What you looking at, 6-eyes?
When faced with a Vogon, you'll be told "Resistance is useless!" When faced with a Borg, you'll be told "Resistance is futile!" when faced with a Chimera, you'll be told "GRAHH!! RARGHH!! ARGH!! BLARGH!!" and then you'll have your face bitten off. Actions speak louder than words.
When it arrived, Resistance: Fall of Man had the unenviable task of justifying both the purchase of some very expensive gaming hardware, and justifying the inclusion of what made the hardware so expensive in the first place, the Blu-Ray drive. While it did a sketchy job of doing either of those things, it did very well as a game, in spite of the burden placed on it. It sold well and has a dedicated, hardcore online following. And Sony must have great faith in the franchise, as they are confident enough in it to push Killzone 2 back to next year, and leave Resistance 2 to take on heavy hitters like Gears of War and Call of Duty all on its lonesome. Not bad going for a mashup of Half Life 2 and World War 2 that was rushed to meet a console launch deadline.
Two years on, Insomniac want you to get back into Nathan Hales' shaven noggin and stare out of his glowing eyes to stop those 6-eyed Chimeran freaks making the place look untidy with those big towers they keep shoving all over the landscape. He's kind of a mutant Fred Dibnah.
Deja View
The game picks up exactly where the first left off, with Hale staggering around in the snowy outskirts of London, and being rudely grabbed by the Sentinels (it made my eyes water). Shoved on a plane and drugged, he awakes above a strangely warm and verdant looking Icelandic landscape, which is being gently blasted to shit by a Goliath, a vast, walking death tank that looks at least twice as massive as the one you had to play hide and
go fuck yourself seek with when driving the Stalker in Resistance 1.
Yes, in Resistance 2,
everything is bigger, and they want you to know it straight away. Iceland seems a lovely place to have your plane shot down. The broad colour palette is a great contrast to the first games sludgy wartorn tones, and it's immediately evident that textures and environments are of a much higher quality. Throughout the game foliage, rocks and water have a great naturalistic look to them, and while the game seems a little lighter on post processing effects than its predecessor, for the most part, the higher detail levels make it unnecessary.
It's bigger, brighter, more crisp, and pleasing in every way except for the frame rate, which remains stuck at the 30fps of the first game. It's a shame, because playing the game it soon becomes clear that they've honed the feel to be close to that of Call of Duty 4. Iron sights aiming and strafing is much improved, and sprinting after Major Blake, dodging the shitstorm of fire from the Goliath and its accompanying Stalkers is reminiscent of the All Ghillied Up section of CoD4. It all feels more focussed than the first game, but not as smooth as it would with a 60hz refresh.
In the process of this refinement, gone is the slightly confusing multi-page ring system for selecting weapons and grenades, now Nathan can only carry 2 weapons at a time. Also gone is the four-bar health system in favour of the ubiquitous rest and refresh system, it brings the game into line with most other shooters out there, but does give proceedings a more homogenised air. Personally I always found it more handy when games would let me carry several tons of artillery, mysteriously ensconced about my person, reality is overrated.
Pastafarian
Once you've met a nice flying spaghetti monster called Daedalus, and given the Goliath a Star Wars style exhaust-port enema this little prologue is done and the game cuts forward 3 years. Nathan Hale is now a member of SRPA and can boss those gas-masked Sentinels around as much as he likes (they don't beep anymore, not even when they're dead!) No longer dressed in army drab green, but in a black T-Shirt, with an over the ear headset/mic, and a squad of clichéd bad-asses who are all tooled up with Human/Chimeran hybrid weapons, and they bark things at each other like "You're needed in Sac-Com, Code Black" and other such abbreviated gobbledygook that seems completely out of place in the 50s.
Yes, you guessed it, the game is now basically bald space marines, except in 50s America. This change in tone really makes the retro setting irrelevant. These bald machismo jerks shooting aliens could be lifted out of, or dropped into, any Sci-fi shooter you care to name. They can be genuinely helpful at times, but the game feels best when they're not around, and when Hale himself keeps his gob-shut. I thought his taciturn, Gordon Freeman like silence was a bit dull in the first game, but I longed for it this time. Dialogue? More like DIRE-log!
As a story, and as a larger story arc, Resistance peels its layers back very well. The premise is good, even if they may owe
Harry Turtledove a drink, the pace of the revelations about both the history of the Chimera, and the dabblings of the Russians with their DNA is excellently done, but the poor script does its best to sabotage it. As does the by the numbers voice casting. Having got people like BSG's Katee Sackhoff and Edward James Olmos to contribute to the publicity campaign, it makes for a big comedown.
It doesn't ruin the game, by any means, though. I'm, probably kind of a snob about these things, and even I could grit my teeth and get on with enjoying the visual treats and run & gun larks on offer.
The game
is a lot more run & gun this time too, with very generous checkpointing and a more effective arsenal available much earlier in the game, you'll be enjoying the new exploding bodies of Chimeran Hybrids, Steelheads and Grims in no time. Perhaps aware they'd be going up against the gung-ho hijinx of Gears 2, big bangs, bigger enemies and more intense violence have replaced the more tense and tactical play of the first game. The difficulty seems to be quite a bit lower too. Even on its easiest setting the first game offered some stiff challenges - the first time you took on a Stalker, the brutal Titan and the absolute chaos of Tower Bridge. There's little to match these choking points in R2. Anyone who's played much of Fall of Man should go straight for the "Difficult" setting to get an equal experience.
