularly ornery. Their latest entry, Sniper Elite: Resistance, takes us to the front of French Resistance efforts to bring down the German occupation of France and stop the Nazis from developing a terrifying new wonder weapon.
Sniper Elite: Resistance Story and Gameplay (No spoilers)
Waiiiiit a second—that's not Karl Fairburne! The protagonist of Sniper Elite: Resistance is a fellow by the name of Harry Hawker. Long-time fans of the Sniper Elite franchise will actually recognize Harry as the default Co-op character skin from the last three Sniper Elite titles. However, if you're not really deep in the Sniper Elite lore, nobody would fault you for not recognizing the guy. He's a bit of an empty shell, with little backstory to speak of, and no real personality or energy. He just goes in the direction you point him and shoots Nazis.
That's not too much different from actually playing with Karl Fairburne, who is apparently too busy during Sniper Elite: Resistance's timeline to serve as our protagonist because he's busy with the events of Sniper Elite 5. Rude. Hawker is a bit older, with a bit more beard, but at the end of the day, he's just a generic shell of a character that's hard to care much about.
Harry can sure take out some Nazis, though, and that's what we're all here for anyway. He's perfectly capable with a sniper rifle (well, provided you are capable with one), an SMG, or a pistol, and you're going to project yourself onto him to explore the campaign's 9 semi-open world missions.
Like Sniper Elite 5, Resistance contains the missions for each chapter in one semi-open world. Players can explore the massive maps and take on one primary objective and a few side quests like taking out specific German officers or helping the Resistance. The side quests are entirely optional, and players can simply exfil from a mission once they've completed the main quest if they don't want to do all the extra stuff.
The extra stuff, though, is where all the good details of the game live. So much of what the German oppressors are doing is tucked inside of lore collectibles, and even creating new loadouts for your weapons while in a match requires you to search until you find a collectible workbench. Every element of the game's missions can also be approached in whatever way you choose. Go stealthy, taking out enemies and hiding bodies to protect your cover or parkour up a drain pipe, climb in a window, and hit the enemy with guns blazing.
Players can find propaganda posters in Sniper Elite: Resistance's campaign as a collectible, but these actually serve a secondary purpose of unlocking new challenges—6 in all—in the game's Propaganda mode. Propaganda mode puts players, armed only with a pistol, on a map with a specific number of enemies. The first player kill kicks off the mode's timer, which players must beat by clearing the area of all enemy forces before the clock hits 0. Any additional weapons and equipment must be scavenged. The mode awards medals for faster times, but I found it a bit too repetitive and uninteresting to grind them out.
I find Sniper Elite is a franchise best played with a friend, as it can be exciting to take your time and explore the maps looking for collectibles together. You can play the campaign cooperatively, or you can ramp up the stakes by allowing Axis invasions, which lets another player join your match as an enemy sniper. Allowing invasions does liven up the repetitious gameplay, as you never quite know how an invading player will behave. If you're not up for invasions, though, you can turn the system off or set it to invite-only.
Sniper Elite: Resistance also offers a standard PvP multiplayer experience with modes like deathmatch and free-for-all, but it feels like there's little to incentivize playing these modes for more than a few matches with friends.
Sniper Elite: Resistance Visuals and Sound
I remember being wholeheartedly stunned by how pretty Sniper Elite 5 was. Imagine my surprise when I launch Sniper Elite: Resistance and see the visuals of the game have taken 2 steps back from its predecessor. I can't even really describe what it is about Sniper Elite: Resistance that feels so wrong. It just hits you in a moment when you're staring down the scope, and you're looking for an enemy. The vines feel like they're cut out and pasted into the world haphazardly. The horribly uncanny waxy faces of the enemies are the stuff of nightmares.
I played Sniper Elite: Resistance both on my Xbox Series X and on my PC for this review, and in both instances I was disappointed with the visual state of the game. It's not ugly, by any means. The draw distance of the horizon, spanning to distant mountain ranges, can be stunning. There's just something about the close-up details, though, that doesn't feel right—especially with the X-ray cams for those beloved kill shots showing enemy weapons clipping through faces and arms in unnatural positions.
Thankfully, what Sniper Elite: Resistance lacks in visuals, it makes up for in sound design. There are some great moments in the game where you, the player, need to time shots to coincide with audio that can provide cover. Take a shot during a clap of thunder in a storm, or as a car with a loud engine passes by, for example. These aren't new gameplay mechanics for the franchise, but it is still an undeniably well-designed system. There are also visual cues for the audio mechanics, which provide a little extra accessibility for players with hearing impairments.
Sniper Elite: Resistance Conclusion
Nobody does bullet time-turned x-ray cams of kill shots on Nazi testicles better than Rebellion, and Sniper Elite: Resistance further proves there are no exceptions to that rule. I play a lot of shooters, but there's something special about loading into a Sniper Elite title. I know what I'm getting, sure. It's the comfort-food equivalent of Nazi shooters, after all. The recipe never really changes, but I'm still going to have my fill.
I do wish we had more of a reason to care about Harry Hawker and how he came to a life of sniping fascist nuts. And I wish the NPCs weren't soulless wax figures waiting for me to knock their teeth out with a sniper shot hidden by the sound of an approaching thunderstorm. I could probably sit here and come up with a laundry list of additional things I'd like to see the franchise add to help bolster replayability. But that's not what Sniper Elite: Resistance has.
I have to think about where it's at rather than where I want it to be. Is it perfect? No, but am I still going to have some fun? You can bet your bullets I am, and you probably will, too. Just don't blame me if those NPCs haunt you afterward.
Sniper Elite: Resistance, developed and published by Rebellion, is set to launch on all platforms on January 30. The game is a day-one launch on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, and supports Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning you only need to buy it once to play it on your Xbox consoles and your Windows PC. At that point, there's no good reason not to go secure some headshots (or nut shots. I won't judge.)
