Sniper Elite: Behind Enemy Lines

Rebellion boasts an impressive track record of delivering outstanding games using its in-house technology. The proprietary Asura engine showcases solid performance across a broad range of platforms, including the Nintendo Switch. Nonetheless, it’s apparent that the core engine technology is somewhat last-generation, lacking several essential features that are now becoming standard in the latest hardware. Sniper Elite: Resistance is another last-gen title—therefore, it’s advisable to adjust technical expectations accordingly—but has the engine been advanced beyond 2022’s Sniper Elite 5? How does it perform and how does the image quality compare across all four current-gen consoles?

From a technical viewpoint, Sniper Elite: Resistance excels in some areas. Each level in Resistance presents a sprawling open map, featuring abundant enemy AI and multiple paths to explore. This forms the essence of the Sniper Elite gameplay loop, and everything functions precisely as expected, with credible enemy behavior throughout the map and no significant technical issues to mention. Visually, I believe Resistance does an excellent job of rendering expansive environments: many of the game’s levels feature lush, extensive foliage, coupled with sightlines that showcase remarkable detail deep into the player’s view. The landscapes generally look impressive from nearly any position or angle, with bombed-out buildings, bunkers, and churches frequently taking center stage.

Lighting in outdoor scenes also appears convincing with strong direct illumination—even during nighttime scenes—and realistic shadows. Interiors are, however, a bit more inconsistent. There are occasions where the diffuse indirect lighting looks excellent, but there are also numerous moments with questionable lighting quality. Rebellion heavily leans on screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) as a form of indirect lighting workaround to enhance the richness of environments; however, it comes across as thick and applied harshly, almost like a crude outline shader. There is no top-tier global illumination to manage complex lighting in many areas, resulting in a notable decline in lighting quality upon closer inspection. This issue occasionally persists in outdoor spaces filled with colors, where objects can seem to emit a glow in certain conditions.

Apart from these fundamental elements, Resistance blends well with many last-gen systems. The game assets—many stemming from photogrammetry—look reasonably good, albeit not exceptional, with some areas appearing slightly flat at times. Reflections are handled via a combination of screen-space reflections (SSR) and cubemaps—again, a decidedly last-gen method. However, this isn’t too much of a concern since Rebellion is delivering this game on both modern and last-generation platforms simultaneously, so visual development is not necessarily what you’d expect.

This also pertains to the series’ hallmark visual feature, the x-ray kill cams. These sequences track the path of your bullet through an enemy, providing a visual payoff for carefully placed shots. Sniper Elite 5 and Resistance share very similar x-ray perspectives, which look fantastic. I do prefer the approach taken by Sniper Elite 4, which occasionally presented a more visceral visual impact. However, if these sequences are not to your liking, you can reduce their frequency or disable them entirely.

Resistance looks good enough for what it is: it’s artistically coherent, and on a general technical level, the levels and encounters with enemies run smoothly. Yet, technology progresses rapidly, and I would like to see a genuinely modern-gen venture from Rebellion—or even another one of their innovative Switch ports, which are genuinely impressive considering the hardware. In 2025 on PS5 Pro, Resistance may look decent, but would have potentially benefited from a stronger focus on current-gen capabilities. The other visual challenge with Resistance pertains to image quality, where various forms of aliasing occur, particularly of the specular variety. The game is plagued with consistent edge artifacts in almost every scene, which are particularly noticeable when viewing distant geometry.

Regrettably, Resistance does not utilize a highly effective anti-aliasing method. TAA techniques are absent here, not to mention more sophisticated temporal upsamplers such as FSR 2. You might think a lightweight post-processing method is in play here, but if so, it is extraordinarily subtle. The PC version lacks additional options for any anti-aliasing techniques or choices for specific types of upscaling.

In terms of resolution, a dynamic 2160p resolution is employed on PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X—it is true that Pro benefits from a higher general pixel count, with Pro and Series X maintaining more time at the 4K upper limits. Otherwise, the games appear very similar with no obvious differences in other settings. Fortunately, the higher-end current-gen platforms consistently deliver a smooth 60fps experience. Sudden changes in camera angles can occasionally drop a frame or two, with the DRS system possibly not keeping pace sufficiently. Large explosions can also trigger drops, especially when aiming, but aside from these very minor issues, it is generally a flawless 60fps.

There is, however, one minor issue I noted on PS5 Pro and PS5. Occasionally, it may seem as if camera movement isn’t entirely linear when panning the camera with a thumbstick, with subtle jitters observed. This usually isn’t noticeable, but it occasionally registered during my gameplay. The Xbox platforms did not exhibit this issue in my experience. The problem persisted on Series S.