Uninspiring artistic direction, gameplay changes and a weak story make this otherwise superb FPS an unworthy sequel
Insomniac's Resistance Fall of Man was what made the PS3 worth buying back in 2006 and ensured 360 owners would sit up and take notice. Stable and impressive graphics, superb enemy AI that rivaled the best of what Halo had to offer, a strong fully-featured multiplayer supporting 40 players and an enjoyable alternate history campaign made the PS3 launch title a must-have and quickly established Insomniac as a competent FPS developer.
Resistance 2 puts us back in the shoes of Nathan Hale, the mutated US marine who fought and survived the Chimera invasion of Great Britain. The premise of the sequel is simple but effective, The Chimera have turned their sights on the US of A and Hale along with 3 other soldiers known as "Sentinels" who carry the gene that prevents them from being infected by the Chimeran spire attacks must do this, blow up that and shout loudly at each other in an attempt to save the land of the free from alien invasion.
Unfortunately the story here isn't nearly as engrossing or even coherent as the first game. In FoM the tale was narrated by a British Captain Rachel Parker who smoothed over any discrepancies in the narrative and the story cutscenes were monochrome static panels which helped enforce the alternate history themes. Resistance 2 falls back to the more conventional, and subsequently less interesting pre-rendered cutscenes which have a tendency to be grainy and overly bright regardless of your TV or video settings, nevertheless they're quite well done with strong facial animations and good framing and they're almost indistinguishable from the in-game visuals.
This does mean that there is nobody to explain the events taking place and they do need explaining because frankly the story is incomprehensible for the most part, the objectives themselves are simple. Activate this, prevent that, stop the crazy flying jellyfish with the scary voice from activating that thing there and blow this thing to smithereens but the overall narrative is poorly explained especially the circumstances surrounding Project Abraham and the experiments conducted on Sheppard (a different one) and Hale. It's adequate enough to provide enough context to funnel you from A to B but it'll definitely be a disappointment for fans of the original.
It doesn't help matters when Hale, the protagonist is semi-dislikable individual. The first game managed to create a sense of mystery around Hale and his survival of the spire attacks from the narration of Rachel and her opinion on Hale but now that Hale must carry the story on his own things don't turn out to be nearly as interesting. He's the same generic gruff marine-type he was in the first game but now he's both the protagonist and the centre of the plot you'll realize how dull and stereotypical his character really is from both his dialogue and the voice actor's one note delivery.
The Sentinels don't fare much better, Capelli is obnoxious and unfortunately compounds this by surviving the events of the story, Hawthorne is vanilla as you can make a mutated soldier and only Sgt. Warner the ubiquitous black sergeant offers any personality and human connection although most of it will come from the intel sheets that act as collectibles throughout the game. The main antagonist Sheppard provides some predictable voice-filtered moralizing on the superiority of the aliens and at least manages to lend some gravitas but on the whole the voice acting and characterisation ranges from adequate to mediocre and occasionally hints at idiotic (mainly supplied by Hale and Capelli).
Graphics (Technical):
Insomniac's Version 2 of its proprietary engine is a definite step up from the original in terms of technical grunt, FoM ran at a solid 30 and never faltered once but here it's just faster and smoother while offering the same stability. The engine also allows much greater numbers of enemies to be onscreen at once while still maintaining a solid framerate which is very impressive considering the sheer size and numbers of enemies that you may have in your field of view at once.
Lighting has also been improved somewhat over the original although it's quite static; shafts of light cascade through foliage and alien structures although you'll rarely find yourself in the darker, more forbidding lighting that characterised the first game. There are also huge levels of detail for the most part, occasionally you'll see flat textures, shiny waxed-dipped objects and at one point you'll look down from upon high to see that world stretching out around you looks like a Google maps picture has failed to load.
Sadly the engine's particle effects are not on par with its processing abilities, explosions are drab and gritty and several of the weapon effects haven't really been improved since we saw them in the original game. The new Bullseye variant especially has shots that just seem dissipate on enemies (not to mention the fact that the only difference is it's blue instead of red shots) and the fire effects are dreadful in every sense of the word and barely interact with the game's lighting which is odd to say the least.
You may also notice the fact that the engine doesn't do flora very well, it doesn't really much vary in colour, staying stubbornly dark green throughout and much of it is hard-lined 2D which is noticeably grainy, Something that will become evident while you traipse though a forest in Orick, California.
