There are a wide variety of shooter games on the market, each with its own style of trigger-pulling. The Sniper Elite series, the first of which was released back in 2005, has its particular aim-through-a-scope-action-stealth niche well marked out. And Sniper Elite: Resistance doesn’t change that Nazi-mulching formula much at all.
It’s the summer of 1944. Gamers play as a British specialist named Harry Hawker, who joins the resistance fighters of Vichy, France. Europe remains under Nazi occupation, and the Third Reich is plotting to wrap up the war with yet another secret superweapon. This one, the “Kliene Blume,” happens to be a deadly nerve agent that threatens to potentially wipe out the Allies’ D-Day invasion before it ever hits the beachhead.
Of course, the cockney-voiced Harry is more of a one-man army than a team player. So his French resistance fellows need but point the trigger-pulling protagonist in the direction of whatever base, HQ or weapons plant he must infiltrate.
Harry will then single-handedly take care of any intel theft, officer assassinations, transponder placements, infrastructure demolitions and general stronghold destruction that may be required. Oh, and he’ll kill Nazis in bloody ways. Yeah, he’ll do lots of that.
Gameplay, then, is as straightforward as it sounds. Gamers are given some nine central missions. (There are also a variety of hidden standalone challenges that can be uncovered in game.) And after getting their mission brief as well as gathering the weapons and supplies that seem appropriate, players can approach their objective in whatever way they please.
They can run in with a pistol in hand or jump from a rooftop with a knife in their teeth if they want. But most missions are designed for stealth and, of course, pinpoint long-range sniping.
The locales range from massy superstructures, to a train depot, to an underground facility, to a repurposed French chateau. And the missions not only feel enormous in size, but at times extremely difficult—putting your strategies and the long-range capabilities of your weaponry to the test.
Along with its single-player missions, gamers can play Sniper Elite: Resistance with up to three friends in co-op mode. (Those modes do not require an online connection to play.) The game also supports online multiplayer play. And there’s a special “Axis Invasion” mode that allows another player to enter your campaign as an enemy soldier, adding a fresh challenge.
Without question, there is a certain satisfaction to playing a stealthy hero who must strategically figure out how to make it past overwhelmingly deadly forces and save thousands from a murderous weapon. However …
… don’t leap into this game with the idea that your play can be all stealthy strategy and no blood. That’s not how Sniper Elite games are designed. Not only are the Nazi opponents quite deadly themselves—sometimes pinpointing you from very long distances with their own sniper fire—but the story centers around the gory mess of war.
There are massive explosions in the mix. Players use machine guns, pistols and knives for up-close slashes to a jugular, blasts to the temple or a bullet spray to the chest. But the game finds its largest “joy” in showing shooters how destructive their long-range sniper fire can be.
An accurate sniper shot triggers a short slow motion cutscene that traces the bullet’s trajectory as it hits and destroys a foe’s bodily organs (x-ray view mulching of brains, skulls, eyes, hearts, backbones, intestines and testicles). Players are also given the opportunity to track down Adolph Hitler in the course of the game and find some gruesome way to end his life (all presented for the “comedy” of that messy death.)
There are uses of the words “sh-t,” “d–n” and “b–tard” in the dialogue.
Sniper Elite games have always been about strategy, stealth and the very gory butchering of Nazis. And though Sniper Elite: Resistance adds a few small gaming additions, it doesn’t change the goopy formula at all.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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