I don't always suck at stealth games, but when I do, I like to do so spectacularly. I went into my second Sniper Elite Resistance hands-on demo expecting nothing less, having taken a crack at it just months before at Gamescom 2024. The two-hour demo I tackled was painful enough even then, with autosaves (or any saves, for that matter) disabled for press preview purposes. The one I played in November might have been a different mission, but the same parameters applied: no autosaves, no second chances. If you die, you go back to the start of the level and do it all over again.
For me, that meant any and all efforts to perform perfectly were doomed from the start. Sniper Elite champions realistic gunplay as far as the namesake firearm is concerned, each earsplitting shot piercing my enemies' frontal lobes with as much subtlety as an air raid siren. That's how I ended up throwing mission objectives and any hope of stealth action to the wind, opting for an overt rather than covert operation through Nazi-infested France.
Best laid plans
Developer: Rebellion Developments, Wushu Studios
Publisher: Rebellion
Platform(s): PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC
Release date: January 30, 2025
I did at least try to play Sniper Elite Resistance with integrity, sneaking through shrubbery and performing stealth takedowns the way Rebellion surely intended as I spawned into the scene for the first time. I wish I could say that I started as I meant to carry on, but that would be a lie; while grappling to relearn the PC keybindings as a mostly controller-enjoyer, I ended up shooting into an enemy jeep and alerting the entire road to my presence.
As I ran to a safe vantage point in a pithy attempt at escape, I started making peace with the fact that I was never going to see this mission through to the end. Not if I reprised that shoddy performance, anyway. Sniper Elite is at its best when you carefully plan each move, using the binoculars judiciously to scout for opportunities or threats ahead. With multiple ways to reach a target, and many optional points of interest to divert you from that course, it's all too easy to get wrapped up in the palm-sweating fear of making the wrong call. I employed this tactic for round two, noting a dark alleyway between a Nazi stronghold and some abandoned houses that looked far more appealing than simply strolling down main street toward the bridge in the distance. I sent a single silenced pistol shot ricocheting into a nearby generator to create a little distraction, and made a dash for it.
Roughly three deaths later, I made it down that alleyway and dropped right in front of some empty crates. Just as well, because they were the only thing separating me from a patrolling Nazi. I kept an eye on the minimap, watching the chaos I'd sown just feet away, making sure I was always just outside the circular perimeter of the enemy's seek-and-destroy efforts. I swiftly dispatched the patrolman, looted him for some bandages, and skulked across the dimly-lit street to the foot of the bridge just opposite. Next came a little of that forward planning I'd lacked so sorely earlier: before attempting to scale the ladder and inch down the bridge, I shot each of the enemy searchlights lining it. I felt incredibly proud of myself, thinking I'd surely bested Sniper Elite at its own game. Alas, I was wrong. Turns out that enemies can and did hear the thunderous boom of four shattered searchlights sprinkling glass into the river below. Cue another bout of crouch-behind-a-crate-and-wait-for-the-all-clear.
So anyway, I started blasting
I asked myself: how many Nazis brains can I paint the town with before they overwhelm me?
But for all the patience I was learning during my second Sniper Elite Resistance encounter, it never felt quite enough to make me a perfect player. The game's full release will have autosave and manual saves, I'm told, but the demo definitely exposed my overwhelming preference for a guns-blazing approach. So that's exactly what I spent the rest of the session experimenting with. Getting myself set up on the bridge, I asked myself: how many Nazis brains can I paint the town with before they overwhelm me?
Turns out, quite a few if you're sure they can't get too close. It's totally tangential to the mission objective, which no doubt is linked to a nebulous wartime storyline I had time nor mental bandwidth to focus on, but it's good to know that Sniper Elite can still be a blast for those of us who just want to lay waste to a few fascists. Each juicy animation treated me to a slow-mo anatomical X-ray view of the damage my bullets wrought, but after so many successive headshots, there's only so many animations the game can spit out. I think I might have broken it in that regard, as Sniper Elite Resistance tried in vain to keep up with the bullet frenzy I inflicted upon it. Three rounds later of this makeshift horde shooter experience, I buzzed my PR representative to say that I was happy to finish here.
If you're reading this, Rebellion: I'm sorry. I promise I had fun, though. And if you're not a member of Rebellion, just know that you probably shouldn't take a page out of my chaotic book come the game's release on January 30, 2025 – you'll have autosaves to keep you from such wayward travels, surely.
