From Liverpool-based work-for-hire developer Wushu Studios and publisher Rebellion comes the latest installment in the Sniper Elite series, subtitled Resistance. It is set in early June 1944, alongside the events of 2022’s Sniper Elite 5. While long-time fans might be expecting Sniper Elite 6 this is the next best thing.
We have a small confession to make. The last game in the mainline series we played was 2012’s Sniper Elite V2 on XBox 360, even that was after the event when hit Games For Gold in 2015. Think the same level of diminishing returns as current PlayStation Plus releases and you’ll be on the right track. We liked it though, plus we also played Zombie Army 4 and Strange Brigade also by Rebellion in the same engine. So, we’re not entirely unfamiliar with the mechanics here.
Across its eight main levels, you’ll uncover a conspiracy that threatens to jeopardise the forthcoming D-Day landings, though probably not tipping the balance in the Nazis and change the course of the war. Let’s be honest here, the might of the US military industrial complex had already turned the tide in the allies’ favour even before June 1944.
Playing as a new character Captain Harry Hawker, as opposed to series main man Karl Fairburne, you’ll be inserted into the local resistance cell as part of an SOE operation to get to the bottom of what the enigmatic Special Committee C are up to. Though they’re not exactly that happy to see you. Their presence is only really felt in cutscenes if we’re honest, with your progression being something of a lone wolf experience.
At the outset, we’d recommend finding a safe vantage point and marking up enemies and objects of interest. Once an object is tagged, it’ll show up on the minimap, making it far more easy to keep track of enemies patrol routes as well as the direction they’re currently facing in.
If you go in all guns blazing, taking out Nazis with a flurry of buckshot, you’ll quickly come unstuck. Your best approach is to be a bit more restrained and attack from a distance. Though even then the crack of your rifle is likely to draw attention from until then unseen enemies as they converge on your position. You’ll know when someone has spotted you when you get a white arrow show up onscreen, this will turn to yellow when you’ve aroused suspicion, culminating in red when they are about to attack you.
By the time you get to red, you’ll either be returning fire or you’ll have rapidly closed the distance between you and your foe to strike with a melee attack or a silenced pistol. If you’re quick enough you’ll subdue them before they’ve got a shot off and alerted anyone else. So yes, the titular sniping isn’t always the best approach under normal circumstances.
However, if you find something noisy to act as a backdrop, you can snipe away with impunity. Whether it be a truck engine that you’ve sabotaged to loudly backfire or an environmental phenomenon like thunder, it means you can go full ham and Wesley it up like you’re in a club full of vampires. As in the prior games, you’ve got the slightly disturbing x-ray view for when you hit specific body parts, as shown in this handy diagram. There’s also a trophy for getting a testicle shot from over a hundred metres away, because of course there is.
As well as sniper rifles and the aforementioned pistols, you have a secondary weapon that’s a flavour of submachinegun. This is best used in close quarters as a last resort, generally coping well when enemies are closing in on you in droves. Though we found repeatedly booby trapping one hapless corpse and letting enemies blow themselves up with impunity is the most amusing approach. You can also pick up enemy weapons they’ve dropped as well as heavy weapons found scattered around the place, be it a panzerfaust to help see off a tank or an MG42 machine gun so you can channel Rambo if you so wish.
Knocking out enemies is also an option, though in heavily populated areas you’d best pick them up and take them off to a secluded area, lest they get revived. You can also decide to stab away like you’re in an Assassin’s Creed game, but you won’t get the experience bonus for doing so at the conclusion of a level.
Talking of the experience bonus, you unlock upgrade points up to a maximum cap of level 40, by which point you’ll have all the perks unlocked. This makes the mopping up of anything you’ve missed later that bit easier, especially with perk showing unseen enemy attention spheres so you know they’re around before they become aware of you.
As well as main objectives to carry the story along, you’ll happen across optional goals, sometimes with more than one per level. These aren’t required to move the story along, though they generally come with an associated trophy for doing so, as well as one for all of them across all the levels.
Each campaign level has three workbenches that let you unlock weapon upgrades across the three types such as silencers, different sights. These along with a multitude of other collectibles are scattered across the large levels, some in mission areas that you’re likely to encounter, others very much off the beaten track. That’s one of our complaints really, the expansive levels are so big sometimes that you’ll have to cover a lot of ground to find everything. Sometimes your best approach is to just play through once, only revisiting if you want to mop up the collectibles later.
As well as the campaign; that you can also play in online co-op if you wish; you have propaganda challenges, survival mode and standard multiplayer. Propaganda challenges are unlocked by finding posters in the campaign and are either stealth or sniper challenges with a preset weapon, one featuring the MP44 which isn’t really up to the task but it sure is fun. Survival mode is a horde mode in which you have to beat successive waves, but it’s not so great solo as you’ll quickly get overwhelmed.
You also have Axis Invasion mode that lets you go into someone else’s campaign and attempt to pick them off. It reminded us of going into another player’s game like in our personal 2011 game of the year, Mindjack on PS3. Only unlike that, you need a PS+ subscription to play multiplayer. It’s a shame really as we let our PS+ lapse a long time hence.
That means the handful of other multiplayer trophies mean the platinum trophy remains out of our reach, notwithstanding the completing the campaign on realistic difficulty. It’s a shame that multiplayer trophies are a thing in what amounts to a singleplayer experience.
Other than this gripe, we’ve encountered some oddities with the physics and traversal. The former, we’ve seen objects hovering in mid-air, be they walls or ammunition boxes. The latter, we couldn’t leave a staircase by the bottom of it, instead having to take a more circuitous route to do so. We were reassured to see an enemy stuck on a staircase in a similar manner to our own experience, so at least there’s some consistency here. Finally, besides the incongruity of finding a Bren gun in a heavily garrisoned town, when you get a kill with it, it’s chalked down as an MG42 kill instead. All well and good but a little jarring.
We get that season passes and DLC are a thing these days, but when there’s day one DLC we think that’s a step too far, not least when the game is £54.99 on PSN to begin with. We’d have liked the opportunity to pop a cap in the Fuhrer’s noggin, but not for £5.79 or £28.99 for the season pass. Give over.
In conclusion, Sniper Elite: Resistance is a fun expansive experience with tons to do. It’s all too easy to play through the campaign and entirely miss areas of the map altogether, so we’d recommend going off the well beaten track on occasion. The sniping part isn’t necessarily the best approach, with a bit of subterfuge and stealthy attacks often being your best bet. The game modes outside campaign are fun enough, it’s just a shame that there’s a few multiplayer trophies into the bargain. The day one DLC seems particularly meanspirited though.
+ Optional objectives and collectibles up the wazoo
+ How you play is up to you, whether guns blazing or skulking
+ Storyline is cliched but still fairly well done
- Not all that much in the way of the resistance outside cutscenes
- Occasionally glitchy when it comes to traversal
- Day one DLC can get in the sea, amusing title or not