Like many hardcore gamers these days, I rush to a local gamestore to pick up a game on their midnight releases.I don't pick up all games on their midnight release but for some reason, Resistance 3 had me excited. Maybe it's the 3 years of a Resistance game being absent on PS3 or it could also be because of abysmal summer games that gamers experienced this year. Anyway, I have work in the morning so usually I don't get to play the game right away (I do have time to sniff game manuals though). That's what I thought about R3. My plan was to load the game into my console to install and download patches of the game and call it a day. But, I was curious about the three years development time that Insomniac Games put for this game. After I was done "trying" the game, I looked at the clock and it was over 3 am.
Resistance 3 is better than any Resistance games ever made. It is actually better than most FPS games we have in the market for both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Insomniac Games deliver on the gameplay and story ends of the game. Insomniac Games always provide rock solid gameplay for its games in the past before, but this time with Resistance 3, they somehow tell a story that is believable and fun to follow through. Throughout the game, players will witness the emotional and desperate story of humanities like nothing they ever experienced before.
The game opens up with a cinemayic that recaps the story of the Resistance 1 and 2 so far. After the brief cinematic, player given control of the game's main character, Joseph Capelli. He looks much different compared to R2. You can see that he actually suffers from living underground evading from the chimera that runs the surface of the earth. The first few minutes of the game shows how bad the living conditions of humans since the chimera took over the planet. I personally never experienced such gritty atmosphere from any games before let alone from a FPS game.
The game's main story is similar to the last two games, humans trying to defeat the chimeras. After being underground so many years, humans starting to lose hope in survival. Then come along the series' regular, Dr. Malikov who proposed an idea to rid the chimera from earth once and for all. After initially refusing to help Dr. Malikov, he was later convinced by his wife to go with Dr. Malikov. The game then takes player to an extraordinary trip from Haven, Oklahoma to New York city in order to close down a chimeran worm-hole before it's too late. The settings of the campaign are all memorable except one (area that looks like it's from Halo). The campaign is perfectly paced, until that Halo area. I won't spoil the ending, but I am left a little bit dissapointed by it. The ending lacks the sense of closure that the third game in a trilogy supposed to provide.
The gameplay feels really tight in R3. At first, I was kind of worried after Insomniac Games announced that it would stop making games in 60fps after Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time. I thought the game would feel and play like a slow mediocre FPS (*cough..Homefront...cough*). But the gameplay ended up feeling great and lightning fast. I don't know what kind of black magic that Insomniac uses for this game but I love it. Weapons feel quick and extremely satisfying to use, especially combined with returning fan's favorite, the weapon wheel. Unlike R2, you can carry all of your arsenal with you all the time. Old favorite such as Bullseye and Rossmore are back. Insomniac kept the creative standard of their products by introducing cool weapons such as Mutator that causes the enemy to swell up like a giant zit and explode. You can level up each weapon (3 levels for each weapon) now just like in Ratchet and Clank games. The only way to level up the weapon is to use it. So, you need to try out every weapon if you want fully-leveled up your arsenals.
The enemy AI is much improved than previous games. Unlike other FPS games, they will flank and throw grenades at you. They also don't just stand on one spot waiting to be shot by you. Insomniac introduces some new types of chimera. The Longlegs is my favorite, they can jump from one roof to another and really hard to defeat. Not only the enemies are harder now, the game also gives players some challenge by dropping the regenerating health system from R2. Instead, the health pack system from the first game returns and it was a triumphant return in my opinion.
Matching the great gameplay is the graphics and sound of the game. The game looks dark, gritty and dirty, in a good way. The game does a good job in portraying terror that humans feel in the game. Most of the texture in the game looks great although not as good as Killzone 3. Although, I feel the debris in Haven looks much better than snow flakes in Killzone 3. The game is at solid 30fps throughout the campaign. The music of the game matches the mood of the game. It is mosty sad tone, however during combat the music will match the intensity of gun fights. The voice over in my opinion can be a bit better. The voice of Capelli is the only one that I think fits the character, while the voices of other characters are just okay .
Other than single player campaign, R3 also offers co-op campaign and of course online multiplayer. The co-op campaign can be experienced through split-screen or online. The online co-op lacks matchmaking which is actually good since you will be forced to play with somebody that you know (the only way to play online games in my opinion). The multiplayer is progress-based ala Call of Duty games. You get points every time you level up that you can spend to unlock various of things. During the first few weeks of the game's release, the multiplayer suffers from lag and slow downs but Insomniac is working really hard to patch the problems. Even though the multiplayer is reallly good, I don't think it will be my go-to multiplayer game with games like Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 right around the corner.
If somebody asks me to recommend one PS3 exclusive FPS game to them, Resistance 3 will be it. The game feels extremely polished from top to bottom. I highly recommend to play the campaign twice, alone and then co-op because it is that damn good (except the ending). Although Insomniac didn't introduce any ground breaking gameplay elements with R3, at the end of the day who cares? Resistance 3's gameplay in the words of the late Steve Jobs, "it just works".