Not quite a killer-app, but worth every penny.
Well it's good, but it's not quite that good. While the gameplay is great, it has a few minor flaws that keep it from getting a perfect score.
The artificial intelligence is absolutely amazing. It is by far the best AI I've played with in a console game to date, bar none. The feel of it channels initial reactions to playing Half-life for the first time: "Holy crap, did it just do that?" "No way, that Chimera flanked me???" (The Chimera are the game's enemies).
A prime example: I was told to go take out the Chimera in a building. I move in, fighting my way through. After dying a few times, I knew there were going to be Chimera waiting inside a door, so I thought I'd wear them down with some hop 'n' pop firing. I was wrong. Once the Chimera knew where I was, they circled around outside the building and came up and hit me from behind. I know this, because after I died and reloaded, I used the exact same route to flank them: only to find they had met me halfway while one came OUT the original door and hit me from behind.
Yes, they're THAT good.
And you'll be fighting a lot of them at a time. Channeling the Serious Sam series, you'll be fighting in some instances ten and fifteen or more Chimera at a time, sometimes more.
Of course you're not fighting alone. Other soldiers are there with you. For the most part, they don't share the skill that the enemy AI has, but to be honest, I never paid attention to it, nor gave them a chance to find out how good their AI is. You won't miss it though: you'll be doing most of the fighting during the game.
And the weapon design is incredible: You'll have guns with rifle grenade launchers, guns that fire homing tags that can target enemies for steady automatic fire, guns that can make your own energy shield, guns that can be dual wielded....I've been told the designers are the team that did Rachet and Clank. I never played that game, but the weapon design definitely draws upon that.
The level design is well done:It never quite feels like a maze, but it does feel sufficiently like an occupied city.
Only downside I've noticed so far: The graphics just aren't up to par. PS3 was touted as a graphical powerhouse. Well Resistance is far from ugly, but if you're not playing on a HDTV on an HDMI cable, you're not going to like how it looks. Interestingly enough, I had played Resistance BEFORE I played Gears of War, and had compared Resistance's graphics to being slightly below those of some of the prettier 360 games before Gears of War. However, there is a caveat to this: the graphics get MUCH better as the game progresses. I don't really know why that is.
Soundtrack is average. Not particularly bad, not awe inspiring. Sound effects are likewise, though better than average.
On a whole, I'd recommend this game as a definite buy, but if you have other games you'd rather play first, by all means go to it. Just don't lose R:FOM in the shuffle...while it's not a "killer app", it's a great game.