As baffling to believe as it is, the first entry in the Sniper Elite franchise arrived in 2005 as a skin-deep and wholly basic and flat third-person shooter experience, but has since morphed into a series with multi-faceted layers to every level, and has become a capable shooter comfortable with side-arm combat, whilst managing and maintaining its strict stealthy carapace. On top of this, Sniper Elite dutifully whisks players off to verdant locations across the globe from Berlin Germany to North Africa, Italy and France, scrunching Nazi noggins with gratifying skull-penetrating efficiency along the way.
Karl Fairburne has been dismissed from his usual position as protagonist in Sniper Elite: Resistance, replaced by his co-operative mode counterpart Harry Hawker, as he assists the French Resistance repel Nazi incursions, all the while trying to destroy a devastating new weapon that threatens to change the face of the war. With the stakes skyrocketing to unprecedented levels amid a constant struggle to flush out Nazi tyrany in France, Sniper Elite: Resistance is primed to keep your attention and your trigger finger itching with its layered levels and special objectives. Can Sniper Elite: Resistance carve out its own identity from the mainline Sniper Elite games, or is it merely glorified downloadable content?
Our new hero Harry Hawker is a confident and cliché-spewing sharp-shooter and saboteur. A man with a strong British accent and who murmurs to himself during his espionage and sabotaging exploits, Hawker is less meat-head like than his pal Fairburne, but he’s a very capable service man who deserves his own story because his backstory prior to Resistance is fuzzy at best. We already know he’s an adaptable and highly efficient marksman, but we’ve yet to see a full story from Sniper Elite‘s number 2 man. Thankfully, Resistance has addressed this issue firmly.
Hawker’s accolades and proficiencies on the battlefield are eerily similar to Fairburne’s, which kinda makes his skillset tough to distinguish. Hawker is a pro with a sniper rifle, but he’s equally adept with his sub-machine gun, pea shooter, tossing grenades, and rigging satchel charges to blow giant Nazi structures to kingdom come. You may say that Hawker is a blast to play as har-har, but he definitely has all the tools and know-how to get the job done swiftly and explosively if need be.
Your Resistance teammates are primed for your assistance, just be prepared for thick French accents that can seem as cheesy as a wedge of L’Hexagone’s finest Brie. Pre-mission briefings will give you a lowdown on every mission, giving you a great sense of feeling embroiled in a heavy conflict to demolish Nazi tyranny and free France of their fiendish presence.

Each mission of the Sniper Elite: Resistance campaign comprises of high stakes and wide-open reconnaissance affairs. As it turns out, Nazi bases are intimidatingly huge and are heavily guarded, but they can be exhilarating as you plan to find the best approach, execute vulnerable Nazi soldiers, and skulk about as quietly as possible and dispatching any enemies you see who are ripe for a brutal stealth takedown.
The inaugural mission of Resistance at the hydro-electric dam shows off the impressive scale and delicious tactical openness at your disposal. As you survey your surroundings, you’ll witness a ginormous cake’s worth of visual stimulation, which can be all-encompassing, but if you play through each mission multiple times, you’ll become more comfortable with the layouts and they’ll therefore be less intimidating to take on.
There’s an inherent difficulty in entering Nazi occupied territories alone and completing every objective, but there are navigational options and routes that make your exploits sneakier and smarter, such as the ability to climb and shimmy up and across vines to reach platforms, and ripping down barricades that reveal underground passageways you can covertly dart through, or search rooms for ammo and supplies. When on red alert and the sirens are blaring, you can find ziplines to speedily find your way to safety, or if that fails you can run and attempt to evade the hail of Nazi bullets, but finding cover and recovering your covert position is an ideal way to get back on track.
Trying not to get caught is hard work in Sniper Elite, and Resistance doesn’t relent when it comes to challenging your stealth prowess. Enemies can be picked off with the hallowed and trusty sniper rifle of course, but reaching your objective in a hurry – damn what’s in your way – will likely penetrate Hawker with more holes than Swiss cheese. You can medicate and bandage Hawker up of course, but your inventory is fairly sparse in the face of the overwhelming odds you come up against.
Resistance rewards deft and careful play, and while it can be difficult and frustrating at times if you’re the hurrying type, you’ll scrape by if you find the best routes and vantage points to reach and accomplish each objective. Rejoicing in an exquisitely planned and executed mission is always something to bask in and savour in Sniper Elite, and Resistance is still very compelling regardless.