It's like deja vu, all over again
Playing through a second time doesn't net you any new weapons this time, either. Where Resistance 1 offered re-players the independently targetable dual-wield reapers, the flesh boiling L112 Dragon and the brilliant Backlash shield-grenade, there are no such prizes for persistent Chimera killers this time, in fact, those weapons didn't make the cut at all. There are a few new weapons, but apart from the Wraith mini-gun with it's mobile bubble shield, the Ratchet & Clank weapons masters seem not to have innovated much in the guns department this time.
The game has some fantastic set piece encounters though, being charged by dozens of Hybrids and Steelheads while dodging hellfire cannons and the attacks of 4 stalkers in Chicago, followed by the rampaging Leviathan, who stands taller than the skyscrapers he romps around. After taking on the games huge boss creatures, being hunted in the Californian woods - Predator style - by the invisible Chameleons, and blasting your way through a couple of thousand of Chimeran troops, the final battle above Chicxulub seems a little flat by comparison. Although the view from up there is stunning.
After the crazy barrage of Steelheads, Hardfangs, Titans, Angels and everything else they could throw at you at the end of Resistance: FoM's excellent climax, it doesn't really measure up. The ending itself does deliver a good impact though, and poses some very interesting questions for the sequel.
On the whole, the single player experience is of a much higher quality, but seems to offer less in terms of challenge and playtime. This is down to chekpointing, which rarely asks you to repeat too much of what you've done before should you die. In and of itself, I generally approve of that, but it does cut down on the need to approach things as tactically as you might otherwise need to. It's a blockbuster presentation, with a campaign more people are likely to get through than with the first game, but it doesn't quite satisfy the same way.
I don't want to be alone
Of course, a lot of the resources that might have gone into more for the SP campaign have gone into hugely beefing up what was already a benchmark online game. Competitive multiplayer support has rocket jumped from 32 players to 60; and new to the series is the 8 player co-op mode.
We were told beforehand the co-op mode would be like a separate story mode, but it's more like a set of stand-alone missions. There are 5 co-op maps, (some bringing back English locations from Resistance 1) with 26 various different objectives available to play through on them. Some are simple like defusing a bomb and defending the position, to others which are huge firefights with hard as nails Chimeran forces. There are 3 classes, Soldier, Medic and Spec Ops, each of which can be leveled up, for those who want to specialise.
It's essential to work as a close team, as Chimera are much tougher in co-op than in the main game, and it's not so much co-operation as co-dependence. Spec Ops re-supply vital ammo and shields to the Wraith carrying Soldiers, the Soldiers shields provide vital shelter from weapons fire and the medics drain energy from enemies and heal other players with it. Thankfully, the quality of the voice chat is crystal clear, much the best I've found in any online title yet.
It adds a lot of life to the experience, and makes a nice change from sheer competitive shooting, although there's plenty of that on offer too. The 60 player Skirmish matches sound like they would descend into chaos, but each player is assigned to a smaller squad, which is given their own objectives to fulfill. It can be capturing or holding a beacon, or killing/defending a randomly selected player who becomes a designated target of the opposition.
Two Conk Lewd
When this is working properly, it works brilliantly, although there does still seem to be a bug which was present in the Beta, where the game simply stops selecting anymore objectives, and just has everybody attacking and defending the same beacon over and over. Hopefully this will be patched, as a 100 Round game I was playing in got stuck like this at Round 37. I didn't stick around to finish the match.
Away from Skirmish mode, the other MP modes are your classic DM Team, DM and Core Control, on maps new and old. It all works smoothly, seems lag-free, even on worldwide servers, and has much improved matchmaking options over Resistance 1, which, now the game supports your PSN friends list should have the community from the first game migrating in short order.
For some, the admittedly excellent multiplayer offerings lift the score a notch, but for me the experience isn't quite top-drawer material. It's fantastic looking, has great set-pieces, handles better, has an expanded and much improved multiplayer experience and continues to engage me with the premise and great enemy designs. But the descent into clichéd space marine territory, the dodgy script, the non-story led co-op modes and the choice to remain at 30 frames per second keep me from giving this the full praise I might otherwise have showered on it.
It's still a cracking good game though.
Chillingo Game Sale
(0) (19/12) 
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Trip SkyWay - on 28/11/2008 at 03:39 wrote:
Slightly more interested in picking this up after reading your review. The single player had been taking a bashing on a few podcasts I'd listened to and that's what I'd been after. I like the sound of the co-op but chances are I'd not get to play it with friends so it's not enough to sell me it.
JohnnyM60 - on 28/11/2008 at 10:13 wrote:
Wondered why I kept seeing you playing it all night. :)
Gonna pick it up later today. Can't wait to get cracking with the multi, had a delicious taste from the beta and I've missed it.
Old maps in competitive? What?! Didn't know that. Which are they?
Great review btw.
Hughes. - on 28/11/2008 at 12:47 wrote:
My mistook, the old areas like Bracknell and Axbridge are only in co-op, I just assumed they'd bulk out the Competitive with classic maps too, as most shooters do.
The only thing I forgot to mention was the lack of any vehicle sections this time, so no tank driving or Stalker walking this time out. It's a shame, as I did love blasting everything to shit with the tank.
ilmaestro - on 28/11/2008 at 16:44 wrote:
Heh, great first paragraph.