There’s an old saying that goes: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” However, few people know that this is usually followed by another adage: “But if it’s already stale, don’t keep reheating it with an air fryer.” Both statements are true for Sniper Elite: Resistance, the latest installment in Rebellion’s third-person stealth and tactical shooter saga set during World War II.
Sniper Elite: Resistance’s mechanics remain rooted in the past. While the action may have been enjoyable a decade ago, it’s certainly become more formulaic nowadays, made worse by a threadbare narrative, an unengaging romp across the fields of France, and the fact that it’s nearly devoid of new features.
The most noticeable difference in Sniper Elite: Resistance is that you control a new operative: Harry Hawker. As far as rehashing ideas goes, the studio just replaced the protagonist from the previous games, Karl Fairburne, with someone who used to be an alternate skin in multiplayer matches, a bushy-bearded fella with a Jason Statham-esque Cockney accent. The writing itself has also hit a new low — and that’s saying something for a franchise that’s not known for its stellar narrative — especially with Hawker’s quips about how tall grass “provides great cover,” and that it’s “itchy but stealthy.”
Story-wise, Hawker’s arc runs parallel with the events of Sniper Elite 5, which I appreciated if only for a time. There were portions where I saw glimpses of plot points from the previous title, including the Operation Kraken plan to invade the Eastern Seaboard of the United States with countless U-boats, as well as various references to V1 and V2 rocket systems. During these moments, I truly felt like Hawker was part of a larger conflict and that the game didn’t necessarily exist within a bubble.
Unfortunately, Rebellion tried to scrape the oil from the same pan one too many times, causing a flabbergastingly repetitive presentation. For instance, both the first and fourth missions take place on the same map, with the latter having a larger explorable area. The seventh mission, meanwhile, caused me to do a double-take, as it eerily reminded me of the layout of Sniper Elite 5’s “Occupied Residence” chateau mission.
Perhaps the most egregious issue is that, for a game that has “Resistance” in the title, I rarely got the chance to interact with the French Resistance. I merely received short mission briefings telling me that a high-ranking Nazi officer had developed yet another Allied-Forces-Annihilating Wunderwaffe™ that could potentially win the war for Germany, and that Hawker had to aid underground fighters in preparation for the D-Day landings. Sadly, the cutscenes involving Resistance members were woefully few and far between. (For reference, Medal of Honor: Underground, a game that was released in 2000 and was even ported by Rebellion to the Game Boy Advance, had you playing as a French freedom fighter named Manon.)
Instead, French Resistance members are playable in time trial challenges, which you unlock whenever you find propaganda posters scattered in various levels. These activities require you eliminate all opponents within a given time limit, though you can add precious seconds via stealth kills and earn points through a score multiplier system. Given that Propaganda Challenges offer run-of-the-mill tasks that last around three minutes or so, and because there are only a select few of them, Resistance fighters don’t really have a lot of time to shine.
It goes without saying that Propaganda Challenges are the only notable new activity in the game, so if you’ve already experienced everything that Sniper Elite 5 had to offer, then there’s hardly anything in Resistance that would entice you. Likewise, since we’re talking about the lack of new features, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that even Resistance’s skill tree is the same as its predecessor’s, right down to having identical perks!
So what can you expect if you still plan on grabbing Sniper Elite: Resistance? Truthfully, the series hasn’t changed much since the third game. This game still has large, sprawling levels, though the ones here are set in the French countryside. The nine campaign missions — or more like seven, since the first and last missions are significantly shorter than the rest — are set in ruined townships with gargantuan fortresses, busy harbors situated next to railyards, factories making machines for the Axis war effort, and the aforementioned “Is this the same chateau level?” segment.