Insomniac has also upped the gore in Resistance 2. Even the humble shotgun will splatter aliens into associated organage and there's one sequence where intestines and so on are plastered to the other side of a window that the game forces you to look through. Even the largest enemies explode into various body parts and bloody fragments which would be nice if it wasn't so terrible to look at. Body pieces bounce around like they're made of Styrofoam, the blood looks like it was taken straight from the Dulux paint range and there's an odd lack of dismemberment for ordinary enemies, its gibing or nothing for Resistance 2 and it looks painfully fake though you may chuckle at the site of a group of hybrids being liquefied by a plasma cannon. The gore doesn't create any sort of horrific atmosphere and is plainly used for shock value rather than at least creating a mood, even Gears of War can use gore effectively and this attempt just cheapens Resistance 2 as a whole.
Graphics (Artistic):
Artistically the game has been taken in a new, more colourful direction and for a fan of the original, it will be incredibly disappointing. Insomniac listened to reviewers and not the fans of the first game, instead of continuing the dark, gritty World War Two themes of the original's art design, Insomniac have coupled a vibrant colour palette consisting mainly of orange and yellow hues with a cartoony interpretation of America in the early 50's. The world has none of the edge of the first game which was a major draw when Fall of Man was released and it makes Resistance feel much more like a sci-fi game than the military shooter/sci-fi hybrid that the first game was, especially as bar a few "Americana" levels you'd hardly realize you were playing a game set in the 1950's.
Compounding this is the fact that you won't really spend much time in recognizable surroundings, a couple of levels are set in a non-descript Icelandic base, there's completely forgettable level set in Bryce Canyon and the levels in Suburban America are so overly colourful that it destroys any kind of somber mood Insomniac may have wanted to create.
There are some gems here though, Chicago is a fantastic level full of 50's details and architecture and there's a sabotage sequence aboard a Chimera ship which is strewn with vertical walkways, massive open expanses for some enjoyable sniping and intricately detailed Chimeran architecture. This being said the Chimera architecture is unsettlingly similar to that seen in Crysis and it lacks the dank, horror elements that added to the atmosphere of Fall of Man, in short, we won't be seeing any hybrid assemblage here.
Another small but disappointing detail is that no longer are there any spire attacks, humans are now converted via small bug-like creatures called spinners, although this may cause initial fascination and disgust in equal measure it's not as impactful as watching the Chimera Carriers carry off the infected bodies of ordinary people and soldiers alike in the original.
Enemy design has also been cartoonishly redone when compared to the more grounded design of the first game. The ordinary Chimera still look nicely foul and suitably alien but the new design of the primarchs and ravagers is oddly lacking in menace, they're not scary anymore, not like they used to be in the first game. This may not have been the case if the game wasn't as bright and colourful but it is so we have to accept that the horror themes of Resistance Fall of Man have also been removed from the enemies that define the series. Insomniac has even made a zombie-type enemy which is basically a skinny naked human with a Chimera face; remember how much you hate Halo's Flood? This isn't that bad, but it's uncomfortably close. A new enemy zombie take does not a horror theme make Insomniac and you should know this just by playing any of the mediocre horror games of the last decade.
Sound:
Resistance 2 doesn't manage the heights of the original's fantastic score but it's audio redesign makes up for some of this. All the weapons have a lovely, satisfying kick in the audio department; especially the Marksman which sounds like a brace of cannon being fired directly at your foes. There's a lot of noise going on in this game, more often than not you'll have trouble distinguishing the score from the cacophony of 50 or more weapons going off at once. There are some great musical moments here; at one point the score brings the tension to fever pitch as you dodge a pair of seemingly invincible combat drones in an attempt to escape a military bunker. There isn't much to shout about musically here but it's perfectly serviceable and the brilliant sound effects make up for much of the lack of a strong original score.
Gameplay (Singleplayer):
The core action of Resistance is still here and it's just as smooth, frenetic and joyous as ever. The controls have been streamlined to the "L1 to aim, R1 to fire and R3 to knife" arrangement popularised by the recent Call of Duty games and its actually welcome as the more Halo-ish controls of the last game couldn't totally manage the frenetic action. That's said, you will be doing more aiming and ducking behind cover than the circle strafing and grenade chucking that Fall of Man required.
Enemy AI is still leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, the Chimera display no human characteristics whatsoever, instead they display "believable" behaviour. They're unrelentingly aggressive, charging you and suppressing you at every opportunity, working collaboratively to box you in then they'll either rush in to finish you off or rip you apart with hedgehog grenades. Be prepared for a challenge, this is probably the most difficult FPS campaign on the highest difficulty (Superhuman) since Call of Duty 4's veteran. Even on normal the game will kill you outright if you make the wrong move, calculating how to expend you secondary fire ammunition, grenades and which threats to take out first is extremely challenging against AI this good but it's wonderfully rewarding once you become accustomed to the pace and occasional pure insanity of the action here.
