My first encounter withSniper Elite: Resistancewas back in November when the lovely people at Rebellion hosteda virtual hands-on session focused on the game’s third mission.
When the opportunity to give the game a proper spin came about, I was elated. The anticipation was such that it overcame my hatred of playing shooters on the PlayStation 5.
While I firmly believe that any good shooter is better played with a mouse and keyboard combo,Sniper Elite: Resistancesurprised me with how it uses the PlayStation 5 features to create a great experience, but more on that later.
Sniper Elite: Resistanceis nota hardcore shooter, nor is it a fully-fledged sniper simulator, butit excels at being a cinematic stealth game that is a mostly smooth, challenging, and occasionally infuriating gameplay experience.
At the end of a long day at work, putting rounds through virtual Nazi skulls is the perfect way to wind down. But you’ll want to know if this is the new, definitive Nazi-killing experience, so let’s get into it.
Welcome To Sniper Elite
If you are new to the series,Sniper Elitehas been rocking the same great formula since 2005. You play a special forces sniper working alone behind enemy lines to get dirty jobs done to save the Allied war effort.
We’re talking third-person espionage action with enemies that are on alert and not afraid to put you in the forever box. In that sense,the newerSniper Elitegames play out like an infinitely more refined version of Hideo Kojima’s pioneering workwith the earlyMetal Gearfranchise.
As a warmup whileSniper Elite: Resistancewas installed, I figured to go play super cool spy guy in Bolivia throughGhost Recon: Wildlands. Third person, big areas, behind enemy lines, it’s similar, right? As I found out, the Santa Blanca sicarios are beyond worthless compared to any of the German soldiersSniper Elite: Resistancethrew at me.
There are allegations of a steep learning curve and a lot of swearing on my end as I got overwhelmed again, and again, and again. I will neither confirm nor deny this, but I’ll say this. The game pulls no punches.
In what should be obvious from the name,Sniper Eliterewards you for getting the job done quietly, from long distances, and without blowing your cover in the process. That implies not pissing off an entire garrison using an unsuppressed machine gun to do a subsonic sniper round’s job.
You can call it a learning experience, a skill issue, or the sniper gods punishing me for my hubris. Whatever your pick,Sniper Elitehurt my ego harder than a dozenEscape From Tarkovrounds, and most of the time, I was in love with it for that.
Story and Presentation
Following up onSniper Elite 5, the game takes place in occupied France, in the spring of 1944. Playing as SOE agent Harry Hawker, your job is to link up with a French Resistance cell and help thwart the deployment of a German super weapon that could jeopardize the upcoming landings in Normandy.
The premise and presentation are solid, even if the whole History Channel-tier Wunderwaffe trope is a little old by now.Each mission comes with a beautifully stylized briefing comprised of grainy film, documents, and garbled instructions over a radio.
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When playing becomes learning.
There are minor annoyances here and there. The opening level has you raiding a dam in support of the 617 Squadron’s iconic Dambusters mission. It is a great throwback to the sequence in the first Call of Duty’s British segment.
For reasons beyond my understanding,Sniper Elite: Resistancehas this play out in broad daylight. I’d wager not all players readEnemy Coast Ahead, the autobiography by mission commander Guy Gibson, but seeing the lumbering Lancasters make their attack runs around lunchtime feels silly.
PlayStation 5 Gameplay
At a surface level,Sniper Eliteplays out like your classicthird-person shooter. You move about large maps, hugging a wall or solid object makes you transition to a cover animation, and you do some shooting.
Rebellion did a grand job making sure the world feels naturally interactive.you may use any little box as cover, small obstacles let you vault over them, and even more complex geometries get by without having to resort to aggressive “LOOK HERE” methodslike the much-maligned yellow paint.
In a poignant metaphor for how a lot of players feel about these hints, one of the few times Sniper Elite: Resistance does it is through bird poop on the hotel balcony. Powerful stuff.
As I said previously, I don’t feel shooters work out too well on the PlayStation 5 by design, but controllers beat their keyboard and mouse brethren in certain categories.Sniper Elite: Resistancedoes good at leveraging these advantages.
Starting with the small stuff, a stealth game works so much better when you’re using analog sticks for movement. It is functionally better, not to mention much more immersive, to move your stick a tiny bit when pussyfooting around a guard rather than hitting a keyboard toggle. Don’t get me started on games that find it acceptable to make crouching the only way to walk.
I have no good things to say about aiming, but that’s by design. When the console gods bestowed the first-person shooter upon us, they offered two ways to play properly: with the arcade-style zapper (think Duck Hunt on the NES), or with a mouse.
Everything else is suboptimal, but that’s not Rebellion’s fault.Sniper Elite: Resistancedoes mitigate some of the problems by having a nice three-step aiming system.
When walking about, Harry hip-fires.The first left trigger stage raises the weapon and gives you the old crosshairs while looking over your shoulder. Holding the left trigger down makes you aim down sights properly.
Aiming over the shoulder leaves you more mouse sensitivity. It is all you ever need for close-quarters combat, and the transition is exceptionally quick without feeling jarring. Aiming down sights is a smoother, slower aiming experience, the kind you want when precision is required.
