"Ridiculously detailed Resistance Review"

A Little History
I was seven when I first played DOOM. At the time it scared the crap out of me. Thirteen years later it is still my favorite single player first person shooter. Incredibly fast with daunting enemies (and lots of them) and, for its time, interesting weapons (many of which are now staples of the genre). Resistance: Fall of Man is the first game I've ever played to fully recapture the feeling I got when I played DOOM for the first time. Not to say that it's a clone in any way, it manages to borrow all the best elements of all the greatest first person shooters throughout the genre's history. I've grown up playing PC FPSs, so my general opinion of console FPSs is pretty low (Halo is fun, but vastly over-rated). To put it frankly, this game is sublime.

Story
The game takes place in an alternate universe where World War II never happened because a mysterious virus spawned out of Siberia and quickly over-ran all of Europe, preventing WWII from ever happening. Whether the virus is alien or some Soviet biological weapon ran amok, no one knows. The Chimera, as there called, are born of humans, for the most part. But these are not your usual zombies. They're scary looking creatures with large fangs and huge, cool-looking apparatuses strapped on their backs (although this is just the main variety, there are many more larger and smaller creatures to shoot). And they're smart. Scary smart. They have developed substantial technology including their own weapons and vehicles. It feels like your blasting aliens or hell-spawn instead of the result of a virus.

You play as Army Ranger Sgt. Nathan Hale, part of an American Expeditionary Force sent to Great Britain to help defend the last human foothold in Europe. The story is presented via short, though effective cut-scenes at the beginning of each level (the cut-scenes are also played when you load a game in the middle of a level). I personally enjoyed the story presentation in this game, as it was enough story to keep me interested, though not to much story to interfere with your killing.

Campaign
The game takes about 10-14 hours to complete your first time through on the normal difficulty level, and quite frankly, it's a blast. The game borrows a lot from other great games in the genre, but at the same time the game always feels fresh and brand new, not like a stale rip-off at all. Credit Insomniac for injecting enough of there own creativity in with the elements they borrowed from others. It's fun to see the great elements of other games they put in their game, like the exciting vehicle segments ripped straight from Halo, the alien environments of Half-Life 2, or the jump-out-at-you-in-the-dark moments from DOOM 3. All of this comes together with Insomniac's superb design (artistic and otherwise) to create a compelling experience. The whole campaign can be played with a friend via split-screen, which is fun, but online co-op is becoming the norm. The campaign also has weapons and a new difficulty to unlock after your first play-through, so there's plenty of reason to go back at least once to this game's stellar campaign.

The AI in a single-player FPS can make or break a game, and Resistance's AI is very solid. The enemies entrench themselves very well. If you find yourself in a room surrounded by enemies, the old trick of retreating and waiting for them to come after you one by one just plain doesn't work. They'll take cover, and wait for you to stick your head back out so they can blast you. The artificial intelligence isn't perfect, sometimes you can just walk up to one of them and shoot them in the back of the head, but these events occur rarely and don't take anything away from the feeling that you're fighting an intelligent foe. The game's friendly AI though, just isn't quite up to snuff. They just can't seem to do anything other than get shot. Also, they only carry the main human assault rifle for some reason. It's helpful sometimes when you need to get ammo for that weapon off of a deceased comrade, but it would be very cool to see an AI controlled teammate rocking a rocket launcher, or even another basic human weapon like a shotgun, but they don't. Also, apparently the Chimera were briefed on the fact that your fellow soldiers pose little threat, as there are times when you feel like your the only person on your side of the war getting shot at. All in all though these minor blemishes do little to detract from the greatness of this game.

The environments are in the campaign are also very good, not to mention varied. While the game maintains its well-defined visual style, as you progress the world around you becomes more alien, and you really just don't know what the next level will throw at you. Fantastic.

Finally, the weapons. The weapons in Resistance are glorious. Your arsenal is vast, but you will find situations in the campaign where you will need every single one. The weapons are also extremely original, and fresh, new weapons are something this genre rarely sees. Insomniac can create some clever weapons, as evidenced in the Ratchet and Clank series. Every weapon has a primary and a secondary fire (an element borrowed from Unreal Tournament) to create a sinister load out to use or be the victim of. For example, the Auger's primary fire shoots powerful single blasts that burrow through walls. It's secondary fire creates a wall that blocks everything but Auger rounds. Another example is the Bullseye. It's secondary fire “tags” enemies. Once an enemy is tagged, the primary fire will maneuver around obstacles to hit its target, so you can take cover while your rounds home in on their target. The sniper rifle is another staple of the genre, but in this game it has an alternate fire that slows down time. It makes getting headshots on your normally fast enemies simple. It's a powerful weapon. Like I said your arsenal is incredible. Oh, and there's a shotgun, which is important to me. It's pretty basic, the alternate fire just shoots two shells at once with a slightly longer reload time due to the recoil. The shotgun still has its uses in close range, though.

