Snippy Elite: Resistance - The Definitive Review

Bomb, Stick (Grenade) and Harry

In my incredibly uncharitable review for Sniper Elite 5,I remarked that finishing the game had left me with an aching sense of ennui, that the whole fucking slog of the thing ended up with relief that the game had finished. There was something terribly hollow about the game’s core and, upon indulging Sniper Elite: Resistance, I think I’ve managed to figure it out. The maps were horrible. Or were they really? Well, the plot was shit. But I couldn’t give a toss about the story. The upgrade paths were annoying or pathetic - well, that hasn’t changed. And yet, I’ve enjoyed my time with Sniper Elite: Resistance a lot more than I expected to. I can’t say this has anything to do with the shift in player character, as Harry is exactly the same as Karl - it’s literally a skin and voice swap. It makes the whole thing weirdly comedic though, and perhaps it’s that change in viewpoint which makes me see Resistance in a lighter tone than Sniper Elite 5.

It actually is the maps, if I’m honest. There (at least) feels like a shift in vibe, as the maps in Resistance feel nicer somehow. It’s a bit nebulous without inspecting the minutiae in vast comparative studies of each game’s content, but there was something a bit off about Sniper Elite 5’s giant conglomerations of French countryside and towns mashed up with Nazi megastructures. I distinctly remember grudgingly following the pre-ordained paths running through several of Sniper Elite 5’s stages with a real sense of indignation, feeling funnelled into uncomfortable confrontations or exposed overlooks in order to promote more violence or give the player more challenge or whatever. But I definitely felt somewhat compromised by this. Missions like Spy Academy drew plenty of praise, some of it weirdly breathless in its swoon, yet I found the map incredibly hostile to the improvisational, observe-and-plan style that Sniper Elite 4 carried off with such aplomb. Sniper Elite 5’s first big mission, The Atlantic Wall, is a set of extremely corralled objectives with highly funnelled routes to connect them. Likewise with the square-of-countryside map Libération, which feels very much like five mini-stages strung together with far-too-narrow pathways. When you compare this to San Celini Island in Sniper Elite 4, which is a large expanse with plenty of free passage and loads of great overlook spots, you might be able to see the difference. It’s something of a relief then, that Resistance seems to return to that mode of environment. Indeed, for its first big Nazi megafactory, it leans incredibly heavily on Spy Academy’s verticality, but offers a much more improvisational route to ticking off objectives and getting to the main mission locale. Sniper Elite 5 felt more like you were banging around in an attempt to find the path of least resistance for most of its open stages. Even my favourite stage had its fair share of joyless slogging; Festung Guernsey. It really came down to the issue of the open terrain being hamstrung by aggressively proscriptive routes to traverse it. There were too many places where you couldn’t walk, but were nonetheless visible for detection and being shot at. Or all too often, places of confusingly arbitrary design that may have been impressive feats of modelling but seem impossible as real spaces, such as 99% of War Factory or the various installations in Secret Weapons. The climactic final stage, Rubble And Ruin, was perhaps the most joyless. Despite superb detail in the ruined streets, it was an absolute pain in the arse to get through, and was followed by yet another implausibly vast subterranean megastructure. And this wasn’t through any difficulty spikes or ‘fuck you’ chokepoints, the place just wasn’t fun to do elite snipering in.

Thankfully, Resistance seems to have far less of that bullshit and far more of the complex mapping that made many of Sniper Elite 4’s stages a joy to explore. I think there are, in fact, some fun parallels. Notably Resistance’s opening stage set on a dam, which is reprised with a much expanded map later on, recalls the superb Regilino Viaduct from Sniper Elite 4. That was a truly lovely walk through a forest with multiple routes and some great setups for in-foliage murder and vehicle sabotage, combined with options for absolutely heroic long-distance snipes. I got my first 500-metre headshot there. Whilst I’m happy about that, I can’t say I feel the same about the game’s workbench-based weapon customisation curves or the fact that Resistance does nothing at all to address the game’s pitiful idea of upgradeable skills. Once again, I can get that the hidden workbenches give the player a tangible reason to explore, but tying up weapon unlocks and upgrades to their discovery feels crushingly artificial, especially in combination with the temporary one-magazine-only special weapons you collect in-theatre. Having other weapons locked behind the optional assassinations per map would be fine if it was for true exotica, but here if you want a shotgun instead of an SMG for your secondary, you have to jump through some incredibly artificial hoops to get it. But the real shame lies in the skills. They’re exactly the same as Sniper Elite 5, disappointingly, so they’re a set of barely helpful upgrades to inventory sizes, sniper vision distance and movement speed and a few bones thrown your way to help in combat. The upshot is that a fully upgraded player isn’t that much better at completing the missions than a base one, which renders it all a bit pointless. Sure, I can carry a bit more stuff and can revive myself a bit more easily if downed, but it’s all paper-thin piss at the end of the day. It’s almost as if they’re the result of the Tony Hawk-like ticker of sniper shot attributes carrying XP values, and the game needing something, anything to spend said XP on. Given my proposal that Sniper Elite really would benefit from offering specialisation in classes of sniper, there’d be a very clear pathway for spending XP if you’re hoping to specialise in extreme-range sniping over distance, or forgoing the longshots to be a Sam Fisher non-lethal close-up stealth pervert. In that sense, the three upgrade wheels almost write themselves. Here, they feel like placeholders to justify the game having an XP system in the first place.

And yet, Sniper Elite: Resistance is still a real fun time. However I do question what it’s supposed to be. Was it a DLC campaign that graduated into a full release? If so, why not Sniper Elite 6? Or 5.5? It’s literally the same stuff, the same game. It’s a map pack, really. And of course, I noted that 5 was really little more than a map pack for Sniper Elite 4. One has to wonder if it’s the result of Rebellion’s internal hedging. A product more of an uncertain future in an uncertain marketplace, and perhaps one that may not have seen the light of day if it wasn’t for a few reviewers going apeshit over Spy Academy. I can’t ignore that its arrival via Game Pass somewhat softens the repetitive blows within the game’s superstructures, but then would I really feel all that differently if I’d paid retail prices for a disc copy? I’d probably be just as happy that the maps felt more fun. But maybe I’m just letting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 colour my views. Resistance’s vibrant palettes and arcadey attributes are a nice reset from the unrelenting starkness of the Zone. Yet I feel much the same about Resistance as I did Sniper Elite 5. This game is being shackled by its thematic fixation with World War Two. Whatever it gains in possible content and guilt-free targets for killing, it loses in being bound to those traditions, timespans and locales. And despite a constant set of reminders about its artificiality and extant videogameyness, it still refuses to leap into the multifold possibilities of exploring an exaggerated cartoon version of that war, in a Wolfensteinian sense. Perhaps having a cybernetically-enhanced Karl/Harry hybrid battling robo-Nazis on the Moon wouldn’t be too bad an idea, after all? But then maybe there’s something else in play - Atomfall. Naturally, I’m wildly excited about getting my hands on that, and seeing how the Game Pass cadence sees it arriving just in time for everyone to be bored of Avowed presents just the right window for a quick run through Resistance in early Feb 2025. And perhaps that’s its best label - a between-courses amuse-bouche that’s got plenty to delight. Though this time round I’m left with just the slightest touch of dismay. Personally, I don’t consider a stage finished unless I’ve killed every single Nazi on the map. But now, I’m somewhat peeved that I can’t also cleanse the environment of Nazi regalia and symbology. Now, more than ever, the statement and the sentiment behind allowing us all to cathartically indulge in such a thing would be supremely welcome.

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