Summary
Sniper Elite has long been one of the most underrated names in stealth gaming. It has densely intricate, sprawling maps loaded full of opportunities, yes, but, more importantly, each game lets you engage in what’s really important: splattering Nazis.
WhileSniper Elite: Resistancecarries on this proud tradition with the usual depth and gravitas of its predecessors, there’s a plodding sense of predictability to it this time around. The spinoff gives enough Nazi grape popping to be worthwhile, but also doesn’t push the formula forward nearly enough.
Keep Your Eyes Sharp, Hawker
Resistance takes a break from usual protagonist Karl Fairburne to check in on eternal second fiddle, Harry Hawker as we experience his own campaign. In true Sniper Elite fashion, Hawker’s tasked with putting a stop to a secret Nazi superweapon that could win the Third Reich the war, and to do so you have to sneak and snipe your way through ginormous levels with rifle in hand.
Of course, the big point of Resistance is the focus on Harry Hawker – the Luigi to usual protagonist Karl’s Mario. Harry feels like a breath of fresh air, being a more wisecracking and cheeky alternative to the action hero Fairburne. If Hawker doesn’t become a regular fixture in the series, becoming a bona-fide co-star like Miles Morales did for the Spider-Man games, I’ll be very disappointed.
Though the maps are slightly smaller than Sniper Elite 5’s largest in terms of raw surface area, Resistance still layers them thick with all sorts of alternate routes to navigate and perches to pick off fascists from. You could play each of its missions a dozen times and still find new ways to go about them, whether it be creeping through the tunnels under a walled city, or hanging back and taking out most of the map from a well-placed ledge.
Missions are varied, with a good balance of sniping-focused long-range tasks and up-close missions that force you to perfect your sneaking. The variety is so notable that even though two missions take place in the exact same map, each utilises the environment in such different ways that it wasn’t until I’d nearly finished my return visit that I noticed.
Right Between The Eyes
Some of the levels offer up the finest sniping the series has seen yet. Where SE5 sometimes seemed unwilling to give you an open space to shoot freely from, Resistance knows it’s what we’re here for and keeps the hits coming. Taking out a whole dam (twice!), or combing through a town from a safe distance helps the sublime shooting come into its own.
And oh boy, is the shooting still top-notch. Settings let you tweak the difficulty as much as you like, ranging from an arcade shooter to a full-on simulation with bullet drop and wind direction to compensate for. Landing a shot and getting a glorious X-ray view of the bullet careening through a Nazi’s pelvis, taking out both berries as it goes, is just as much of a joy now as it was when the system debuted in Sniper Elite V2.
The fantastic Axis Invasion returns from Sniper Elite 5, letting other players drop into your game as enemy snipers to turn your mission into a perilous game of cat and mouse. While I’ve had some technical problems surrounding the online services, a launch and maybe a patch or two should have this being one of the highlights of the game once you’ve put a stop to the Nazi nerve gas.
Same As It Ever Was
That’s part of the problem, though. For the many things Sniper Elite: Resistance does right, they’re mostly things it’s inherited from previous entries. Sniper Elite 3 took the series from a linear shooter into an immersive sim sandbox, but since then there hasn’t really been much of an evolution. If you liked Sniper Elite 3, you’ll most likely like 4, 5, and now Resistance, because they’re all, at their core, the same game.
One fully new thing Resistance introduces is Propaganda missions. These are extra challenges that are unlocked through the campaign, and task you with taking down as many enemies in a few minutes as possible. They’re utterly fantastic at offering a condensed dose of Sniper Elite greatness – especially the Sniper missions which give you a rifle, a perch, a ton of Nazis, and a dream – but it’s not an addition that helps advance the series much.
Resistance isn’t a bad game by any stretch. With dense missions, gorgeous environments, a clever new mode in Propaganda, and a likeable new protagonist, it’s a solid entry in a fantastic series. But it doesn’t do anything new: this is the same shooting and sneaking as it has been for almost a decade now, and Hawker alone doesn’t bring enough to help Resistance stand out as anything more than just more Sniper Elite.
