Title: Resistance: Fall of Man

Date: 12.04.2006

Genre: FPS

Platform: PlayStation 3

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publisher: SCEA

Where Am I?
Consider yourself in the middle of a battle field where two huge metal spiders are crawling around a snowy city while an opposing enemy throws a grenade sending hundreds of needles in every direction. Some piercing its own allies and others killing your comrades. You take your gun raise it at the enemy spider and before you can even get off a shot the metal giant have already turned its turrets on you as well as the other 30 to 40 chimera in the general vicinity. You start firing aimlessly while stepping backwards throwing an air fuel grenade which emits a large area of gas into the air around a squad of 5-10 chimera. The gas then lights and the entire squad are burned black while the stalkers slowly walk through the smoke.

You then take out another weapon in your ever expanding arsenal and use the alternate fire to create an electric barrier in front of you. The Stalkers Ammo is repelled off of the electrical shield while you turn around and run into an abandoned house hold. From their, you get behind a cracked brick wall and begin to fire your weapons shots directly through the bricks and into the cockpit of the robotic spider. You look to your left and you see Laark ammo on the floor. Loading your cannon you hide behind the wall and wait for the fire to stop. The stalkers turret has overheated and you take this opportunity to come peak your head outside the window and fire off two rockets directly into the body of the beast. It explodes, filling the air with smoke and metal legs all over the disassembled city block.

Immediately you see a golden shine on the ceiling above you. Natural Instincts force you to take four steps backward as golden beams of light drip from the ceiling like rain. Quickly using the same munitions you fire your own shots into the ceiling and suddenly things are oddly silent. It then takes you less then a second to analyze what's going on. Coming to the realization that you have dozens of chimera outside of the building shooting inwards, an auger carrying chimera on the second floor of your supposed safe spot, and now a large organic spider breaking open a fence to your left spewing large bubbles of acid. You think about your comrades and if it's possible they could help, but to your dismay you see that they're all busy holding off the western front where even more chimera and another stalker waits...

Story
These are the types of situations that Resistance constantly puts you into during the campaign and all need to be handled strategically based on the weapons that you carry. How much you may or may not like the story of Resistance is up to your personal preference really. If you enjoy being a detective and finding clues to further explain a rather cryptic storyline then this game is perfect for you. But on the other hand if you like stories that reveal everything straight up and puts everything on the table then this story may not be for you. Basically instead of World War II occurring many events that did not happen in our own reality lead up to a large scale chimeran attack beginning in Russia to eventually snowball its way to Britain. The only place in Europe the Chimera has yet to either convert or completely destroy.

Now chimera's origins, reasons for attack and relations to another strange yet unseen group are explained somewhat in the story, but you'll find most of this information through Intel somewhat hidden within each stage. Nathan Hale the stories hero came from Americas attempt to help out Europe in this growingly impossible war. As the story gets to the halfway point of the first level something strange happens to Hale, which results in him gaining the positive attributes of your average chimeran soldier. One being regenerative powers due to the Chimera's high metabolism, and the other is increasingly fast reflexes and reactions. The story is well put together and done in a History Channel-esque way of narration by a British female commanding officer.

Game Play
The game play mechanics are of course that of your average first person shooter. The default controls (everything is customizable) have you shooting with R1. Secondary fire is done with L1, while L2 is for crouching and R2 is for either bringing up a weapon switch menu by holding down the button or a quick switch by simply tapping it. During the single player campaign the game pauses when you hold down R2 to change your weapons, but if you play Co op through the campaign, then the pause is taken off meaning less time to really sit and think what weapon is best for that certain scenario. Controls are tight and you'll never see a bullet fly past your head and still damage you or the other way around. Your fire will show its affect on the chimera wherever your bullet pierces skin, clothing, or armor.

Resistance also offers more then one way to handle the various battles and you find yourself actually using every means of attack you obtain out of pure necessity. It's too many times in shooters where I find myself using only one weapon exclusively when I have an array of weapons under my belt, but luckily Insomniac has addressed this problem by including weapons that are all useful. Don't let the standard Assault Rifle, Shotgun, and sniper rifle fool you. There is a healthy supply of weaponry here and all are fun, useful and highly original. Each gun has a good purpose and it's up to you as Nathan Hale to really figure what each gun is best for and trust me...each gun will either save you on many various occasions or provide you with an experience you will never forget.

As for other game play features. Resistance offers offline cooperative play with a friend, which adjusts the difficulty level by adding more enemies, tougher AI, and other surprises. An offline death match providing matches for up to 4 players. Unfortunately there are no bots in this game so you will have to venture online for the famed 40 player battles everyone's been talking about. Oh and trust me you don't want to miss out on the online play. I don't want to spoil anything from the game, but there are also vehicles. Vehicles are extremely easy to use and provide the player with a whole lot of fun. Basically things get intense and that's what Resistance will be known for to the players who have completed the game.

