Resistance is an interesting FPS game with some good ideas but the
execution is a bit uneven. I was excited to try out Sony's potential
killer app but it seems maybe my expectations were too high.
The first thing you'll notice are the graphics. While sharp and solid,
the art direction is fairly generic. The majority of the game is very
reminiscent of other WW2 shooters such as Medal of Honor and Call of
Duty. There are a lot of browns and greens throughout the game except
for a couple of chapters. While it was novel in the beginning of the
game (since it was populated with Chimera instead of humans), the
levels looked fairly boring and generic as you progressed.
Speaking of the Chimera, their designs were decent but too many of them
look too similar which made fighting them quickly tiring. There were
only a few enemies that looked different and they didn't appear a lot
compared to the grunts. While people rave about the guns in the game, I
didn't find them that special or different than any other FPS games out
there. They looked nice but the animations for the guns weren't
anything special. Overall, the design and art direction for the game
were fairly generic.
The sound and music is pretty good. The voice acting is solid but
there's nothing overly memorable or outstanding about them. It's good
not great. The music is decent with a lot of WW2 style military music
that you'd come to expect from a game of this type. But it's not very
memorable just like the voice acting. I was bit disappointed that the
game didn't have any strong musical scores to pull you into the game
either.
Now we have the main meat of the game; the gameplay. Resistance is a
strange mix of all types FPS games that any other fellow FPS player has
seen or experienced. The main game feels like it was inspired from
games like the Medal of Honor/Call of Duty series. There are lots of
battles with fellow soldiers and explosions everywhere. Later in the
game, we have claustrophobic levels with a lot of shadows that is
similar to Doom 3 including plenty of enemy scares. Finally, there are
some levels which were clearly inspired by the Halo series with its
sci-fi motif and structures. I can also list a few levels where it
reminded me of games like the Half-Life series etc. You can tell that
Insomniac was heavily influenced by all those games when they were
making this game.
But all those various styles didn't really help the game meld together.
Some levels were wildly inconsistent with its length. Some levels ended
in a few minutes while other sections lasted a good amount of time
before you hit a checkpoint. It's somewhat annoying and made the game
either too easy or too hard. The enemy AI is also fairly dumb. They
would either rush you or pop in and out behind cover. They were
extremely predictable and very easy to dispatch once you remember their
spawn points. I wasn't too impressed with any of the enemies in the
game at all. I also found the guns to be overrated by other reviews.
Only a few guns were interesting but I didn't find them that unique or
fun to play. Their secondary attacks weren't that useful for me
compared to their primary attacks.
Finally, the boring story. While the aliens in WW2 premise was unique,
the narrative felt uninspired and uninteresting. The main character,
Hale, is as generic as it gets and we hardly learn anything about the
rest of the few characters we meet along the way. None of the Chimera
show any sort of unique intelligence nor do they have any
personalities. I was fairly disappointed with the story overall. I wish
they developed the characters more and I really wish they made Hale
more interesting. Couldn't they give us more background on the military
and Chimera enemies? I guess not.
The real winner is the multiplayer. Logging into games is a breeze and
matches are fun and relatively short. The various maps are well
designed and the amount of players in these games are great. I had no
lag when I was playing and finding a game is very easy and quick. This
is the main reason why you would want to play this game. It's a lot
more fun than the single player by a large margin. You will not be
disappointed.
Overall, Resistance is fairly generic FPS game which tried to take in
too many ideas and ended up with a lot of inconsistent levels and
gameplay. The story is weak, the characters are forgettable and the
entire experience is not very deep. I had to force myself to beat the
single player simply because the levels were sooo boring. The single
player is worth checking out, but the multiplayer is what saves
Resistance from mediocrity.
