Resistance 2 Review

A Review - By Steve Heller

You are standing on a battlefield, a fellow soldier to your right, a fallen soldier to your left, and a giant "Goliath" aiming to force feed you rockets down your throat.... welcome to the opening level of Resistance 2 on the Playstation 3.

This sets the mood for the hectic twelve or so hours the player will be going through in R2's single player campaign. The action never lets up, and while this is definitely not a bad thing, at times it can be hard to listen to all the goings on in the story. The game picks up where 2006's Fall of Man left off - the player takes control of Nathan Hale yet again as he is en route to a research lab in Iceland when things all go haywire. The player then follows Hale and the rest of his squad through a series of missions to take down the dreaded Chimera in an alternate 1950's era shooter.

There are a number of changes that players will encounter when they first pick up R2. Controls have been refined to fit in more to a Call of Duty 4 style, which suits the game better, but will have Fall of Man veterans shouting from the rooftops at first. The controls are certainly tighter and are easy enough to be picked up. Developers have done away completely with the four bar health systems and opted for the regeneration mechanic that has become a standard for shooters this day and age.

Resistance 2 Review

The one thing that really stood out in the single player campaign was the amazing set pieces. They are huge, concise, impressive and emersive. While I wasn't exactly hooked on the game, once I had made it to the third level and I saw the first big set piece in a town, I was compelled to keep on playing. It is ultimately these intense battles, that keeps the player motivated to continue on with the campaign. Often the player will be fighting impossible odds, and be in awe at the beauty of what they are experiencing. Resistance 2 excels at creating memorable moment throughout the whole single player experience

Multiplayer sees a huge upgrade this time round. Players have a chance to play through a seperate co-op campaign with up to eight players, all fielding a different player class. The co-op campaign runs along side the single player and it is refreshing to see something new, unlike most games which just throw the single player campaign back in our faces to complete with friends. Lag is minimal and I was playing with people from the USA on my side, so things can only be beter for locally hosted games.

Resistance 2 Review

Competitive Multiplayer has the modes we all expected from the first outing, and then beefed up with new weapons, options and experience points which unlock new ranks and items, ala COD 4. While it works well, and will keep most players hooked, it seemed to me that all online shooters are following the Call of Duty line in the way of competitve multiplayer, and I only have time to devote myself to ranking up in one shooter. 60 player Skirmish mode is nice, it has people working in squads to complete objectives which change throughout the course of the match. With mininal lag once again playing on a USA hosted server, it was hectic, it was chaotic, it was wild and I loved it. This is the selling point of Resistance 2's impressive online suite.

First thing Fall of Man players will notice is that someone has dumped colour into this title. The first game was a drab brown and grey affair, while Resistance 2 has a colourful landscape that paints a bevvy of visual landscapes. Environments range from cold corridors of a complex, forests, country towns, Chicago City to the desert. The player will not be bored with the environments, they look great and create a scale that makes the game seem much larger than the first.

Resistance 2 Review

Player models are detailed and look great, Hale looks ruggerd as does his squad mates and the Chimera look terrifying. The weapons throughout the game look like they should, this is based in the 1950's afterall, visual sights look worn and realistic

But on all of it's detail Resistance doesn't really jump out and say "Hey look at me I'm pretty". Sure it looks good, but it doesn't look stunning. There is a lot going on the screen at once though, and the game keeps a consistant frame rate the whole way through, which I think may be the reason why they didn't push the graphics to their limit. They look good, but not stunning, but the game offers a lag free experience the whole way through.

Resistance 2 Review

The audio is rather hit and miss. Vehicles sound impressive, the Chimera sound damn terrifying and the voice acting is solid. When in game a character who might be standing right next to you and talking will always be heard through the games intercom system, which is good in theory if you can make out what they are saying. It's crackly, distorted, and unless you have your sound turned right up it can often be hard to hear which is frustrating as they often chat about key aspects of the story.

Same is said for weapons during the game. Some sound realistic as hell, the Carbine sounds like it was lifted directly from the beaches of Normandy, the Bullseye sounds like it was lifted from some kind of sci-fi movie from the sixties. The weapons you would expect to sound deep and weighted simply don't, the LARK doesn't offer enough punch and the Auger seems to be firing with a silencer attached. This detracts from an otherwise solid aural performance

Resistance 2 Review

With a lengthy campaign to be played over at various levels of difficulty, intel documents to collect, trophies to be unlocked and an impressive suite of Multiplayer modes Resistance 2 is definately going to provide you with bang for buck no doubt about it. With promises of the DLC in the future we should see this in players consoles for quite sometime.

Final Verdict

Resistance 2 Review