Sniper Elite: Resistance sends players into occupied France to stop a Nazi superweapon

Rebellion is set to bring players back to World War 2 with the latest entry in the Sniper Elite series. Sniper Elite: Resistance will put players in the role of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Harry Hawker, going deep into Nazi-occupied France as we aim to uncover and sabotage a new Nazi ace in the hole. I got the chance to experience one mission in the upcoming game, and came away feeling like we’ve got a vast and exciting new Sniper Elite campaign ahead of us.

Checking in, Mr. Hawker?

For my brief playthrough session in Sniper Elite: Resistance, I was given the opportunity to run rampant around a single campaign map. The Germans are working on a new war weapon, the Wunderwaffe, and it’s up to us to sabotage their plans. Set in an urban French city, players are tasked with sneaking into highly fortified territory, stealing documents hidden away in two German-dominated high-value structures that pertain to the existence of the Wunderwaffe, and escaping by any means necessary. The mission started us on a hilltop near the main city, and from there, I could already see this was a vast map full of opportunity.

Adding to that opportunity was my arsenal and everything I could collect along the way. You start with a silenced pistol (great for close-range takedowns), a submachine gun in case of a sudden firefight, and your trusty rifle. Of course, the latter supplies the usual Sniper Elite visual effects bonanza where, when you fire off a particularly good shot, the game will follow the bullet in slow motion through wherever you shot your foe, along with a grisly x-ray shot of the damage you did. Resistance’s version of the x-ray bullet cam looked as detailed as ever. When I took a headshot on a helmeted soldier, I got to see the hole in the helmet flip it off their head, the shattering of bones, the tearing of muscle, the sprinkling of blood, and a lot more intense graphical detail that would make Mortal Kombat’s NetherRealm Studios weep in joy.

X-ray bullet cam is just one cool factor of this game. The other is the versatility of the approach to your mission. The diligent agent will have plenty of options. You could go across the bridge, or sneak around under it. You could go right to the luxury hotel where one set of documents is hidden or go for the hilltop facility and make the hotel your second stop. Once inside the hotel, I found that I could have gotten into the room where the documents were by finding a key (by searching the dead bodies of officers) or by finding a satchel charge explosive to simply explode the door open. I also saw opportunities to crowbar a locked door open elsewhere in the map. The sheer breadth of routes you could take, ways you can play, and the ways it can go right and wrong were exciting to see.

And boy howdy, can things go wrong. At the end of the hotel after I’d collected the documents, there was a zipline that took me down from the hotel. I think this was better suited for escaping the mission than getting started on the second objective. While it was cool, it also kind of dropped me in a courtyard full of nazi scum where I ran for my life until I was gunned down. It was hilarious and I’ll definitely have to rework my approach, but I’m excited for all the options it seems we’ll have.

As always, your main objective… Kill Hitler!

There was a vast amount of details and opportunity throughout just this one mission we got to see in Sniper Elite: Resistance. Add in things like co-op, the adversarial fan-favorite Invasion Mode, and even new Propaganda missions hidden throughout each campaign map, and it looks like Rebellion has another fantastic stealth-action shooter sandbox on their hands. It will be interesting to see if the rest of the game is as scoped in as we wait for its arrival in January 2025.

These impressions are based on a remote play session operated by the publisher. Sniper Elite: Resistance comes out on January 30, 2025.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.