non-gravity

User Score
8.9

Presentation - 8.0
Gameplay - 8.5
Value - 9.5

At the launch of the PlayStation 3 Insomniac Games, maker of excellent plat-formers, came out with a new IP. Ratchet and Clank had always been a plat-former/shooter hybrid but were they able to start a successful new First-Person Shooter franchise? Yes they were. The original Resistance: Fall of Man was one of the ps3’s early must-have titles. Now is Insomniac able to expand upon the Fall of Man?

The Resistance universe is set in an alternative version of the 1950’s. In Resistance: Fall of Man the whole of Europe has been overrun by a force known as the Chimera. Our protagonist, Nathan Hale, set out to save Great Britain and after being infected by the Chimeran virus Hale developed special abilities. Resistance 2 starts off directly were the last game ended. After the events of the first game the Chimera are now targeting the United States of America and launch a full-scale aerial attack. Hale joins up with a group of other super-soldiers known as the Sentinels and now has to do whatever it takes to defend his country, while he himself is slowly being changed into the very evil he is fighting.

(Chimeran Background: The Chimera are a species of unconfirmed origin, who serve as the main enemies in the game. They first appeared in Siberia shortly after the Tunguska event in the game's alternate history. The human forces initially believed the Chimera to be the result of a biological experiment gone wrong, but through events and revelations during the course of Fall of Man, along with the Chimeras' advanced technologies such as weather control, energy weapons, and force fields, it became obvious to the humans that the Chimera are extraterrestrial in origin. The Chimeran army expands by infecting humans with a mutagenic virus that causes its victims to fall into a coma, then slowly transform into Chimera while inside cocoons.)

This time around Resistance falls more in line with other modern First-Person Shooters: The health bar has been replaced with a regenerating one and while last time you could carry around every weapon at the same time, you are now limited to two. The game does feature more color and has diverse environments across the US and Iceland.  And it still has the wide weapon variety (inspired by Ratchet and Clank) that made the first game so enjoyable.

While great in scope the single-player can feel a bit underwhelming. The story is told through various cut scenes (where Nathan actually talks instead of the first game’s narrative view), but the story doesn’t go very deep. And additional storytelling through hidden intel doesn’t help either. There are some big bosses to fight but each of them is more like a puzzle, so once you discover how to deal with them they are lot less scary.

Fortunately the single-player is not all there is, the online component is where the most fun is to be had. With an impressive 60 player online Competitive mode featuring 5 different game modes and a never-seen-before 8-player online Cooperative mode this is where the game truly shines. Though you can’t play the campaign with a friend and offline co-op is not that much fun you can always play online co-op and online multiplayer split-screen with a friend.

The Competitive mode features 5 different game modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag (Core Control),Skirmish, and released via update, Meltdown, from Resistance: Fall of Man. You will see these modes in most other shooters as well, but Skirmish is something different. In a squad you’ll be given an objective you need to complete. There can be multiple squads on one team needing to complete different objectives. (These objectives are pretty simple: Seize this beacon, kill that person and run there.) Near the end of the battle most squads come together to complete one final objective resulting in a grander battle. In the menu you can choose a weapon and with enough collected experience you can active a perk (super power). Enemies do take more bullets to die than in other shooters, but this won’t kill the fun. And every action or bullet that hits an opponent will give you experience points to rank up.

Last but not least there is the Cooperative mode. It features a separate campaign running parallel to the single-player campaign. Supporting anything from 2-8 players, you will take the role of a special forces group. Your team is tasked with randomized objectives around the map, while defeating hordes of Chimera on your way. You will have to pick one of three classes each of which are absolutely necessary for you team to survive:

Special Ops - long-distance damage dealers, who also provide ammunition;

Soldiers - who can endure the most damage and have a limited power shield to protect the rest of their team from enemy bullets;

Medics - who are tasked with healing or reviving their teammates and can also drain health from the Chimera.

The graphics are quite good, though they can look sub-par in the online modes; the game certainly is colorful and has some diverse levels. Though there certainly is room for improvement in some areas, the game’s gameplay is great fun and there is a lot of replayability in the online modes. If you’re looking for a great online experience either with friends or alone, look no further.