R:FOM Combines all the great parts it takes to create an immersive and action-filled FPS with great story and design.
+ Great story and story-telling
+ Fantastic weapon design
+ "Wait.... is that london.... for real?"
+ Great Character and enemy design
+ Superb sound quality and voice acting
+ Quite long Single-Player
Cons:
- Disappointing Graphics at times
For the record, this review is based only on the single-player experience.
I have yet not tried the multi-player long enough to be able to judge it.
Story:
In Resistance: Fall of Man, the U.S. and Britain band together in a last-ditch effort to save Europe and Asia from a horrific scourge. In mere decades, the Chimera, a species of unknown origin, propagating a virus that converts other life forms into more Chimera has overrun Russia and all of Europe. Humanity's hope for survival is slim, and the tide of the battle rests on the shoulders of U.S. Army Ranger, Sgt. Nathan Hale. Resistance: Fall of Man draws the player into a deep, frightening story that rewrites the 20th century and pits the United States and Britain against a horrific species of unknown origin.
All of this takes place it in 1951, the chimeran has conquered most of the world at the last remaining lands try to protect themselves from a fate that comes closer everyday. The story-telling are among the best i have ever seen, it is explained in the game with so much feeling and emotion combined with great voice action that you instantly will be drawn into it. The story is very good but also easy to understand. This is a truly top-class script you will experience throughout the game.
What makes it extra emotional is to see humanity struggle with the technology of the WW2 versus a foe that can build plasma weapons and giant machines that walks through the cities and devastates everything with anti-air missiles and laser cannons, combine this with that the chimera turns the humans they defeat into new chimeran and you got one epic story that truly grabs you.
Graphics:
Resistance Gives a mixed reaction on graphics, while they are good, you do not need something as powerful as a PS3 to run them, in fact, you do not even need an Xbox 360 to run them.
While the graphics look juat a bit better than the best-looking Xbox (original one) games, they are still good enough to not be a problem, most of the lightnig is awesome but the textures tend to be somewhat low-res.
The way glass shatter is amazing though, but since there are not a lot of glass to shatter in the game, i can not imagine why they focused at that.
The light bloom effect in the game is really good and the design helps to give an impressive feeling, the textures look a bit out of place though. Sometimes you will encounter a group of enemuies just to see that some of them have high resolution skins while the other have low resolution skins, and since the enemies and characters are heavily bump-mapped unlike the environment it looks even weirder.
But overall i thing the graphics are good, i would compare it to the graphics of Half-Life 2, it looks good, but a bit outdated today. And most work has gone into the detail on the environment and the setting.
But considering that the PS3 did not exist at the time of development, it is understandable that it are no jaw-dropping graphics. After all, they designed the game after a console that had not been released at the time of development.
Gameplay:
Resistance features standard run and gun action with crazy enemies and insane weapons.
Your standard enemy is the chimeran infantry soldier but over the course of the game you will face more than 20 different enemies all looking as fearsome and impressive as the last one.
The main attraction of Resistances gameplay is its over the top insane weapon design, all weapon are as weird and crazy as you can imagine. The games rocket launcher can, for example, stop the rockets in mid-air and change its direction and then let it start move again, you can also stop the rocket in mid-air and have it spin around to release a swarm of homing missiles. Another weapon can fire tags that attaches itself to enemies and attracts the weapons primary plasma blasts, one wepaon can shoot through walls as well as create a shield that blocks all projectiles but its own. My favorite is the splitter gun which allows you to fire a large green blast of energy that you can split horizontally and vertically to create a net of energy bolts, or you can just split it in one direction to create a shockwave of it.
There are also vehicles in Resistance, such as a tank and a military armored car, but these serves mostly to add variety, after a while you will want to get back to using your standard weapons again. The tank is enjoyable though.
In Resistance you have four health bars, these are being affected when you take damage. If one bar is is being depleted the next will start taking damage, if you can avoid damage long enough the current bar will regenerate itself, you recover these bars of health by picking up yellow medkits from enemies, much like in Pariah.
You can carry all your weapons at once that gives a nice old-school feel, there are 8 weapons in the game at first, but once you beat the game you can replay it with 4 more weapons added to the levels.
Most of the levels are linear but the design are very well done and you will recognise a lot in the game if you have been to England yourself.
Sound:
The sound is really good, voice acting is superb, weapons feel powerful and enemies sound intimidating.
Sound quality is with other words just plain great.
Replay value:
You will most likely want to replay Resistance at least once, which will give you a lot of worth for your money since the single-player is so long.
Not only do you unlock a harder difficulty when you beat the game which makes you have to play twice if you want to beat it at the highest difficulty but you also unlock 4 new weapons that can make the second playthrough quite surprising too.