FrameRate?
As for lag and glitches, I must say I've seen close to none. Actually I've never experienced lag, but if I must say something negative then I'll say that your comrades Ai could use some work. They are not nearly as intelligent as your enemies and they more or less are cannon fodder. The game offers things called "Hero Moments" where you can actually save a soldiers life, but eventually they will most likely die anyway.

Environment
Now the environments are always different with every level and provide the player with an experience that will not only cause complete immersion, but also make them look in awe as snow falls and over 40 soldiers battle it out on a burned and close to completely destroyed avenue. At the same time large metal spiders trot around trees and over rubble. Now I've yet to see level designs this impressive in a long time, and the variations in level designs are increasingly impressive as well. You will start the game with two levels very similar to what you'd expect to see in a World War II game, but immediately after that you will be thrust into a dark and claustrophobic abandoned pier covered in smog and alien architecture.

The game can be completely quiet then down the hallway of a dark corridor a shadow will sprint by. The game will let out a suspenseful screech and from there you will be left in silence. You will actually be afraid to turn corners and the game does a great job of creating these growing emotions through its various battlefields. Levels span from huge all out wars in a destroyed city, to abandoned military bases where a flashlight is needed simply to navigate its long hallways and disturbing laboratories. I mean you even get to walk through dark subway cars with some being at weird angles providing a very cool level.

The sounds of explosions and footsteps further your immersion into the game. You will hear faint screams in the smaller areas and lines of huge explosions from the larger maps. Sound will often save your life as well as each gun makes a specific noise that will basically let you know someone's there and they're using a specific gun giving you time to choose the right weapon to take down this opposing threat.

Graphics are not bad at all due to the games environments. But sometimes you will likely notice some textures looking rather simplistic compared to the rest of the games beautiful scenery. Character models are amazing, but sometimes these piles of pebbles just look so jagged that I want to take a pencil and shade the poor rocks in myself. Anyway, other then the very rare low textured pile of rocks you will stand in awe at the presentation of the battlefields and claustrophobic indoor fights. In my opinion I see the graphics getting better and better as the game progresses. Each level is more visually stunning then the last and the game simply becomes more and more exciting as you continue on the 10 to 15 hour journey.

Negatives
Negatives. Every game has them and this one doesn't get by without a few cuts and bruises. Now if I were to sit here and name off every fault Resistance has then I'd simply be nit picking, because honestly this game doesn't have many faults. But I must name some for the sake of this review and I'll try my best to list them here. Okay so your comrades Ai is plain dumb. They barely help you at all, except for the fact they sometimes direct enemy fire away from you for about a split second. The graphics are not the best in the industry and the lack of online cooperative play brings a tear to my eye. This games campaign would shine brighter then the sun if it had online cooperative. It almost seems like it could have been a need and not a simple want. And last, but not least the hybrids, although always seeming to put up a different fight are used a bit much throughout the game. They are definitely a fun enemy to fight, but Insomniac could have used more of its huge variety of enemies during the single player.

Are you going to want to play this over?
Replay ability...The game is definitely one you'll want to show off to your friends. This is the type of game that you will invite a friend over to try and complete the co op campaign with. It is highly addictive and will provoke you to replay the game the moment you finish the last level. It actually includes hidden weapons that were not available on your first play through and other information that could help you learn more about the games story line. Another reason to the games replay ability is it's interesting and fun to use weaponry. Even the grenades are extremely fun. I won't go into details about the guns, but I will say that every gun is worth using and each have a purpose. You could certainly choose to the go through the game on easy with the standard assault rifles, but if you wanted to try the game on medium or any of the other higher difficulties then you will without a doubt sit down and learn exactly how to use these weapons that mean the difference between life and death.

Simply learning the uses of each gun adds replay value, and on top of that you get more guns after playing through a second time. Every weapon has a secondary fire option and often times makes the gun what it is. On top of the awesome weaponry, you will discover that the Ai is not stupid. They will duck behind cover and in some cases flank you and your squad or cooperative partner. You will not be able to sit behind cover forever because they will have one chimera shoot the place where you might want to stick your head out to fire while another chimeran soldier runs behind you and beats you down with his rifle. I also was in many firefights where the enemy would throw an unprecedented amount of grenades. I continued to die pathetically, but instead of becoming frustrated with the game I was actually excited instead.

Online
A huge factor about Resistance that really makes the game stand out, is the online portion. Insomniac really pulled out all the stops here and created a game that could keep you busy for weeks, let alone months and possibly years to come. There are two types of online games, ranked and unranked. Battles fought from the beginning of a match, which most of the time consists of two rounds give the player experience points that help him level up to different ranks allowing the player to unlock multiple helmets, heads, skins, accessories and more to individualize your online avatar.

Modes?
There are 6 modes of play including Breach, which is a 40 man game about capturing nodes closer to the opposing team's reactor so that you can spawn closer every time you die so that you can eventually destroy your target. Meltdown, which is a smaller version of breach. Conversion, a spin on the standard death match mode where every player starts as a human, and if you are killed then you re spawn as a chimer then if you die from there its over. Team Death match, which is your standard kill anyone on the opposing team and gain points from simply taking out your target or assisting others in taking out a target. Death match, which is the same as team death match except you’re alone. And last, but not least Capture the Flag, which has one team try to capture the flag and bring it back to their own base. In the unranked games, all those modes are customizable with the ability to take certain guns out of the mix, adjust the amount of points it takes to win, decide whether you want humans vs. chimera, chimera vs. chimera, humans vs. humans, or even humans and chimera, vs. humans and chimera.

