So because of the fact that in a typical year I am a starving student I am unable to afford shiny games fresh out of the box. Which is why I normally have to pick and choose what current games need my money right away and which I should wait for a price drop. With the exception of those two or three new games the rest of my time is spent playing last years games that are now are more affordable. Since this the reason I have never been able to submit a proper game of the year list I will merely give my thoughts on the games I played this year whether they be from 2009 or 2012. They are listed in the order I played them not rated by preference. Oh I am also going to leave out the two HD collections I played this year the PSP God of War Collection and Jak Collection because I had played some of these before. And finally I will add a little section on each game about trophies because while not a big deal to most people I enjoy getting them and I get more of my moneys worth if I hunt them down.

Resistance 3

I started 2012 with a sequel to a series which I enjoyed very much and was not so much disappointed as I was deceived by the hype. (I realize you might be saying Resistance WHAT HYPE?? But one reviewer in particular (Colin Moriarty from IGN, I KNOW) was a big fan of the Resistance series and therefore I put some stock in what he had to say about this new game. If I remember correctly he praised the game for its story, characters and gameplay calling R3 the best in the series. So even though I knew I shouldn’t I did get my hopes up a little as Christmas rolled around and Resistance was high on my list for games I wanted. The next thing I say may cause fans of Resistance to completely disregard my opinion about R3 and the series in general but here I go…Resistance 2 is my favourite in the series. Alright I hear the groan now let me go on and say Resistance 2 was the first game in the series I played, the guns were great, the story was surprisingly good for an FPS and when I first played it I loved the ending. Ok. Then I went back and played the first game and enjoyed it, however I believe my perception was skewed because I played them out of order. I found the enemies less compelling (thought Daedalus was more interesting figure than just Angels in general) also I liked my team in R2 even though they weren’t fully developed before they began getting picked off. Also did I mention the ending? Even though it was a complete plug for another game I thought killing Hale in the final moments (not by sacrificing himself to kill the final boss) was original and interesting. Plus the moment after you kill Daedalus and shit is exploding and you have no gun I was all WTF? And as I walked toward Chimera shooting Bullseyes at me I was like um….am I missing something and then I pressed shoot…and shit started exploding out of my hands. It was great. I liked that little reward at the end of the game it was hilarious seeing Chimera just explode from hand power (if you know what I mean).

Should probably start talking about R3 before I lose the crowd (Ha ha what crowd? It's Reistance ZING). So the things above I had in my mind when I popped in R3. First off a small change that did take me aback a bit was the change in art style in the third series of a franchise. I was like ok…whatever I can deal with it. The way they completely changed Joe Capelli was not to my liking at all in R2 he was this surly insubordinate heavy who talked shit pretty much the whole game. In R3 they made him drop like thirty pound lose his trademark cap and gun as well as pretty much erasing his facial scar leaving him almost unrecognizable as a character from the previous game. As far as story and character progression I thought it would be more significant than it was with basically Capelli just looking at a mitten the entire game representing his drive to protect his family. There is a point there for this game, however, this idea is not really developed (Capelli doesn’t really grow) and while I am probably expecting a lot out of an FPS Resistance has been my shooter with a story or at least fascinating history to me at least. Which leads to the issue that R3 will probably be the last Insomniac Resistance and they added like nothing to mythology of the series of this game. They don’t really address the cloven (who I’ve been dying to know more about) or the Tungsten event or whether Chimera have another race that killed them in the past. There are so many threads that have been dropped that I was pissed that the entire story was one dude running to New York and then back home and that was it. And R3’s ending well…UGH. Hey I exploded that wormhole generator now the millions of Chimera are no longer a threat…um what? Maybe I’m too stupid to understand what happened at the end of the game but Capelli stopped the wormhole thing, then was reunited with his family and then the credits rolled showing pictures of like New York being reconstructed which seemed to imply that the war was over because people can re-establish the biggest city in the world? Which if that is the message they were sending was BS. Because it disregards the millions of Chimera on the planet still, the massively depopulated human race and the fact that the series is called Resistance (resist not succeed). If that is the hunky dory situation they set up for the end game with no real explanation of the events that came after it’s not only going against the theme of the series but it’s downright lazy story telling.

I realize I’ve been complaining a lot about a game that I actually enjoyed playing disregarding much of the story. I loved that they brought back single player co-op which made the campaign much more fun playing through the second time with a buddy. The guns which are always a highlight of this series were still great although I found myself getting reacquainted with old guns because of the new style of them in R3. The new enemy types were a great addition to the series (how many types of Chimera are there!?) I especially liked the Brawler who wasn’t the typical I’m a big guy who will walk slowly and shoot from far away. This dude got right up in your face and hulked out on you if he could. In addition to the brawler I also like the leapers or jumpers (not the little insects from R2) the dudes who jumped around. They were hard to pin down and made the Bullseyes tag bullets even more useful. As usual the atmosphere of the game was right where it needed to be for a Resistance game. Dark and gloomy as shit, I really liked the prison part (post apocalyptia apparently always has dudes being sickos in prison) even though that is after Malikov bites it <3. The part when they throw you in the coliseum with just a hammer I was like oh shit and actually died once which ratcheted up the intensity. Overall I enjoyed the game but it was the changes to design and what I found to be lazy storytelling and a lack of development of the series mythos that were the biggest bummers to me. I realize now that if someone gets this far reading there probably like wow dude should have done a review but I didn’t realize I had this much to say until now ha ha.

Last part I promise, trophies. For you hunters out there Resistance 3 isn’t much of a challenge. If you were one of the fools like me who actually platted Resistance 2 (with a 10 000 kills multiplayer trophy) then an easier plat for Resistance 3 will be a huge relief. Even though by the time I was done with Resistance 2 I thoroughly hated myself and the game itself, the first 7000 kills or so were as part of duo were I worked with my bud. It was really fun and unlike most games I actually played the multiplayer, I even got fairly good at it and enjoyed competing with people who were regulars. So while I’m glad R3 didn’t have a huge kill count for the multiplayer, it didn’t have any multiplayer trophies at all. Which I suppose is fine because honestly I come to this series for the campaign.

However even two multiplayer trophies would have been welcomed just to encourage me to play a little bit more of the multiplayer. I realize some people will be like why don’t you just play it anyway? For me multiplayer is more about accomplishment and with nothing other than multiplayer awards to play for I sort of lose interest quickly. The single player trophies were well varied like R2 which was nice, however the one which was like burn freeze and poison a dude was mad glitchy and a pain to get even though a great idea in theory. The single player trophies had a quality list that made you use the numerous weapons in the game and vary your play style which any FPS trophy list should do. For any of you who made it this far thanks for reading and leave thoughts! Next up Infamous 2.