Sniper Elite: Resistance Review – Niche Gamer

When it comes to shooters, the most common time period referenced is the Second Great War, World War 2. Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, and Sniper Elite established their franchises in one of the bloodiest wars.

Since then, Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor have visited other periods and giving gamers the ability to experience different wars. Unlike its competitors, Sniper Elite has stayed in the 1940s and continued to tell tales of slaying Nazis and stopping nefarious plans. Now Sniper Elite is back with its newest game, Sniper Elite: Resistance.

Sniper Elite: Resistance
Developer: Rebellion Developments
Publisher: Rebellion Developments
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: January 30th, 2025
Players: 1 to 16
Price: Base: $59.99 USD 

The events of Sniper Elite: Resistance takes place alongside the events of Sniper Elite 5. Rather than playing as Karl Fairburne (the Story’s main protagonist), we are reintroduced to Harry Hawker; Hawker was previously in the cooperative multiplayer mode of Sniper Elite 3, 4, and 5.

Team up with Resistance fighters as they fight against Nazi oppression in France. As Hawker looks to uncover the Nazi’s plans, he discovers that they have more nefarious plans that could affect the Normandy invasion and many other plans from the Allies. With a bioweapon in play, Hawker must defuse the situation and take out prominent Nazis along the way. 

Sniper Elite: Resistance‘s main campaign is only nine chapters long, however, with side objectives, collectibles, propaganda, and termination contracts, each level can take an hour or longer depending on the way the player explores the level and the difficulty they are playing on. On higher difficulties, enemies are more aware and deal more damage. Before each mission, the player can adjust different factors of the game’s AI and difficulty. 

Sniper Elite: Resistance‘s difficulty modes can be altered and the player can choose how they want to experience the game. The game has five base difficulties: Civilian, Cadet, Sharpshooter, Sniper Elite, and Authentic.

Players can adjust the combat difficulty, sniping mechanics, and tactical information the game provides. In advanced difficulty customization, the player can adjust damage taken by friendly fire, player resistance, respawning, AI accuracy, damage improvement, bullet drop, and wind impact. All of these settings allow you to play how you want to play.

As you progress through the campaign and complete different challenges, your player will level up in rank and unlock new skill points. Those skill points can be assigned to one of three trees improving the player’s combat, equipment, and body skills.

These skills can increase the player’s health bar, ammo carried, ability to revive, and lung capacity. These skills can make the game easier allowing you to increase the game’s difficulty as you progress or replay levels. When replaying levels, you can start at different checkpoints that you previous discovered and unlocked. 

Once you have completed the campaign, you can take on the Propaganda Challenge, Axis Invasion, Multiplayer, or Survival. Propaganda Challenge levels can only be played after you discover each campaign mission’s propaganda.

Each propaganda mission has a different theme and goal for you to complete. With Axis Invasion, you will step into the shoes of Jager and hunt down the allied spy in the other player’s campaign mission.

As you take out other players, you will level up and unlock new equipment. Unlike the base campaign, the Axis Invaders skill set is fully maxed out and the base weapons have all their upgrades unlocked.

Due to reviewing this before the game’s release, we were not able to test out the multiplayer modes, so we will have to double back to them once the game is available. 

Sniper Elite: Resistance offers a good variety of customization options whether it be in the setting for the different game modes. When the game first boots up, you must establish what visual and gameplay settings you want before being able to play.

The game has a decent amount of accessibility options including the standard of subtitles and box opacity, colorblind mode, alteration to the hud, aim assist sensitivity, controller button prompts, and layout.

Although Sniper Elite: Resistance‘s campaign is decently sized, the game extends beyond it with a variety of game modes for the player to enjoy and different ways to play through each level. When it comes to replayability, the game offers a wide variety of options that will give Sniper Elite fans hours of enjoyment. Yes, the shooting mechanics can take a little bit to get used to but after a bit, you should be able to hit 200+ shots; the hardest part of the game to originally get around is the switching from third-person while exploring to first-person while shooting. 

Even though Sniper Elite: Restistance’s campaign was fairly enjoyable, we did encounter a few issues that left us frustrated. On occasion, when we focused on an objective it would not always give us enough information to complete it. After the first patch, we encountered a few bugs that left us feeling frustrated.

The first bug that caused an issue was an enemy falling through the map and that enemy held a certain piece of intel we needed to progress; those enemies that fell through the map could still shoot at us but we were unable to fire back. Snipers occasionally would be able to shoot through solid pieces of the environment despite being in cover. 

Outside of the AI bugs, the second biggest issue we faced was invisible walls. These walls would block us from going up or down certain stairs or around certain objects that should have been easily maneuverable. These walls wouldn’t always be where we’d expect them and cause our grenades to immediately bounce back or fall down at us and progress no further.

This led to some interesting moments where we died or killed an enemy in a unique way. Ultimately, we were able to get past the invisible walls by going different ways or vaulting over a piece of equipment/terrain, but it did get annoying when running away from enemies or dodging bullets. 

Despite the game’s bugs and our inability to play the multiplayer until launch, Sniper Elite: Resistance was a ton of fun to play. The adrenaline we got when pulling off a difficult shot and watching as the kill cam showed us how the bullet penetrating a vital organ was exhilarating.

Yes, it is a bit graphic so it is not advisable for the young or those who are squeamish, but seeing where your shots hit anatomically is both insightful and scintillating. The ability to customize your gameplay experience makes for either a fun action adventure with platforming elements or a tactical shooter that can teach you the core mechanics of snipping; these elements can hypothetically be applied to the real-life experience. 

The combat in the game can be satisfying when playing at lower difficulties but at higher difficulties, you will need to be tactical in order to survive. The game tracks whether or not you choose to be stealthy and tactical or loud and aggressive.

Throughout the mission, you will get ribbons that indicate your performance or for doing special challenges. The thrill and adrenaline rush of exploding Nazi’s balls, brains, and vital organs will make your heart race and your hands shake with excitement. 

If you are looking for a fun action shooter that isn’t Call of Duty, Valorant, or Marvel Rivals, consider playing Sniper Elite: Resistance. Sniper Elite: Resistance is definitely worth picking up if you are a fan of shooters or tactical experiences.

As someone who hasn’t played the series since the first game, getting to experience how the franchise has changed over the last 20 years and evolved really shows how much Rebellion Developments has put into making a realistic but fun WW2 Sniping experience.

Sniper Elite: Resistance was reviewed on a base model PlayStation 5 using a copy provided by Rebellion Developments. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Sniper Elite: Resistance is available on January 30th on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.