Resistance: Fall of Man

Resistance: Fall of Man was the first shooter to make an appearence on the Playstation 3 Platform. Hyped postively from it's last successful franchise-Ratchet and Clank and developer-Insomniac, there wasn't much reason not to be hyped around the title. Unfortunately Resistance didn't deliver the promise it had made although delivering on most fronts, it hadn't delivered on all fronts that it had promised. But you can't knock it all off Resistance, it's still a fantastic shooter.

Soon after the long, stressful and tiresome World War II, disease spread and eventually humans started to turn into mutants slowly, and slowly humans more rapidly began to change. These mutants known as chimera still possessed much of the skills as humans to possessed, no one knew about the mystery of missing people. Slowly factories began work, mainly conversion factories to speed up the process of converting humans to chimera. Supplies and Weapons were manufactured and it all came down to a sudden surprise to Russia when they were ambushed and quickly taken over within months after the long battle of World War II. Russia were weak after their 20 million soldier forfeit during World War II, it was made only to easy for the Chimera to take over Russia, the huge country gave scope for not only more factories but a bigger population to convert. Soon after, the Chimera took over other small countries as they pushed towards Germany, there after they breezed past France and moved onto border of Britain, this was the battle for survival of the Resistance.

Resistance puts you in the shoes of Nathan Hale, nothing is known much about him except he's an American Soldier to have aided the British. Quickly into the war, he and his squad were ambushed by Scorpion like Chimera, bitten and plagued. Everyone was sure to be dead, except Nathan Hale, no one knows how or why he survived but he simply carried onto help the British. After all if Britain was taken over, America was next!

Resistance setting is immense but its plot is very straight forward with little reasoning behind the plots motive. Battle after battle after battle; the battles are long and some too long for their own good. The missions are punishing maybe a bit too punishing for that matter, the second difficulty is beyond belief let alone the last and foremost third difficulty. Missions are made so hard, that even Hardcore Gamers will probably have frustration with this game.

Instead of the the usual time regeneration health mechanic, Resistance changes back to old-school providing you with four health bars and health packs which are required to restore health. Although if a health bar is weakened then it'll regenerate providing you stick in cover for a few seconds. This is probably the most contributing reason towards the punishing difficulty for the fact you can't simply regenerate your health if you stick in some cover but you must find your health instead.

Set piece battles are a great thing about Resistance but it can also turn against itself. There are simply too many set piece battles, missions are long because of this. Resistance does well in immersing you with huge set piece battles but the difficulty and quantity of them is hard not to notice. On the plus side, you really get that huge satisfaction when you complete a mission because of the amount of effort driven into completing a set piece battle or even a mission for that matter.

There's a huge variety of Chimera, sometimes there's just too much variety in one battle that it's hard to win. For you could be taking down an ordinary platoon of foot soldiers while being charged at by close combat leapers or having a huge titanic Chimera fireing huge Auger Cannon blasts at you. It's incredibly hard to fight of some close combat leapers let alone being shot at in all directions from some Hybrids.

Resistance's difficulty is pretty much told, but depending if the difficulty doesn't bother you, then you'll certainly enjoy the long 15 hour or so single player that the game has to offer. Although like I said the game pretty much sums up, battle after battle after battle and while this may seem repetitive, it depends on the challenge you face. For I received huge amounts of satisfaction from completing set-piece battles which while not driving me to complete the next battle, in small doses, it's a much preferred way to play Resistance's campaign.

Resistance: Fall of Man features two player split screen co-op which deeply forgives the difficulty except for the fact if one player dies, the whole team dies and so you must restart from the last check point which can be from the start of a huge set-piece battle that you in fact nearly finished. There's no online co-op either, which is drag so you can't play with your friends online. Furthermore the single player and co-op are two entirely seperate subjects. If you are playing through the single player and are three quarters way through and just need a friend locally to help you, you cannot for the reason that single player and co-op are two different ways of playing and you'd have to start a new game on the co-op part of the game instead.

The AI is pretty basic although for a few years back it may have been regarded as good. Set piece battles will usually rely on various chimera taking you down in their different strengths. As stated above, you're distracted with an army of foot soldiers while close combat leapers are honing in on your position. The chimera are also deadly punishing, they will hardly miss and always go for you rather than different AI team members. But having said that the Chimera do have some tricks up their sleeves, they will move behind pieces of cover that they may find appropriate and occassionlly advance on your position or try to flush you out.

