Sniper Elite: Resistance (2025)
Sniper Elite has been a fallback game for me, mostly due to the series not veering too far off the comfortable path they have carved out for themselves over the years. With gameplay taking front and center stage, it’s hard for me to get really excited about yet another tour through the European countryside dismantling the Nazi warmachine’s latest “big bad SuperWeapon”. Even with a new character to play as, I feel like the series needs a big retooling (not reboot) to make me really care.
What Sniper Elite excels in, is their dedication to a meticulous and well crafted environment that feels like real locations in the European countries that either are newly taken over, or have been entrenched in a battle of attrition. Sprinting and crawling through bombed out buildings or taking cover in tall grass hillsides is just a pleasure, as I feel the levels always have a very well made craft to them. I’d honestly prefer these levels to most other open world sections in many other games, they feel real and from a by-gone era of semi-peaceful living (besides the obvious Nazi takeover).
The story suffers just as it always does in these games, with a new protagonist called Henry Hawk that seems somehow more obnoxious and annoying than the wet cardboard stereotype of Karl the German American. I’ll take Karl over Henry “trying his best Jason Stathom impression” Hawk any day of the week. He becomes a caricature of himself early on in the game and never really becomes more than a try hard one line spouting dull as dirt avatar for my sniper rifle.
Along with the atrocious character, as I alluded to earlier, the main story seems copy and pasted from the last several games in the series. The Nazi’s have developed a super weapon of some sort and it’s up to our character to defeat them, this time joining up with a resistance composed of around 4 people. None of which actually do anything, the main French woman who seems to be the leader shows up twice (in the beginning and ending cutscenes) and provides the voice over narration for each level’s intro. This also is where the cutscenes mostly are just grainy game engine pictures thrown on a table with a map that acts as sort of a “here, this is what’s going on, and why you should care”. None of it matters and none of it is even remotely interesting.
Luckily, even if the story and characters are below the baseline standard of game characters, the gameplay stands heads and shoulders above the rest, allowing me to sink two plus hours into a single level. Think about the modern Hitman games that are basically a clockwork set piece and that’s mostly what is going on here. Each enemy is doing their own thing, and as the bullets ring out, their in-game lives get disturbed. I was able to systematically take down dozens of enemies from within the first dozen or so feet from starting the level, thanks to a well placed Sniper Tower. Spending the next twenty to thirty minutes meticulously tagging and sniping each single enemy without alerting others, thanks to sound masking.
The game itself might be well trodden territory now, but it doesn’t make it any less fun. I have a blast watching every eye squish, lung puncture or even testicle explode as the X-Ray slow motion bullet pierces the flesh of my enemies. It’s so satisfying seeing their skulls pop and break apart and even seeing shrapnel hurt other enemies in slow motion. It’s a young kids dream come true for an overly gory but fun game.
I do hope that the team moves on restructuring the game more, and gives me a better story in the next game in the series, but again, it’s a game that I can come back to with every new release and have a good time. The gameplay has been nearly perfected and the only thing holding it back is the story and characters which need a majority retooling effort. Nine levels of open world sniping goodness was more than enough to keep me smiling the entire time, and leave my jaw on the floor with a few X-Ray shots that would even make a war vet blush.