Sniper Elite: Resistance Review - Nazi Population Control At Its Finest
Given the state of the good old U.S. of A., it seems prudent to remind a not insignificant portion of them that the Nazis are, in fact, the bad guys. Always have been and they always will be. To assist in refreshing their memory, the team at Rebellion have brought us Sniper Elite: Resistance. Despite being a spin-off from the main series, Resistance shows us that the best Nazi is a dead Nazi, and there is nothing more satisfying than watching the slow-motion camera follow your bullet across two hundred metres before shattering the testicle of a random Nazi grunt.
While it is always fun to shoot Nazis in the testicle, most of the time you will be taking more conventional shots. As with the previous entries in the main series, the slow-motion X-ray camera highlights the damage wrought by efficient and deadly shots, making those long-distance kills feel that much more satisfying. This is where the Sniper Elite franchise is at its best, allowing the player to feel the thrill of pulling off these fantastic shots without the need for years of dedication and training. The great thing for those who want to kick the immersion up to the next level is being able to set the game to authentic settings, where you have to factor in wind strength and direction, your zoom options are limited and have to contend with minimal HUD elements to inform your actions.
You are free to tackle each level however you see fit. Want to kick in the front door and cause a ruckus? You may not have much success but you are more than welcome to try. I played the long game, picking off as many enemies as I could before moving towards my objectives. There will still be plenty of times when you need to sneak your way through a building or to a new sniping position, but how you do this and the route you take is entirely up to you. Even the choice of which objectives you want to tackle first can enhance your playthrough when you make strategic use of the environment.
In a mission that had me sneaking through an Italian vineyard, searching high and low for the nefarious superweapon, I had a bonus objective that called for the disruption of rocket systems and their launchers. These rockets were being tested in anticipation of the Allied forces landing on the beaches of France, hence frequent launches were providing a perfect sound cover to hide the loud reports of my rifle firing at an oblivious grunt standing guard. The suppressors of that time were rather rudimentary, unlike today, and the best I could get was the gunshot sounding within a forty-metre radius. So the longer those rockets were firing the easier my work was, and then I simply engaged in some quick sabotage on my way to the exfiltration point.
You even have the option to incapacitate enemy soldiers, with each soldier who is still unconscious at the end of the mission rewarding you with a reasonably hefty chunk of XP. I tried doing this myself but it just felt wrong to leave the Nazis breathing. Does this make me a monster? It’s entirely possible, but in my defence…ya know, Nazis. The way the game is designed, taking this route purely for the XP bonus will potentially allow you to level up enough to unlock every skill, but you don’t necessarily need to unlock them all unless you have those OCD tendencies that demand total completion.
The narrative of the game is not super complex. Each mission is bookended with a cutscene that provides context and exposition for the objectives of each mission and where you are heading next. In-mission, the only exposition is revealed to the player through small moments of Harry Hawker, the hero of our story, talking out loud to himself and reading letters and documents you find throughout the mission. I am not saying this is a bad thing. You could load me into one of the maps with a bunch of objectives and I would have just as much fun as I already am. If you are having a bit of trouble finding your way you can also have a friend join you for some co-op Nazi testicle sniping.
Unfortunately, with the mission maps being quite large you will be sure to encounter some small issues that can annoy you, though I do believe that some of it does stem from poor design choices. The most common of these is the seeming randomness between which ledges I can jump off and climb up and which ones I cannot. The number of times where I was forced to walk to a set of stairs instead of being able to drop down from the same height as I had a few minutes prior was more frustrating than anything. I also do not understand making it impossible to walk into the large bushes, even if they would not be big enough for hiding I would think it would be possible to pass through them instead of having to backtrack because you are faced with a big bush surrounded by waist-high fences.
Other issues just feel a bit more on the side of clumsy implementation, like being able to go prone on the ground but not on the base of the exterior area of a crane that I was able to climb up to. The funniest thing is finding ‘Safe Keys’ on certain enemies and then noticing the safes themselves have combination dials. It would have made much more sense to have ‘Safe Codes’ for these instances, though I suspect this had something to do with other locked doors that require keys rather than a complete design oversight.
The Sniper Elite franchise itself is a whole lot of fun and a very different take on the World War era than most first-person shooter games. With the freedom to tackle each mission in whichever way you want, not to mention that it is already on Game Pass for Xbox and PC players, you have no reason not to jump in, have some fun, and shoot some Nazis in the testicles.
Sniper Elite: Resistance was reviewed on the PS5 with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