Resistance 2 also brings a new wrinkle to the formula, which is scale. When I mentioned huge numbers of enemies I'm not talking about 20 or 30, you'll get up to 60 enemies onscreen frequently in large scale battles and there are a couple of semi-boss battles (although the most impressive of these is really just a cinematic sequence that you happen to have control in) fill the screen such is their size and you won't fail to be dumbstruck by the Goliath and the Leviathan, not even Gears of War 2 can match the scale seen here.
It's not completely obvious at first but this iteration owes much more to Call of Duty than it does to Half Life 2 and to a lesser extent Halo (although there are Halo driven changes here too). This is immediately evident from the start as the radial weapon wheel has been discarded, now replaced by the two-weapon only system of CoD and Halo.
As a result the game offers you much less freedom in terms of how you want to play, even if you hoard ammo for your rocket launcher or shotgun you'll eventually have to abandon it and take up the carbine or the Bullseye. This is probably the worst decision made in the entire design process, we can't chose how we want to play bar the few choices that Insomniac deigns to give to us and this makes the game so much less enjoyable as you have to play the game how the developers want you to play. No overpowered toys to save up for a hard section, no messing about with alternate fire mechanics just because you can and you'll spend about 70% of the game with a carbine and a Bullseye strapped to your back instead of being able to draw out the best of the arsenal when you feel like it and damn the consequences of wasting ammo that'll give you an edge later.
The CoDisms continue when you realize that the innovative health bar of the original has been replaced by the recharging health system which is more of a gaming staple than the classic red barrel. It does allow the action to be more frenetic and dangerous than the first game and you'll be glad of the freedom it provides when playing on the harder difficulties but a layer of depth and complexity has been removed and after a few hours you'll come to miss the adrenaline rush of darting out under fire to nab that one health pack then ducking behind cover as the health section recharged that characterised Fall of Man's firefights.
Fortunately Resistance 2's arsenal is just as enjoyable as ever, Insomniac made their name devising interesting and destructive deathsticks and Resistance 2 is no different. The best of the last game return in force such as the staple carbine, the Bullseye with its tertiary fire functionality, the wall-ignoring Auger, the time-slowing Fareye and the ever-satisfying Rossmore shotgun. All are subtly tweaked and fettled but still just as enjoyable to fire. New to the mix are the magnum which fires shots which can be detonated at will, a minigun that will shred anything before it, a disk launcher which will cut the new Grims to pieces and a burst-firing battle rifle which is similar to the one in Halo but you'll only register the fact when comparing how inferior Halo's version is to this one. All have the secondary fire additions that were so fun in the first game and they're all fun to fire bar the Bellock which is a total waste of pixels and oddly included in the multiplayer. The only complaint I have is that there isn't anything truly crazy on offer, especially considering Insomniac's reputation as creators of over-the-top arsenals.
Gameplay (Multiplayer):
Multiplayer was a huge part of the first game and it's probably the best reason for you to play this game. Insomniac has installed dedicated servers for large matches and the netcode is so good that even peer-to-peer hosting is practically lag free. This is a good thing as Resistance 2 can support up to 60 players in a single match. I have no idea how Insomniac achieved this in a non-pc and non-multiplayer only title but it's astonishing. Fortunately the 60 player matches are relegated to simple Team Deathmatch affairs so the objective based game types don't degrade into a tedious war of attrition. All the standard match types are here with the inclusion of a randomly changing Skirmish which puts players in squads and sets them different objectives. Sadly the crowd favourite Breach game mode isn't here and you can't change any of the multiplayer settings like you can with Halo 3. A CoD killstreak-like "Berserk" has been added, the only difference is the points accumulate regardless of deaths and there's only one rather than different ones depending on the number of kills.
There's the usual ranking system but it requires painful hours grinding and the rewards aren't nearly as satisfying as anything found in Battlefield Bad Company or any of the recent CoD titles, mostly meaning new skins and additions to your online characters. The maps are many and varied and they all cater for both large and small matches and they're all well designed with multiple routes and carefully designed choke points. Sadly the weapons aren't quite the same as they are in the single-player game; the minigun has both its accuracy and power cut back, the Bellock , disk-launcher and shotgun have all been weakened in the name of balance and are borderline useless even when you're playing on the smaller maps and there's an unhealthy bias towards sniping as where the scope points, the shot lands and in most cases a single shot to the body will take at least 50-60% of your health which usually means a kill in a 60 player game.