As usual, you can decide on how you’d approach mission objectives. You could go gung-ho, taking out every Wehrmacht and Gestapo lackey as you see fit with submachine guns and pistols, or you could stealthily avoid combat by finding well-hidden passageways. Are there numerous soldiers guarding a manor? Perhaps you can climb vines to enter a room on the second floor. Are there dozens of hostiles patrolling the fields? You could go through a tunnel, find a distant tower, and pick them off one by one with your trusty sniper rifle. There were a few exhilarating moments whenever I found myself surrounded by enemies, and I had to rethink my strategy while looking for safer hiding spots and clearer vantage points.
Furthermore, the X-Ray Kill Cam, a series staple, is back, but there are no noticeable changes to it as far as I can tell. At best, you still bear witness to amazingly gory slow-motion sequences, such as a single bullet flying through the air to strike the innards of a target, or portions where you shoot an explosive barrel and watch as a soldier’s bones break apart with a sickening crunch. Yes, killing Nazis — and shooting them in the balls — never gets old, regardless of the time period. However, after seeing the same Kill Cam sequences over the years, the overall flow of combat gets dull and tiresome rather quickly.
The moment-to-moment gameplay in Sniper Elite: Resistance hasn’t just gone stale; it also suffers from a few glaring issues. Chief among these relates to AI behavior, which is par for the course considering previous titles in the franchise. There were several instances in Resistance where AI soldiers would hear a noise and remain in a high-alert state for the entirety of the mission, running around or hiding while panicked.
There were also segments wherein nearly half a dozen enemies, including those that were farther away, would come running at the sound of a blown generator or a damaged engine. Funnily enough, instead of using the noise to mask the sound of my rifle shots, it became a way for me to funnel in several hostiles so I could easily punch them in the neck.
Additionally, I’ve experienced a couple of bugs related to Kill List challenges. These are side objectives where you eliminate high-value targets by using specific scripted methods, such as planting a rat bomb or poisoning their drink. One example was how I had virtually no way of interacting with an object that was required to trigger the death sequence.
Likewise, I’ve seen quite a few issues with drab and slow-loading textures and poor lighting in several areas. At first, I was a bit surprised, given that my PC has an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU, Intel i9-10900K CPU, and 32 GB of RAM. Thankfully, I’ve been told that these issues would be fixed in time for the game’s launch.
In the end, the biggest problem with Sniper Elite: Resistance is that it retreads the same familiar beats and concepts without making significant changes — not fixing something that isn’t necessarily broken, but a constant reheating of what is already stale — causing it to be eclipsed by its counterparts and contemporaries.
Most of the aforementioned Kill List objectives, at least the ones that aren’t bugged, are as straightforward as they come. Now, compare this to Hitman 3, where you’d have to think carefully and creatively when attempting to assassinate targets, and it’s pretty much night and day. Similarly, if you’re just looking for a game where you can fight and take out Nazis, there’s the superb Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which has meaningful side content and an infinitely more memorable villain in Emmerich Voss, played marvelously by Marios Gavrilis. Lastly, if it weren’t for the stellar X-Ray Kill Cam, CI Games’ Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts would’ve given this franchise a run for its money.
All in all, even after over 20 hours of play as I completed the campaign and obtained all sorts of collectibles, Sniper Elite: Resistance just wasn’t the exciting romp that I hoped it would be. As someone who’s played all the mainline entries in the series, Resistance is a forgettable offering that you can skip. It’s proof that the team at Rebellion needs to come up with something refreshing for its flagship franchise’s future, as opposed to overcooking it in the proverbial air fryer and serving it à la carte.
Reviewer’s note: As of the time of this review, I was unable to try Sniper Elite: Resistance’s multiplayer component (i.e., its co-op campaign, invasions, and multiplayer matches). I’ve been told that the game has cross-play functionality. However, when I tried playing with an editor friend (I was on PC and they were on an Xbox Series X), they kept getting incompatibility errors.
Sniper Elite: Resistance will be released on Jan. 30 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Deluxe Edition owners can play two days early, starting on Jan. 28. The game was reviewed on PC using a copy provided by Rebellion. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.