Sniper Elite: Resistance preview – the first big new release of 2025

It might not be Sniper Elite 6 but Rebellion’s latest game is looking to add a suite of new online options and multiple player characters.

Rebellion’s World War 2 era Sniper Elite franchise is one of the gaming world’s hardy perennials. The first Sniper Elite game was released in 2005, nearly 20 years ago, and its most recent iteration, Sniper Elite 5, came out in 2022 – so Rebellion hasn’t exactly been shy about keeping its momentum going over that period, even with Atomfall coming up as well.

You won’t have to wait long for another instalment of its distinctive third person Nazi elimination action either. Sniper Elite: Resistance will be one of the first new releases of 2025 and while it’s not a numbered sequel it is doing its best to evolve the concept in more subtle ways.

In the grand tradition of long-running franchises, Sniper Elite: Resistance will be a mid-cycle game – Sniper Elite 5.5, if you like. We had the chance to play it, via the game-streaming service Parsec – for an hour. But before jumping in, producer Lauren Davidson explained what Sniper Elite: Resistance is all about and what new features it contains.

Resistance is intended as a standalone addition to the Sniper Elite canon, with a ‘full length’ single-player campaign. Rather than series stalwart Karl Fairburne, it puts you in control of Harry Hawker, a British Special Operations Executive agent (who has had a co-op supporting role in some previous Sniper Elite games).

Davidson also teased a new mode for the franchise, entitled Propaganda, which will centre on finding propaganda posters hidden around the levels. Once you find one you will then be able to step through it and play as a French Resistance operative, in a series of missions that have ‘time-sensitive objectives’.

Davidson added that the series’ Axis Invasion online mode will return, allowing you to step into other players’ campaigns as an Axis sniper. Plus, the game will have a competitive 16-player online mode as well as a three-player co-op Survival mode, in which you and two others will be able to take on waves of enemies.

Our hands-on playthrough was a demo consisting of the third level of Resistance’s campaign. Unfortunately, since it was an early demo, it lacked the checkpointing that would be in the final game, so once we died, we had to restart the level. Without further ado, we jumped in, playing via Parsec on a gaming laptop, but using an Xbox Series X controller rather than keyboard and mouse.

A briefing screen – delivered in typically authentic 1940s newsreel style – provided a hint as to Sniper Elite: Resistance’s overarching storyline: Harry Hawker’s mission to find out more about a legendary new weapon being developed by the Nazis, dubbed a Wunderwaffe, and supposedly so powerful that it could end the war.

In the demo level, Harry finds himself in Fourviere, a district of the French city Lyon, where unusual activity pertaining to said weapon had been sighted by the local Resistance. A large number of Gestapo officers have set up a base in the Hotel Terminus, while unusual amounts of traffic in the nearby train station suggested something was also going on there.

Harry’s brief is to gather intel in the Gestapo’s offices and inspect the Hotel Terminus’s basement, and to scope out the train station. He’s told that Resistance operatives investigating the train station have disappeared from contact, bringing about an optional mission to re-establish contact or find out what had happened to them.

Harry starts at one of the highest points of Fourviere, overlooking a patch of grassland and a major city square, in which much Nazi activity can be perceived. It swiftly becomes obvious that Resistance will be the best-looking Sniper Elite game yet; its visuals are super crisp and the environmental and level design shows an impressive amount of verticality (always welcome in a sniping game).

As is the convention for a Sniper Elite game, Hawker is equipped with a pistol, sniper rifle, and an assault rifle – as well as a grenade, a full-health-restoring medical kit, some bandages, and objects such as bottles that can be thrown to cause distractions.

Different ammo types can be equipped for each weapon, such as armour-piercing, although at the start of the mission, he only has standard ammo. Looting dead enemies and finding supply drops throughout the course of the level is key to building up a more diverse loadout and some of the Nazis killed also yield some interesting weaponry.

Gameplay-wise, Sniper Elite: Resistance is comfortingly familiar. Reaching instantly for the sniper rifle, we targeted a lone Nazi infantryman and hit the right bumper to hold our breath, at which point, time slowed down slightly, the targeting reticule turned red, and our successful shot launched the deliciously lurid x-ray killcam, following our bullet’s trajectory as it ripped through his body.

Sniper Elite’s famously rigorous enemy AI soon pitched into action. In the square opposite, we took out some long-distance targets, divided between infantrymen and leather-jacketed Gestapo operatives. A lorry full of enemies pulled up and we explored the possibility of environmental kills, planting enough shots into its engine to cause it to explode.

Enemies took cover, necessitating some patience while we waited for them to raise their heads slightly. We also managed to take some out while they were on the move, earning a ribbon (which contribute to upgrading Harry Hawker’s attributes in the full game, as opposed to the demo we were playing) for achieving five sniper rifle kills in 60 seconds.

Having cleared the initial area, we started to move towards our twin objectives of the Hotel Terminus and the train station. On the way was a marked resistance safe house, which had clearly been compromised, since it contained Gestapo operatives rather than resistance fighters – who had to be taken out at close range with the assault rifle.

As we moved through Fourviere, more elements of the familiar Sniper Elite gameplay became evident. Hawker has a powerful melee takedown, which can be used to either kill or incapacitate, and generators can be turned on to mask any movement noise you might make. If you can’t be bothered to hide bodies, you can booby trap them instead with grenades. Alarms are everywhere, which can be taken out by sniping or disabling them manually once you take out the enemies around them.

The level was long, had several stages and was enjoyably involving. As is typical for the franchise, the gameplay is rigorous and challenging – if you make a wrong move you’ll be swamped by reinforcements. Scuttling around to escape last-known positions is vital; luckily, it was always possible to find a new place to hide and snipe, as long as you keep your bearings.

In other words, Sniper Elite: Resistance’s gameplay was exactly what you would expect from a new instalment of the franchise, and the gunplay felt as polished, smooth and perfectly fettled as ever. Sadly, we didn’t manage to find a Propaganda mission, but those should add even more variety to the single-player gameplay.

From what we saw, Sniper Elite: Resistance will offer exactly what you would expect from a Sniper Elite game, albeit with the best visuals yet seen in the franchise, an even greater stamp of authenticity, and a rollicking Second World War plot. It’s not Sniper Elite 6 but it is the next best thing.

Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £54.99
Publisher: Rebellion
Developer: Rebellion
Release Date: 30th January 2025
Age Rating: 16

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