Multiplayer
The single-player game is great, for sure, but that can only hold your attention for so long. after you finish the campaign, (or perhaps before) you'll get addicted to Resistance's amazing multiplayer component. There's just so much content here that it's hard to explain how great it is. The game supports up to a whopping 40 players depending on the game type. And there are some really fun modes to boot. Of course there's your basic Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, but Resistance adds some much more tactically interesting modes to choose from. Breach and Meltdown have you capturing nodes to destroy the other teams base, called the reactor. These modes play out similar to Battlefield or the Onslaught mode found in Unreal Tournament 2004. Another cool mode is Conversion, which is like survival in other games. Except you have 2 lives, one as a human, and one as a Chimera hybrid. Last one standing wins. The humans have a sprint ablity, where they can run fast but can't aim. The Chimera have a rage ability, where they can inflict more damage and see enemies through walls. You can set team games so each team represents either race. Combine these awesome modes with 40 people, and you've got an all out war. Resistance also sports extremely in-depth stat tracking with skill points similar to the medals found in Halo, and full clan support, which makes for a very complete multiplayer experience.

The actual gameplay is very good, too. The game carves out it's own niche in the FPS genre. It's much faster than Halo, but not twitchy as Quake III or Unreal Tournament. Oh, and all the single-player's fantastic weapons make their way to multiplayer, which makes for some very interesting confrontations. The maps are also very interesting, and there's plenty of them, especially with new ones available from the Playstation Store.

Resistance will go down in history as a legend in networking. You can create a party, similar to Halo, so you can hop in and out of games with a group of friends without losing them. You can be online and in a game in minutes thanks to the games ease of joining games. You can also report anybody you think is cheating or exploiting a glitch, a feature missing from many non-Xbox Live titles. Oh, and in all my playing, I have yet to encounter even the slightest bit of lag. That's one of Insomniac's greatest achievements with this game. Phenomenal.

Control
The control in Resistance is fantastic, especially for a console shooter, which I am usually not a big fan of. Sony added a bit more play to the joysticks when they created the Sixaxis, and that pays of big for the aiming in this game, as I found it easier to track a fast-moving target in this game than in any other console shooter. The buttons are mapped pretty well by default, with your basic R1 as shoot, L1 as alternate fire, R2 switches weapons if you tap it and brings up an inventory if you hold it. L2 is crouch, and the face buttons reload, melee, throw grenades, and of course jump.

There are some complaints I have with the default controls, though, but you can customize them any way you want. You have to press L2 to crouch, which is annoying. It's hard to hold it in and press L1 to use your weapon's alternate fire. Also, you have to push R2 in really hard to get the inventory to come up. I found that switching R1 with R2 and L1 with L2 makes life a little easier. First off, it makes more sense to shoot with the Sixaxis' trigger buttons, and its easier to bring up the inventory in the heat of combat, since you don't have to push down very hard on R1. Crouching is still a pain though, as you can assign it to L3 if you want, but you have to hold the joystick down to stay crouched, not to mention that in multiplayer the crouch button activates your race's special power. Having some sort of crouch-toggle feature would have nullified my only complaint with the controls (maybe you could tap to crouch, hold to activate your species' ability).

Graphics and Sound
The graphics in Resistance are quite good, though not exactly mind blowing. Some textures are fantastic while others are dull and muddy. The Chimera-based environments look considerably better than the human ones. The characters are very well modeled, though once again not mind blowing. Resistance's real achievement is it's ability to have ludicrous amounts of action onscreen without the slightest dip in framerate. That's because Insomniac locked the framerate at 30 frames per second. That's not as smooth as other games for sure, but the game never drops a frame and sometimes you'll swear the game is running a higher framerate. There are also no graphical glitches and the game has excellent collision detection, not to mention the best glass-shattering effect I've ever seen. Combine this with a lag-free multiplayer game and it's hard find anything to complain about on the graphical front.

The sound in Resistance is top notch. The orchestral soundtrack puts most Hollywood movies to shame. The voice acting is very convincing, especially the woman that narrates the campaign. Your enemies sound quite menacing, and the weapons sound as uniquely as they perform. Other sound effects like explosions and vehicles are equally as great. I didn't notice any audio glitches anywhere in the game.

Closing Comments
Resistance is greater than the sum of it's parts, and it's parts are pretty substantial (ahem). It borrows a lot from many great shooters, but Insomniac adds enough of there own design flare to create a fresh experience. It's hard to find a more complete game on the Playstation 3, and I would argue that there isn't one. Even non-fans of shooters should check this one out, especially PC shooter fans that think console shooters are for noobs.

A 10 out of 10, through and through.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/26/07

Game Release: Resistance: Fall of Man (US, 11/14/06)