Resistance is a game made by Insomniac, a developer best knowned for
its high rating series Ratchet and Clank. The game started with a
simple idea, make a WWII game but change the story a bit. This derived
in a new game, situated in the 50s in a world that instead of having
Hittler as the main enemy, has a monster like race, called Chimeras.
At first, Chimeras appeared in Russia, then, they expanded, they
conquered Europe in a matter of months and were starting to invade
Britain when the US goverment decided to send help. You, the player,
will control the US sergeant Nathan Hale, a baldy guy whose team is
wiped in the first mission of the game.
Your first encounter with the Chimeras is not a happy one, and you will
notice that this game doesnt go for the easy kills. In fact, most
Chimeras take more shots than you would imagine to kill, making the
game more strategic in some sections.
Resistance also mixes features from previous FPS games and some new
ones. You will see the power of the PS3 with this game, not from the
hand of graphics, which for a launch game are more than fabulous, but
from the hand of events. You will see lots of stuff going on, and lots
of details too. If this is your first Next-Gen game, you will be amazed
by most of the stuff, especially the glass effect of the windows, the
way they break mostly.
The weapons in Resistance at first seem generic, you have the usual
rifle, the shotgun, the sniper and the rocket launcher, but the
innovation, and in what I would say a very good idea, comes from the
Chimeras weapons. Humans use the weapons we all know, but the Chimeras
have all the candy. From the basic Bullseye to the complex Auger.
Resistance campaign will take you more or less 12-15 hours to complete,
more if you take into consideration that in some of the last levels you
will be dying more often too. But, Insomniac added some extra stuff. As
you progress through the game you will be able to unlock skill points,
this skill points could be related to Microsofts Achievements too. The
Skill points will unlock extra stuff, as skins for the online mode,
artworks, movies and more. But skills is not the only thing you can
unlock, once that you finish the campaign, either in Solo or Co-op, you
will unlock even more weapons, some of them involve new gameplay
techniques as the Divider. Also, another bonus when finishing the game
is the option to play the game on harder difficulties, beign the
hardest Superhuman, which is a real challenge.
One of the most amazing stuff in the game, is the feeling you get of
being overpowered by the Chimeras all the time. You kill wave after
wave after wave of Chimeras, yet they still come. Insomniac managed to
create a great war atmosphere in Resistance. You will feel fear of
advancing, you will feel that sometimes there is no way to continue,
that you´ve reached your limit, specially when you get to the later
parts of the game, and you are counting every shot making sure that
whatever comes next wont kill you.
An important thing to take notice of, is that if you are going to be
playing the game in cooperative, make sure that you will be able to
work as a team. The cooperative is offline only, I will later talk
about the online features. Now, when playing in cooperative, you will
notice that everything in the enemies is different, the enemies are
stronger and the ammo is running out fast. This is due to the fact that
Insomniac decided to increase the level of difficulty here, meaning
that if you played this in Normal on cooperative, it will equal Hard on
Solo.
The effects of the game are amazing, from a great soundtrack that
increases the atmosphere at certain moments to a great use of sound
effects. Now, the game is more like Resident Evil 4 here, and most of
the time you will miss the soundtrack due to the heavy SE sounds going
on. But it all builds and its amazing. Also, you will notice some
things too, one of the features touted by Sony PR all the time about
Cell will be noticed here. Hedgehog grenades, which are some of the
best weapon in gaming hystory. If you fire one, you will see how each
of the spikes detach from it as a nail grenade. And you can use it even
when you see more than 10 enemies on the screen, with clouds of dust
flying, firing all over the place and allied soldier fighting back with
no slow down at all. In fact, you will never notice slow downs in the
game which is a real nice improvement over past gens.
Now, as for the online portion of the game, you will see that you have many
modes, from classics as Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch and
Deathmatch to new ones, as Conversion and Meltdown. The online is
really well done, though its missing elements from services as XBL,
though they can be solved by a future patch, right now there is a new
map pack, and the second one is coming soon.
The most important feature of online comes from the lack of lag. Even
if you have a slow internet connection, I mean something greater than
256 kb.
Now, whats the most interesting feature while playing online is the
feature to level up. Yes, as if you were playing an RPG. You will win
points from every time you kill someone, and with them you will level
up, you will also be able to see your development over the time, though
if you are a first comer, and you are not interested in creating a fake
account to practice, then you will have some really bad stats to begin
with.
The last feature that we could remark about online, is the fact that
you can customize your avatar. An avatar is the character that other
sees. You can unlock extra stuff by finishing the main campaign, by
obtaining a certain amount of skill points, by completing different
difficulties.
But online wouldnt be complete without some other stuff. You will be
able to use a headset, you will have a system to find a ranked match
for yourself, you only have to specify if you want a deathmatch, team
deathmatch of an objective based game. You will also have a list of
unranked games, which unlicke ranked games that are hosted by Sony/
Insomniac, the unranked games are hosted by normal people.
There is an option to play the online mode offline, for up to 4
players, but the lack of bots and the size of the maps dont help it
much, unless you have 4 controllers.
All in all, Resistance is a great title, with lots of content to keep
anyone happy for a long time. The game also sports great gameplay, that
will make you come back time after time. Though the story could have
been developed a little bit better, and given more information about
some elements about the back story, it was a great experience,
specially if you are going to play it in cooperative.