There is a huge variety in the chimera. As you progress through the game you will encounter various species of Chimera, each Chimera you encounter will be in written in a codex like a little travel diary. There is some interesting information about the Chimera that will certainly appeal to Sci-Fi buffs. I was intrigued by the depth of the Chimera Race and were clearly a race that were wanting to stand out rather than having another "run of the mill" Sci-Fi Universe. You have the ordinary foot soldiers, with their big daddy primarchs which stand a little taller. You have special equipped foot soldiers with various heavy weapons. Then you have Leapers and Zombies. Leapers are dealy scorpions with bigger cousins later in the game while Zombies as their names suggest are very slow and bite and when they do bite you must rapidly shake the controller to get them off you. There are also Stalkers and Titans which are huge monarchs of the Chimera Race while not particularly counted as particular boss fights, they feel up with them at the least. Stalkers are huge mechanically designed machines by the Chimera with an array of Missile Launchers along with a few exposed weak spots. Titans are titanic Chimera, hence: Titans. Titans are equipped with huge auger cannons which fire huge Auger blasts, scaled a dozen times bigger! Titans are prone to simply, getting shot at as much as possible. They have their limits but they're very big to say the very least. There are at least two or so more dozen Chimera species but this review would go on much longer than neccessary.

If the scale couldn't get any bigger, there are many insane and unique weapons available to use in Resistance. Guns possibly imagined and tuned from Insomniacs last franchise, Ratchet and Clank. Unfortunately not all the guns are balanced but it needn't matter too much. The Carbine is the U.S Forces first choice, the most balanced and centre point of the game. The Carbine features a secondary grenade launcher fire mode. The Bullseye is in the starting line up for the Chimera, it has more clips in a round but it depends on a higher amount of accuracy because of a smaller crosshair and also deals slightly less damage. The Bullseye features a secondary mode homing tag where I still cant understand its use. The Auger sacrifices clips and rounds for power n being that a few shots can kill one foot soldier. Furthermore it can shoot through solid matter, although it's no easy task as there's no vision to see through the matter. The Auger also features a secondary mode barrier where shots cannot trespass. There's also a Resistance themed shotgun called the Rossmore which plays pretty similar to your standard array of World War II weapons. It's balanced to a degree but the crosshair can make it a bit hard to judge whether you're going to hit someone. The secondary fire involves a two in one shot with double power which if it skims someone it'll most likely kill the foe.

There are two heavy and insane weapons which are very stylish and unique. The Arc Changer has a limited capacity of two dozen clips per round but it's also coupled with an overheating possibility. However despite its fireing restrictions, it's incredibly powerful. The Hailstorm is one of the most powerful weapons ever seen in a shooter featuring colossal rates of fire which also works against it. The fire rate combined with its limited capacity leaves it little time for shooting. The Flamethrower is a pretty balanced weapon as it's only useful at a certain range and unlike some video game flamethrowers, does have limited ammo. The Fareye is the one and only sniper in the game which is pretty good and balanced to what a sniper should be. The Laark is the most over powered weapon in the game because its explosive catchment area is so large and you're given a generous three missiles in the multi player.

Resistance has a very different style of game play just like Ratchet and Clank, you can carry every single weapon available in the game and switch upon them by pausing the game and having a little flick around, searching for the gun you wish to have. Although it's a no brainer, not many guns are balanced and you'll be looking at some guns more frequently than others. The only reason all guns are used to a good degree is because ammo is so scarce. Although you'll be using all of the guns anyway, the idea that you can collect all guns is ruined by the fact the guns are horribly unbalanced.

Resistance takes a risky take on the first person shooter genre with an old-school shooting feel. The movement along with the aiming and crosshair reticule feels very old-school from games such as Quake and Unreal Tournament. Does Resistance succeed though? Yes, it certainly does. Resistance is one of the most polished and refined old-school experiences on the Next Gen Consoles to date.

Resistance's control scheme is irrelevant in this review because it is completely changeable. This serves very well as whatever shooter your currently addicted or playing to, the controls scheme doesn't need to differ. Although there are a few issues to be had, Resistance's original control scheme features a click on the analogue of the right stick in order to aim. If you change the right analogue to L1 like Call of Duty, then instead of holding L1 to aim in and out of the sight. You must click L1 to aim and click in again to aim out. Furthermore when you aim in down the sight, your down the sight reticule aims too far in. Imagine it like this, a standard zoom in range of a sniper rifle is 6x but zoom in again and it's 12x. That's kind of the case with some of the weapons in Resistance-you aim to far in and don't geta clear aim at your target. The last annoyance I had with the game play controls, were the bland reloading schematics. It's weird how something utmost minor and miniscule can feel like such a negative yet you'll be reloading alot in the game and that's probably why it was such an annoyance.

There are also some tacked on motion controls which actually do fairly well despite not being enough of them. You will usually just have to shake controller when you're being bitten by leapers or zombies, or a chance if a flamethrower catches you. The motion controls are pretty well done except that they could have been used alot more in the game.

