Just so we’re all clear on this: Nazis are the bad guys, alright? They might have been reduced to almost pantomime villains in TV, films and video games, but it says more about the world that those same video games are providing timely reminders on this fact. So anyway, here comes Sniper Elite: Resistance, in which you get to do to those aforementioned baddies pretty much everything that Samwise Gamgee would do to a potato. And then some.
It’s early 1944, and as the Allies prepare for D-Day, they’ve sent some of their top operatives behind enemy lines to prepare the way, link up with the French Resistance and disentangle any unexpected problems they might find. Taking place alongside Karl Fairburne’s mission in Sniper Elite 5, Resistance gives his regular co-op buddy character Harry Hawker a promotion to be the star of his own mission.
In many ways, Sniper Elite: Resistance feels like a standalone expansion to Sniper Elite 5. It features a spin-off character, it’s the same stealth action gameplay in sandbox missions, and there’s very few new embellishments around that. And I’m totally fine with that. It arrives with the same asking price as Sniper Elite 5, which some might be dismayed at, but this is a full campaign of the same scope as its predecessor, far larger than anything found in a Sniper Elite season pass or DLC.
The core Sniper Elite experience is still so moreish, though. Dropped off on the edge of a large map, you’re given a main mission to complete – find a resistance informant, investigate a trainyard, and the like – an additional Kill List target to kill, with a bonus if you do so in a specific way, and further optional objectives to find and take on along the way.
My default way to play is to sneak through stages with a trusty Welrod in hand, trying to quietly and effectively take out enemies with this pistol or melee kills, only taking out my sniper rifle when there’s effective noise cover from rolling thunder, church bells, or a diesel motor that I’ve just sabotaged. Until it goes a bit wrong, I have to run and gun with SMG, die, and then reload from a save.
Of course, you can get much more creative than this, use more noise distractions, decoys, or booby traps. Or you can go in all guns blazing, trusting your rifle abilities to deal with the throngs of enemies drawn toward your last known positions, especially if someone trips the alarms.
Either way, you’ll want to scavenge around for crowbar and bolt cutters to access electrical boxes or quickly bust through doors – though you can pick locks – and keys to more quietly open safes and objective points. There’s workbenches dotted through each level, each one unlocking new attachments and modifications and allowing you to switch up your loadout, but there’s also special limited ammo weapons which often come kitted out with silencers and other perks. Enemies will still hear a rifle crack from a silencer, though they reduce the audible range quite effectively.
It’s a solid campaign with a good blend of day and night missions, cities, mountains, remote facilities, and more. The main disappointment is when you encounter rougher edges that affect how you can play. In several places, I had clipping issues when trying to climb up stairs, or some invisible geometry in another location. Hopefully, these are ironed out quickly. More deeply rooted is the immersion-breaking way that characters auto-snap into position when doing a melee takedown, which makes the game feel older than it is.
The whole campaign can be played with a buddy character by your side, or with the optional Invasion mode where another player drops in as an adversary, sparking a tense game of cat and mouse, where both animals are armed with sniper rifles and can find clues on where the other one is. There’s also the more regular PvP multiplayer with a set of straightforward modes that include TDM, No Cross for the pure sniping gallery experience, and the multiplayer suite is rounded out with Survival for co-op horde mode play.
We weren’t able to try these modes out prior to release, but…. well, outside of any technical issues, they’re the same as Sniper Elite 5.
The one real addition to the formula are the Propaganda missions. Find a resistance poster while exploring the main missions and you unlock a small challenge mission to take on against the clock. They’re fine bitesized little experiences, but are only really small asides, instead of more significant ways to change up the action.
I keep coming back to that standalone expansion feeling. I do feel that, after Resistance, Rebellion needs to find the next evolution for this series. The fundamental form hasn’t really changed since the shift toward more sandbox levels in Sniper Elite 4, and it feels like the next game can take another leap. Whether that’s cribbing off Hitman’s homework for more replayable levels, going even more open world, or simply digging down to overhaul animations, polish and more, I don’t know.