Stalking and being stalked in Sniper Elite: Resistance’s PvP Invasion Mode

My evenings have been swallowed whole by Sniper Elite: Resistance’s Invasion Mode, where you can join another player’s game as they fight the good fight alongside the French Resistance during WW2—and then, well, hunt them down.

You know that “Are we the baddies?” meme? In this case, yes. Yes, you are. The absolute worst. If you have a moral compass, it’ll spin so hard that it might take off and embed itself in your ceiling. But at least it’s consensual. Players leave their game open for Invasion, like inviting Dracula into their house. Not just inviting him in, but saying, “You’ll never, ever be able to find me, you undead hole-puncher. Go exsanguinate a stone.”

Sure, I’ll bite.

Stalking in St. Raymond

Joining someone’s game mid-session is stepping into the unknown. Everyone plays Sniper Elite: Resistance differently. You could find yourself in the knotty streets of St. Raymond, a quaint French city dominated by a church at one end, a fort at the other. Below these towering monoliths of faith and war lies a maze of tight streets and alleys, with squat buildings and rooftop cafés. A holiday destination, complete with fountained squares in the streets and vaults below ground.

Any other time, I’d pull out a camera, not a Gewehr 43 with a custom barrel. But in this game there were bodies everywhere. Whoever I was hunting was resisting with extreme prejudice, leaving the dead out in the open. (You can move them to avoid suspicion.) Unfortunately, not one victim had the decency to use their own blood to draw a detailed map of the sniper’s location when they were shot. I was on my own.

Logic dictates that the higher ground is where a sniper belongs, but getting there while another sniper roams the streets is fraught with peril. I scoped the level and spotted scaffolding clinging to the spire of the church—the perfect sniper nest.

Moving toward it turned me into a zigzagging, belly-crawling master of stealth. I was a shadow. A wisp. A ghost. I kept out of sight of not just the church spire but also open windows, shadowy doorways, and anything that remotely resembled a rifle barrel.

But arriving at the church didn’t provide sanctuary. It’s so cavernous that you can still get sniped inside. I crouch-ran my way up the stairs, clinging to the walls like a chairlift.

I made it—only to find a lonely gun and a bloodstain. Evidence that I was on the right track but several steps behind. At least now I had a vantage point, clinging to the rooftop like the unfriendly neighborhood Sniper-Man. I scoped the area, but any movement seemed to be from forgotten soldiers, unaware of the danger among them. I tagged them, which would let me know if they were alerted.

After some moments, I decided to make a move. The scaffolding had a zipline to the middle of town, and I shouted “Wheeee!” all the way down. A wheeee I would soon regret.

It deposited me right next to an Invasion Phone, a clever telepathic telephone that pings the rough location of the person you’re tracking. I rang it, and an icon appeared, revealing the cowardly murderer’s location. Strangely, it was almost exactly where I’d just ziplined from…

I hadn’t been stalking him; he’d been stalking me. There was a brief glint of light, revealing that I was in the crosshairs of a fiend, followed by a horrific slow motion POV showcasing (in great anatomical detail) the results of being shot.

Well played, JasonBloodBourne.
 

A clear and obvious danger

Despite that loss, I keep coming back to Sniper Elite: Resistance and Invasion Mode. There are very few games that let you invade another player’s safe space, and it’s like having a front-row seat to their psyche. I’ve seen fastidious players ghosting entire towns full of enemies, attempting to leave no trace of their existence or involvement. I’ve shot most of those ones.

I’ve battled people playing the game like it’s Wolfenstein, bullets pinging off surfaces without a care for their ammo count or constant triggering of alarms. They’re not Elite in the slightest.

I joined a level that I thought was broken. It wasn’t just quiet. It was devoid of life. An empty shell. Everywhere I looked, I saw no one—not a hint of life nor death, not a single carcass.

I crawled, walked, stumbled, and stalked for what felt like hours before I stumbled upon his work: a group of bodies in one room. I should be clear that this isn’t a mission parameter. At no point does the game casually request that you heave corpses into a single room. This person had seriously misread the briefing materials and turned Sniper Elite into something resembling a serial killer’s den.

I’ve never felt more hunted in all my life. But even then, there was an easy fix. I left a mine in the room with the corpses and was rewarded a few moments later with an explosion.
 

Balcony of terror

A final story before I load the game back up and rejoin the hunt.

There’s a level called Sonderzüge Sabotage, a nighttime sortie where a vast building dominates the shadowy sky. The level is massive, but you’ll almost always end up battling your foe in and around that building. It has a fun layout, with a huge open area on the inside, large staircases leading up, and warrens of rooms throughout. There are also loads of drainpipes and open windows, meaning you can get in and hold it for a bit, but you can’t always know when someone is coming for you.

I was following both my gut and the occasional snap of a rifle. I climbed up the outside of the building at least three times, slipping in and out to ensure the host was thoroughly flummoxed. Then I heard a commotion outside again. Had I been had? I was on the top floor and crouch-ran to a large, open balcony. Below, there was chaos, with alarms flooding the square. I pulled out my binoculars and scanned—a dangerous move from where I was, because they also reflect warning glints. I was basically a lighthouse.

After a whole minute of scanning, I heard the telltale snap of a rifle again, except this time it was much closer than I expected.

We were standing about 15 feet apart and had been this whole time. We were on the same balcony…

I’m not going to tell you who won that battle, because we’d both already lost.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is an excellent time. Multiplayer is fun, co-op is a treat, and Invasion Mode is one of my favorite things to play. I’m not proud. When my mum calls and asks me what I’ve been doing that day, I mumble something about international relations and hang up.

And then I go back to hunting.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is available now on the Epic Games Store.