Resistance 2
Review
Survived Chimeran infection, what's next?
by Joseph Barron
reviewed on PS3
Sequel
The original Resistance: Fall of Man was a flagship PS3 launch title for Sony. The sequel comes at a time when the market’s most expensive system is crying out for another killer-app in the wake of the astounding Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots. Does Resistance 2 fit the bill?
Following on immediately after the end of the first game, Resistance 2 finds our hero, Nathan Hale, as a squad leader in a team of elite soldiers who have all survived Chimeran infection. You might expect that this means you and your team have incredible super powers, but unfortunately this isn’t the case and it seems like a missed opportunity. Instead, you are thrown into a familiar feeling, story-driven, linear campaign, where you will spend a lot of time shooting aliens in corridors.
Weapons
While the level design may feel like a “paint-by-numbers” First Person Shooter, the weapons are where the real imagination lies. All of the favorites from the original return, so you can happily blast through walls with the Augur and fire homing bullets with the Bullseye in no time at all. Your arsenal is also expanded this time around. You will find new toys including a minigun, grenade launcher and a couple of new grenade types, such as one which traps enemies in a bubble and rebounds their own bullets back at them. My personal favorite was the Splicer, which launches saw blades at enemies, cutting off their limbs.
Of course, there is no point in having all these cool weapons if there is nothing to shoot them at and Resistance 2 does a good job of throwing a ton of enemies at you. Most of them will be recognizable to players of the first game, but there are just as many new ones too. These range from the invisible Chameleon (which results in some very cheap deaths), to the fast and numerous Grims, which are closer to the Left 4 Dead zombies than they are to anything from the previous Resistance game.
Patterned
One of the most interesting aspects of the campaign is the way that the developer appears to acknowledge their own lack-luster level design by choosing to break up the gameplay with huge boss battles. During these battles you usually have to fight some sort of super Chimera on your own. You can tell that Insomniac rose to fame as a platform game developer, because the bosses are almost painfully patterned, making them little more than exercises in repeating the same movement and attacking until they eventually fall.
The biggest example of this (in more ways than one) is the towering Leviathan, which has been shown in most of the game’s trailers. It is a shame that destroying a skyscraper sized enemy couldn’t have been made a bit more entertaining! Almost all of the boss fights go like this… You are required to run to an on-screen marker, where you will be picked up by the huge monster, you then fire 3 rockets into its mouth. After this you are thrown to the roof of another building and you repeat the process again. It really spoils the whole idea of it being “epic”.
7.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