Maps
The maps can also be scaled to be large or small depending on the amount of players in a game. Maps range from allowing 8, 16, 32 and 40. Humans and Chimera have different abilities that are activated with the L2 button. Humans can sprint by tapping the L2 button, but they have no aimer during the sprint, while Chimera can go into a rage mode that allows them to see life forms in the shape of glowing purple silhouettes through walls and other barriers. Humans also have a radar that allows them to see enemies on the map, while chimera's firepower increases when they go into rage mode, but overheat and lose life if they stay in rage mode too long.

Balance?
The game is wonderfully balanced and I've used many guns online in many different ways to counter many guns that I thought were cheap, but turned out to have weaknesses. I've also had situations where I thought I was being cheap to only discover that someone had used a gun that I thought was weak to completely dominate me. Resistance Players often say that the Chimera's rage make it very difficult for a human to win in a gun fight due to the Chimera's increase in firepower, but while the Chimera may be strong in rage mode, the humans have infinite sprint meaning a very easy time in capture the flag games or other modes that require moving a large distance. Chimera start the match out with the standard alien rifle which has poor accuracy unless you hit the enemy with a tag, which usually creates instant death for those hit by it, while the humans start off with the carbine assault rifle, which is more accurate, fires from a longer range, does more damage to chimera, but has a lower firing rate then the chimeran rifle and less ammo per clip.

Lag?
I've yet to encounter lag no matter what size game I am in, or how many explosions or players are on the screen at once. The only strange things I've seen are of people standing still and taking more shots then normal before they die, but that's pretty much it. You won't see lag players or glitchers exposing any flaws, and so far everything has gone well.

Online Features
Match making is done through ranked games and playing with friends is extremely easy with the games party system. You can create a party of your friends (up to 20 players) or other players, and then move from one game to another, while dragging all the members of your party with you and on to your own team. It's a great feature and has been very useful so far. The game also has an extremely detailed stat tracking book, which allows you to look at your best weapon, worst weapon, various ribbons and medals you've earned and how many times you've earned them (headshots, melee kills etc.), in game achievements like who beat the campaign, obtaining 100 kills with a certain gun etc., shots fired of a particular gun, kills with that gun, accuracy of that gun, and many more. After a game you can also see who you were killed the most by and who you killed the most of.

There is also a list of players you've recently played with so you can easily send a friend invite just in case you forgot to do so after the game. Voice chat is very clear due to Insomniac paying Voice Age to increase the audio of the headset chatting, and so far the community seems to be growing at a slow, but progressive pace. This game online is simply fun and addicting as well with huge very detailed maps offering 11 locations, but completely different when scaled down. Some portions of the smaller maps aren't even on the larger 40 player maps, so if you were to actually count the areas it'd be about 20 or so. Games are often very intense and spawn killing isn't a huge problem as of yet. You almost never feel crowded even with the 40 players and downloadable content is supposed to be on its way.

Final Thoughts
Overall Resistance is a must play game whether you have a ps3 or not. The game is actually pretty fun in cooperative play and offers enough difficult situations to have you and your friend thinking of new ways to attack a scenario that was seemingly impossible just moments before. The guns are all useful and original along with levels and enemies that further help put those guns to good use. The vehicle portions of the Campaign are simple at first, but later become just as difficult as a fire fight, but in some cases even more intense then what you thought the game could achieve. Resistance is great for newcomers to the FPS genre and for those of you that are FPS veterans I say you have a lot of fun just waiting to be played. Don't be fooled by the beginning, because the game does pick up and it does so in the best way possible.

Resistance takes many little influences from other great First Person shooters you've played in the past, but adds a whole lot more with some of the most intense battles you might have ever seen. In fact, I've yet to see another game that has as much going on at once in a game without lag as Resistance does almost flawlessly in some of its major battles. I highly recommend this game and believe it should be enjoyed by all gamers. If you're not an FPS fan then play it with a friend who is. You will have fun just being on the ride, and if you are a hardcore FPS fan then give this game a shot. Go from start to finish because not a single part of this game should be missed by the audience Insomniac tried so hard to impress.

Graphics
Amazing graphics, which are put to the limit during some of the largest and intense battles I've ever experienced in an FPS.

Game Play
Guns that are amazingly original and fun to use, plus a game that puts you in situations that actually needs them.

Environment
Jaw dropping stages and sounds (or lack of), create a sense of immersion strong enough to make you jump from fright and uncontrollable excitement.

Replay ability
With a huge amount of unlockable guns, concept art books, and more. Who needs a “collectors edition”. And with an online game like Resistance you could be busy for months.

Overall
Play this game as soon as possible.

Game Score

A

Reviewed By: Contributed