The best thing about playing this game on the DualSense controller is the trigger feedback. Making the best out of Sony’s outstanding controller is not something new, withAstro Botbuilding an entire fanbase around it, and ARMA Reforgertaking it in the shooter genre.Good DualSense implementationis still rare, unfortunately, and I was delighted to see Rebellion take the gloves off here.
Rather than serving as a simple press-to-shoot button,the right trigger on the controller replicates the trigger feel of each weapon in the game.
I am not exaggerating when I say that firing the sniper rifles borders on explicit. No two triggers behave the same, but take the Berthier Model 1916, for example.
The trigger has a decent bit of play, where it mostly sits loose. I always find myself tickling it in that range when wondering if to go loud or stay soft against a big group of enemies.
When you hit the wall, it is sudden and requires a decent bit of effort to overcome. Having to make a deliberate, forceful movement to fire a round might seem inconsequential, but it certainly affects gameplay.
In my hours playing the game, I was saved a few times from making bad decisions because the effort it took to squeeze the trigger bought me enough time to realize I was about to sign my death warrant.
Other weapon classes have lighter actions, but the feel makes a big difference. Take the Model 1935 pistol, for example: though it has a solid rate of fire, you need to allow the trigger to push back past the wall to fire again. It’s a small thing, but something easy to fumble in a frenzy.
Clever Level Design
One of the main complaints aboutSniper Elite 5is that the AI was a little bit on the stupid side, which, combined with the forgiving level design, made the game all too easy.
Sniper Elite: Resistancecertainly got around that, though at times, I felt like Rebellion overcorrected. This could well be by being a stinky low-skill gaming writer, and maybe you franchise vets could dance your way out of some situations I was nearly crying at.
Most sequences inSniper Elite: Resistanceplay out like a puzzle.Virtually every place has at least a couple of ways to get to, and plenty of guards to get in the way of doing that.
It is theoretically possible to brute-force your way through it, but the extremely limited ammo count, low health, and punishing enemy aim make that a poor choice most of the time. The game does not attempt to force you to do things one way or another, which lets you exercise your creativity.
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Ready, Aim, FIRE!
I got out of one entanglement by knocking a German soldier out with a glass bottle before creeping up on his friend. Another situation had me making a monumental boom with a fused TNT brick to draw some attention from far out, opening the road further ahead.
Thatexercise in tactical problem-solvingis wonderful, but it is occasionally hampered by the checkpoint system.Sniper Elite: Resistancesaves automatically now and then, but the game does not discriminate between situations.
I’ve had at least five times in the first three levels alone where the game saved right as I was about to get gunned down by a patrol. While most of those situations are fixable, and having this system adds some sense of consequence,it would have been a much more pleasant experience to have fewer, more stress-free checkpoints throughout missions.
Graphics & Audio: A Mixed Bag
The graphics inSniper Elite: Resistanceare not bad in any shape or form, but I’d struggle to call them good. The game makes good use of lighting, the textures are detailed enough, and the performance is great.
That being said, it feels underwhelming by PlayStation 5 standards.My main complaint lies with the character models, which have that “2017 NPC” veneer I can’t quite look past.
They starkly contrast with the visuals of weapons, objects, and maps.Having been to some of the locations portrayed in the game, it was easy to recognize them, and the game matched the overall vibe(with Nazis instead of tourists).
Indeed, the graphics are not too different fromSniper Elite 5, released in 2022, but you’d think (or hope, anyway) that three years was enough time to get on with the standards set by the new console generation.
The audio, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Rebellion successfully avoided the temptation of overusing the controller’s speaker, so the action played out beautifully through the main source.
Gunshots feel punchy without being cartoonish, the German lines are overall solid, especially if compared to other WW2 games, and the designers make you value both noise and silence when deciding how to proceed.
The one aspect I grew to hate is Harry Hawker’s constant rambling.Some introspection is fine and even welcome, but if this dude says, “Ah, a submachine gun!” one more time, he’ll be one pound of trigger pressure from losing his head.
If you work at Rebellion and are reading this, please tell me there’s a way to make him chill. It’s important to the Allied war effort.
The Game Sniper Elite 5 Should Have Been
If you’re coming here fromSniper Elite 5, you’re probably wondering why there’s no writing about performance issues, glitches, and assorted technical difficulties. These plagued the previous entry in the franchise and made a lot of players apprehensive aboutSniper Elite: Resistance.
The good news is, there’s nothing to write about.Sniper Elite: Resistanceplays beautifully and, in the 15 hours of playtest I put it through, did not suffer a single crash or hit any lag trap.
The game is well-optimized and is coming out beautifully polished, something a lot of other developers should pay attention to. Between the stability, improved movement, better levels, and more challenging AI, this feels like the gameSniper Elite 5should have been.
Sniper Elite: Resistancecomes out on January 30for standard edition owners, while deluxe edition players get a two-day headstart on January 28.
Closing Comments
There is nothing particularly revolutionary aboutSniper Elite: Resistance, but games don’t always need to do that to be good. This is a fun game that serves as a window to an important part of history, and if you enjoyedSniper Elite 5, you will most definitely love this. If you are new to the franchise, I highly recommend giving this a go if you crave that tactical espionage fix typically associated with classic Metal Gear. Just remember: headshots only.
