rachel on 12/1/2009 at 22:56

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Warning: This review may contain spoilers.



I used the word "epic" a couple of weeks ago when I described <i>Half-Life 2: Episode 2</i>'s final battle. I had never seen or played an outdoor battle that intense, while retaining gorgeous graphics at a reasonable refresh rate and decent resolution. In other words, I was pretty much floored.

<i>Resistance 2</i> is now the shining example of what the oft overused "epic" epithet can mean when talking about games. This game is impressive, on many levels.

I remember watching the trailer and seeing the Chimera ships hover above some city and thinking "Sweet, this looks gorgeous". I never thought that would actually be in the game. But here it is, as you get out of the bunker in San Francisco, you contemplate the Chimera ships hover around the Bay area and above the devastated Golden Gate Bridge. With the same level of details as in the trailer. It's a gorgeous sight, and it's only one of many. I stopped firing several times during battles to watch around. The lush forests of Orick, California. The deserted town of Twin Falls, Idaho. The utter destruction of Chicago by the Goliath or whatever its name is. The swamps of Louisiana.

Everything is gorgeous, detailed, shiny... sometimes a bit too much, for example in the Chinera baseships. But I'll be damned if it's not a showcase of awesome PS3 graphics. And the scale of the thing is just, well, unheard of as far as I was concerned. Being on top of a building, I could watch the Goliath go Godzilla on the city a few block away, and firing missiles at it I could see the flame diminish and diminish, until a small flash at the end indicated a hit. Then it made it notice me and charge. All this with no noticeable lag. Incredible.
By the way speaking of old pal Goliath, I hope you like boss fights because this game is full of them, and they're all bigger than the previous one... A hell of a training for the last level, I tell you. I thought I got off easy in the last act!

The ambient sounds are also neat, with musics and noises, old radios playing in empty rooms, <i>War of the World</i>-esque radio reports... It adds a lot to the atmosphere and almost makes it a movie experience.

To the gameplay: There are some changes compared to the first opus. You can only carry two weapons instead of the whole arsenal, which is both good and bad. Bad because, like Jayne Cobb, I like to keep my options open when I play, good because it actually helps you define your tactics for the next area(s).
In the new weapons category, I particularly like the Marksman, a Chimeran sniper rifle that is *completely* cool. It fires bursts of energy and is incredibly precise. The Wraith, a sort of minigun with shield, is also handy in places. That said, I have to admit I played as much as I could using the trusted old carbine, although the new Bullseye, dubbed Mark II, saw a lot of action too.

I did find the game to be rather difficult, though I played on Normal difficulty. For the record, it's not a bad thing per se, but I was surprised at how it tough it was sometimes. It's true that, to the game's defence, I have a slight tendency to run to my death in front of enemy lines, but I was a bit bummed by the fact that I sometimes couldn't play more than 10 minutes without being killed at least once. There are even areas where dying is pretty much inevitable, and you'll have to reload as many times as necessary until you get it right and complete the task unscathed.
Level design also suffers of heavy "broken stairs syndrome", as I call it. You enter an area by leaping into a ditch/room from stairs/hill/truck/whatever, and you just can't go back to the previous area. I don't mind a few of those, but it's all over the place. (As I recall, FoM is also affected by this actually)

I also noted the old classic: no matter how many friendlies you have with you, the enemy will always pick <i>you</i> for close combat. Hehe. But that's to be expected I guess.

All these complaints, well I can forgive for the sake of gameplay. I could just be more careful after all, and not every game can be like <i>Deus Ex</i>. But there is one thing that I particularly disliked, and this is, in my opinion, unacceptable on a game of that caliber, is artificial boundaries in the form of instant-death fish-like Chimera creatures in every pool I came across.

These creatures are roughly the size of a shark and cannot be killed even by repeated hits from a rocket launcher. Or Wraith. Or anything bigger. You just can't kill them to clear the way, they're immortal and indestructible. And they kill you as soon as you put a toe in the water.

That, is bad design. I can follow bread-crumbs, I can follow linear design. I don't care that there's only one way, I understand, it's the genre. But irrational stuff like that is simply mind-boggingly stupid, since I can kill a Goliath with a rocket launcher. I even got rid of a Marauder in Louisiana with a fucking Magnum pistol and 12 explosive rounds for chrissake! (Yeah, about that, I missed the LAARK on the upper floor, found it afterwards and felt pretty stupid...)

Anyway.

Final thoughts: <i>Resistance: Fall of Man</i> stays at the top spot for its grittiness and for its documentary-style cutscenes. It's a bit of a shame that those didn't make it to the second one, as not only were they cool, they really helped with the backstory. <i>Resistance 2</i>, being much more action-oriented, mostly follows Hale in the cutscenes and doesn't do much more, so the other characters are mostly just NPCs following you along.


Overall I would say it deserves a solid 8/10. It misses the 9.5/10 mark due to the aforementioned stuff I didn't like or thought it lacked, but remains a really, really cool game and likely one of the best FPS released last year. On my next game though, I'll break tradition and pick Normal Difficulty again. For that one, I think it may be too early for Difficult.


8/10 - raph approved :)

rachel on 13/1/2009 at 04:35

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Yeah, both are excellent games. At that level I'd say it's a matter of personal preference :)
R2 aims for bigger and better and succeeds for the most part, it's only a few details that make it miss the mark in my opinion. Felt like the original FoM had more soul, as it were.

edit: I'll add a paragraph later on about the Collector Edition goodies.

june gloom on 13/1/2009 at 08:18

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(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_the_usage_of_Manchester_Cathedral_in_Resistance:_Fall_of_Man) Church of England.

Trance on 14/1/2009 at 12:12

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I like how it says sales have gone up since the controversy; I'd imagine there are lots of people who bought the game just so they could have an opportunity to perforate the cathedral with bullets, which they couldn't get away with in real life.

Mr.Duck on 15/1/2009 at 06:16

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I enjoyed the game overall, but also found it dissapointing, I may elaborate (or not) on this, but needless to say I think the overall narration and delivery of the story in the first was aces, imho, compared to the second one.

Also...the ending...f.u.

:(