Resistance's graphics are no where near technically proficient but the overall presentation and the grim and well suited setting makes up for it. Resistance is far beyond just simply satisfying graphics, no visual element today is beyond remarkable but it's even easy to say that the graphics even hold up for today's standards. Most of the time you'll be fighting in Chimeric caves or ruined and urban environments. The repetition will rarely kick in because you'll be fighting in many different environments despite no changes in the setting. One massive downfall to this, is the fact there are hardly any cut-scenes. They're neither long even though there are so few. The cut-scenes are beautifully presented but there aren't enough animations to make them interesting or jaw-dropping.

Resistance's sound is a mixed bag. Let's get the bad over first; first off there is almost no dialogue or voice acting from the protagonist himself aside a few Terminator two word phrases. Nathan Hale doesn't help the few and short cut-scenes any better by producing nearly no dialogue. The frequent and main voice that will be heard in the game is from one of the partners aiding the U.S Forces. A woman who looks at Nathan Hale's journey into the war against the Resistance. She usually explains about the reasoning behind moving from one mission to another quite well, but usually it's all too complex for its own good. The dialogues complexity bogs this down and while the voice acting is also solid, there's no emotion or passion in there. The sound effects are decent to say the least and while most of the Sci-Fi guns vary in their sounds, the difference isn't huge and they're not as distinct enough as would have been liked. Other non Sci-Fi weapons like the Carbine, Fareye, Grenades and Laark all sound quite well done, especially the Carbine it sounds fantastic. The atmosphere however, is exceptional! The grim and unpleasant setting really feels like it should do, the atmosphere will immerse you no end despite the missions sometimes unforgiving difficulty.

Resistance features a four player split screen local game mode where you can play up to four players offline. There's quite alot of options to customize but nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately this split-screen option is cut down to the fact the maps sizes are huge and can take many minutes to hear a few shots. Despite this if you do play the smallest while still quite large maps, you should still have an enjoyable time.

The biggest part to Resistance is without a doubt its multi player. It's pretty huge with up to 32 player online support and also its map limits in humongous size. In the Resistance lobby, you can create either a custom made game or ranked game. Custom made games allow you to customize your very own game reasonably deep but it's unranked as you are given the advantage by tweaking the rules to your own liking. Ranked runs on automatic servers and give you points on the leaderboards.

Resistance is fantastic in the way score tracking is programmed. You can simply press X on someone's username in the lobby and it'll show all their statistics from kills to medals. Leader boards even go as far as to show accuracy and kills for each individual weapon, it's a treat just to compare and looking at random users stats in a game lobby, which is something rarely implemented today and it's certainly a nice touch. Although score tracking is nearly abscent, because it takes so long to update your new addtional scores. Some times up to an hour and in most cases, half that!

Resistance doesn't feature many game modes at all. Despite being released in 2006, there's still not really an excuse for the standard array of game modes and nothing more. You have Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Node. Capture the Node is a difficult game mode to get the hang of. The rules are easy as it plays out like a Resistance style Capture and Hold but there are no Heads up Display on where the Nodes are and unless you know the maps rhythm off by heart then you'll be using the D-Pad alot to help yourself find the directions to the closest Node.

Resistance's maps are huge and feature innovative jump pads which give you boost jumps on to a multiple level storey building or roof of what sort. This fastens the pace of some maps which really excites the tense engaging atmosphere. Half the maps are fast paced within urban environments along with suitably ruined or wrecked streets. These maps usually pack small enclosed corridors and mini battlefields; perfect for set-piece battles. Other maps are huge and more spread out resulting in less dense packed environments. I preferred the first array of maps though because while huge battlefields were a good thing thing, they weren't as dense or jam-packed and came off in a sort of bland way. These maps are really only based for the 40 player online matches which are rare since the release of the sequel.

+ Completely changeable control scheme.
+ Dozens and dozens of different Chimera.
+ Fantastic Multiplayer including 40 players in a match.
+ Great graphical presentation.
+ Innovating Old-School gameplay.
+ Lengthy, meaty campaign.
+ Two player local co-op and four player split screen.

- Co-op is limited.
- Few Multiplayer game modes.
- Nagging control scheme, gameplay issues.
- Little scripted voice acting from the protagonist.
- Punishing single player campaign.
- Unbalanced weapons, some weak and overpowered.

Resistance is unfortunately not the game we were hoping for. However despite several shortcomings in nearly all its attributes, it still has excellence and innovations in them at the same time. Resistance is neither the savour to which the Playstation would have a killer app to brag about, however what Playstation should brag about is its franchise because it's a fresh take on what was thought to be a long forgotten gaming experience of the old-school era.