What may disappoint fans of the series is the lack of any local co-op for the campaign. Instead Insomniac has chosen to give us an 8-player co-op outside the campaign which is based around a class system. There are three classes: Soldiers who carry miniguns with shields to protect the rest of the team and kill enemies with ease, Recons who are the only class capable of generating ammo and Medics (you can guess this one right?). You go through a various number of menial objectives while being attacked by literally thousands of enemies in a single game, culminating in an intense large scale battle with a boss type enemy.
Think of it as a dumbed-down co-operative Team Fortress 2, you need a roughly equal number of each class in your squad in order to survive and you all need to work together to have any chance of surviving even on the normal difficulty. The enemy AI is also dumbed-down due to the excessive numbers onscreen but they've been beefed up when it comes to resilience to fire so don't expect things to play like they do in the campaign. It's a nice addition and should be included in the next game, but so should online and local co-op for the campaign. It doesn't quite replace the fun of two friends taking on Fall of Man together but it's close and definitely something worth keeping.
Conclusion:
Resistance 2 is an exercise in the design philosophy of "More = better" and it works to varying degrees. The gameplay is still as crazy and enjoyable as before and in terms of scale you won't find a game that'll best Resistance 2's immense battlefields and gigantic enemies. Not all of the changes have been for the better however, it's clear that Insomniac drew more from Call of Duty than Half Life 2 and even the Halo games when designing the gameplay. This is a worthy FPS in its own right and certainly matches up to the Halo's and Call of Duty's of this world in terms of gameplay, content and presentation but as a successor to Fall of Man? No. The story is weak and unclear compared the gonzo alternate history tale of the first game, some of the best elements of its predecessor have been removed and it just doesn't feel as "Resistance"-like as it should. If ever there was a case of "sequelitis" in a game, this is definitely it.
The Rundown:
Pros
+ Superb AI design
+ Incredibly graphical stability, improvements have been made across the board to Resistance's graphical fidelity
+ Still fantastic FPS gameplay which is frenetic and intense as the last game, if not more so.
+ You won't find scale like this in an FPS game anywhere
+ Insomniac again deliver a rich and rewarding arsenal, one of the best weapon sets in recent shooter memory
+ Multiplayer is just as fun and chaotic as the singleplayer campaign and is virtually lag-free despite the huge numbers of players it can support. Nicely designed maps and dedicated servers means this game will have legs up until the sequel replaces it.
+ Interesting take on the co-op mode which should be developed further for Resistance 3
+ Nicely challenging. Optional difficulties range from manageable for FPS players to brutally punishing even for genre veterans
+ Sound effects are raw and punchy, especially when it comes to the Marksman rifle
+ The Chicago level is a masterpiece of scale and spectacle and some of the missions set in Chimera bases are huge with loving details throughout.
+ Lots of content provided by 3 seperate modes, the campaign is the typical 7-8 hours plus untold hours of multiplayer and co-op
Cons:
- Graphical fidelity has its low points, especially when it comes to fire effects
- Art design is inferior to the first game in terms of themes, imagination and overall style. A huge disappointment for fans of Fall of Man
- Recharging health replaces the innovative health system of the last game
- Only 2 weapons means you'll never have the freedom to approach a encounter how you want to, it's devolved back into "here's a rocket launcher because you'll need one" school of gameplay design.
- Multiplayer weapons aren't as fun or useful as they are in the singleplayer and there's an imbalance in favour of snipers, no adjustable settings put the game behind its biggest competitor: Halo 3.
- No local or online co-op for the campaign
- Enemy design is as cartoonish and unthreatening as the artistic design you'll fight them in.
- No truly crazy new weapons to play with.
- Hale and the Sentinels are boring at best, incredibly dislikable the rest of the time. Voice acting doesn't do anything to help this
- Weak story with an unclear goal and virtually no explanation. It all devolves into a "Blow this up" plot by the end and by then you won't really care. A massive let-down considering the surprisingly quality of the original.
This is worth your time for the gameplay (both in single and multiplayer), the AI and the magnificent scale. It's a great shooter in its own right and if you haven't played the original then you won't understand what I've been talking about. Don't expect a coherent or enjoyable story, likable characters or any reason to play this game beyond the quality of its gameplay. This is a brilliant gameplay focused shooter, a truly jaw-dropping exercise in scale and a disappointing sequel to one the best games on ever made for PS3.