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Ready for a random observation, courtesy of Sniper Elite: Resistance? Sniping is simultaneously stealthy and un-stealthy. You need to get in to the right place, at the right time, with no one seeing you (or recognising you if they do), and make sure you have a similar exit strategy. But at the same time you’re carrying a big explosion in a long tube. When you pull the trigger, you’re essentially blowing into a giant vuvuzela and holding up a sign with ‘I Am Here’ written on it.
I thought about this as bullets were pinging into the metal of the thin barrier I was hiding behind. Being one of the least stealthiest humans that has ever lived, my sniping plans were often sub-par. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it. When the stars align and you pull off a perfect shot, then Sniper Elite: Resistance really shines, and it works hard to recreate that moment. When you keep your enemies at a distance, things are great. Cracks only start appearing when we get up close.
Long Distance Bullet Delivery
Sniper Elite: Resistance winds the clock back to 1944, where Europe has picked itself back up off the mat and is ready to deliver a haymaker in the form of D-Day. Unfortunately, the French resistance has picked up some chatter that the Nazis are developing a superweapon. In response, the Brits send in a special operative to deal with it – SOE agent Harry Hawker. A man with the face of a twenty year-old and the voice of a sixty year-old. To be brutally honest, I strongly recommend not coming to Sniper Elite: Resistance for the plot. Harry is a dull non-entity, strung along by the nose from one set-piece to another.
Instead, you should come here for the long guns that make loud noises. Sniping requires you to spot targets through your binoculars, then dial in your scope to distance. After accounting for the weather, you line your crosshair up on either their head or their crotch. If you aim it right, you’re greeted with a gory X-ray scene of your bullet spearing through their skull and/or plums. These X-ray shots do get old, but lining up the perfect shot that flies through the eye-socket of a rival sniper is a wonderful feeling. I recommend flicking the sniping difficulty up, though, otherwise holding your breath just shows you where you’re going to hit.
The sniping excels when the maps open up, and Sniper Elite: Resistance seems to understand that. The best levels are ones with big sprawling fields or other wide areas, where you can hike up a lookout tower and absolutely clear up. If you time shots with loud noises, like thunder or a nearby dogfight, then you’re masked. So with a bit of patience, I could clear half the map with well-placed shots. The maps aren’t empty, though. There are a lot of side missions that need to be manually discovered, along with a kill challenge in each mission. If you fancy slow playing it, you can spend quite a bit of time on each one. I was never bored, that’s for sure.
Sniper No Sniping
Unfortunately, I found it a lot less entertaining when the levels shrank and a lot of that is down to the AI. It’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, bless it. Not just because they’re unable to notice a muzzle flash that’s about ten feet from them. They’re terrible at searching, and frequently unloaded entire magazines at the spot I was about five minutes ago. They search for a long time, too, so I’d just park my arse behind a wall and twiddle my thumbs. They also react to their helmet being shot off by standing there, gawping, until the second bullet bursts through their cranium.
The net result is that that being spotted doesn’t feel harrowing. Partly because the AI won’t put up much challenge, but also because Hawker feels overpowered. One of the first pistols we unlock is silenced and can kill Nazis in one headshot, for instance. But we can also carry multiple grenades, mines and gosh darned TNT, along with a rifle and SMG. Even when I messed up, I managed to clear the map because they could only take one shot, and I could tank several magazines. The shooting isn’t really enjoyable enough to prop things up, so being spotted was more of an annoyance.
Still, once you get out of the structured campaign format, there are other modes that are enjoyable. Propaganda missions, for instance, pop you into time-based scenarios with limited gear and a defined playstyle. So you need to stealth kill as many Nazis as possible, for instance, or (my favourite) counter-snipe a horde of elite snipers. There’s also survival, which was fun enough, but with no one online for multiplayer I was soon minced by a mounted machine gun. Lastly, you can invade other people’s games as a rival sniper. I got invaded precisely once, where I was shot to death without knowing what was happening. I responded by grumpily folding my arms and turning it off. Nice idea, though.
Sniper Elite: Resistance – Fun At A Distance
All this lead to a realisation in the penultimate mission: my favourite part of Sniper Elite: Resistance was the beginning of the campaign missions. I’d get to a safe place and whip out my binoculars. Once I’d tagged enough Nazis, I’d head to a good sniping spot. Then I’d either wait for environmental noise, or kick a generator, and make shot after shot. In other words, when Sniper Elite: Resistance focused on the sniping, everything was golden. Every time it forced me down into a cramped, underground lab I was having less fun.
Still, my experience was overall positive. Crawling over the campaign levels, checking off missions and sniping targets, was good fun. I think I’ll probably return once there are enough people to fill out the survival mode. While getting up close and personal was a bit frustrating thanks to wonky AI, the Sniper Elite series remains the best way to watch a lump of metal obliterate a Nazi’s future fatherhood potential.