Secondary objectives such as kill lists and assassinations bring more depth to missions, as well as secondary objectives such as collecting stolen Resistance intel documents ensures that every mission carries its own distinctive flavour.
Propaganda Missions are new to Sniper Elite: Resistance. As you play through levels, you’ll happen across various propaganda posters on walls. These may seem like simply by-the-numbers collectibles you’ll find in any game, but in Resistance these poster collectibles are secret challenges you can participate in. You’ll be thrust into the boots of a French Resistance fighter and tackle time-sensitive objectives that’ll involve utilizing your entire arsenal and skills to get the job done.
These Propaganda Missions are great for experts and for players who want to hone their skills and increase their high scores, but the rewards for completing them aren’t truly worth the effort; at least it shows Resistance has a new feature it can boast about.
Obviously the ideal way to go about things is to live up to the ‘Sniper Elite‘ in Resistance‘s namesake, and Resistance never disappoints here. Sniper Elite‘s flagship skull-crushing and blood-gushing X-ray camera is as gratifyingly moreish as ever. Whether you’re aiming your sights and firing off a scorching round right between the eyes, or right below the belt, there really is nothing in any Sniper Elite game as satisfying as seeing Nazi skulls shatter like smashed up porcelain.
Using explosive traps is also very rewarding when you can lure a Nazi into them and seeing their innards explode in viscerally satisfying ways. Couple this with all of the unique animations for every X-ray shot type, then you can really tell that Sniper Elite: Resistance is a festival of Nazi evisceration and pulverization you can indulge in wantonly and ravenously.
Unfortunately, the undeniable marquis X-ray camera and all the satisfying kills and shredded apart body parts fail to mask the lingering stench of unrefined gameplay from what Sniper Elite 5 wrought. What this means is Resistance doesn’t improve the fundamentals of the gameplay as much as you might be anticipating.

While using secondary weapons has been improved in the past, they’re still unsatisfying but convenient weapons for close-quarters encounters. Firing away at Nazis using the sub-machine gun and pistol doesn’t usually offer up the heft and gratification of using the sniper, which makes sense since the title alone proves what weapon the developers Rebellion Entertainment want us to use for the most part, but if other weapons are in the game they shouldn’t be the afterthoughts they regrettably are here.
The technical performance is underwhelming too with environment clipping and bugs noticeably impinging on the game’s immersion. These issues don’t completely tarnish Resistance, but it really could’ve used some significant cleaning up in places, especially considering this is a Sniper Elite title running on a Series X.
Resistance‘s visuals are a mixed bag, often breathtaking and diverse in terms of locations and building interiors, it can be unparallelled in how picturesque every area of the game you visit is. Taking all of the locations while you’re perched up high and beaming down upon it with the sniper scope expresses the enormity of every base, which coheres appropriately with the size of the task you’re undertaking.
The stunning locations can be garishly contrasted by underwhelming character textures that look flat and lacking detail. Lamentably, Resistance can look like a 360 game at times, and that’s a shame considering how good the scenery can look, the end result connotes a game that’s graphically at odds with itself.
To be fair, Resistance has retained many of the facets of the series in both good and bad ways. While the X-ray cam, alluring European settings, and the exciting sense of scale are always welcome, the technical choppiness and afterthought sub-weapons are not. Truthfully, the series may need some overhauling if it’s ever going to evolve properly, but in the case of Resistance it’s a solid if unremarkable “that’ll do” kind of Sniper Elite game, rather than an exciting return with an impact greater than the blast radius of the game’s satchel charges.
Conclusion
When all things are considered, Sniper Elite: Resistance is a commendable entry in the Sniper Elite franchise, granting us more insights into Harry Hawker by shining the protagonist spotlight on him, which gives us a respectable reprieve from wearing the militaristic boots of Karl Fairburne. Most of what the series has established is present and accounted for, and although there are various new locations to be in awe of, and navigational options to test out, Resistance fails to truly push the envelope in exciting directions despite shifting the focus onto a new hero and a new story. If you loved previous Sniper Elite games, Resistance has got all the bang you could want from its particular buck, but Resistance is a day late and a nickel short as far as exciting and explosive new features are concerned. The bugs and garish seventh-generation character textures don’t help either, but thankfully Resistance is gratifying enough due to its strategic essences, even though it could – and should – have been so much more.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.