Sniper Elite: Resistance puts a new man behind the scope

Sniper Elite: Resistance puts a new man behind the scope. Rebellion Developments shipped the game on January 30, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It is the first main entry in the series to hand the campaign to someone other than its established lead.

Trailer, via Rebellion.

Harry Hawker Steps Out Of The Co-op Slot

Harry Hawker has been in Sniper Elite before, but only as the second playable character in the cooperative modes of Sniper Elite 3, 4 and 5. Resistance makes him the lead. The story runs alongside the events of Sniper Elite 5 and sets him in Vichy France in 1944, hunting a threat called the Wunderwaffe.

That is a real change for a series that spent five games building one sniper’s war. It also gives Rebellion room to write a smaller, stranger campaign about a man working away from the front lines.

A Dam, A Dead Drop, And Kleine Blume

The campaign opens with the British trying to bomb a dam in Nazi-occupied France. AA guns stop them. Hawker is sent in to neutralise the guns, exfiltrates as the dam blows, then goes back to tracking down local resistance forces.

He finds them, then infiltrates St. Raymond, a town overrun with Gestapo. His target is a dead drop left by a mid-rank officer called Vertigo, who had been in contact with the resistance before he disappeared. The coded documents Hawker recovers point to a Nazi superweapon project.

After working through a Gestapo-controlled hotel and train station in the Lyonese district of Fourvière, Hawker learns the weapon is a nerve agent called Kleine Blume. The dam is being repaired. One of the crashed RAF bombers carried a bouncing bomb, and the Germans are studying it. Hawker kills the scientists and destroys the bouncing bomb technology, blocking mass production. The trail then leads to a Kleine Blume production facility near the southern coast.

Propaganda Mode And A 16-Player Fight

Resistance keeps the series’ structure: large open levels, multiple routes to each objective, stealth or firearms as the player prefers, and weapons that can be customized at length. Non-playable characters can be overheard, and locations can be searched for new ways to reach a target. Optional quests sit alongside the main objectives.

The X-Ray kill cam returns for long-range sniper kills, following the bullet to the target and showing bones, body parts and internal organs breaking or rupturing.

The new addition is Propaganda Mode, which sets time-based combat challenges for an unnamed resistance fighter. Those missions unlock by collecting propaganda posters in the main game. Invasion, the asymmetrical multiplayer mode from Sniper Elite 5, comes back, and there is a 16-player competitive mode.

Release Schedule

The New Lead Is The Right Bet

Hawker works because he is not the series’ established lead. A second sniper in the same war lets Rebellion write a campaign about a man operating in the margins, and the Kleine Blume thread is a better fit for that than another push toward Berlin. The Kleine Blume nerve agent and the bouncing bomb technology give the campaign two concrete objectives instead of a vague march across the map.

The open levels and the multiple routes remain the series’ best idea. The X-Ray kill cam remains its loudest. Propaganda Mode is the piece worth watching: it unlocks through poster collecting, which ties optional exploration to a separate challenge set rather than leaving collectibles as decoration.

The risk is familiarity. Invasion and the 16-player mode return from Sniper Elite 5 largely as they were, and the customization system is the one players already know. Resistance does not reinvent the shooter. It changes who is holding the rifle and where the story sits, and that is enough.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is out now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

PS5 · Rebellion Developments · Sniper Elite · Sniper Elite Resistance · third-person shooter · Xbox Series X