Resistance 2

Even though I didn’t play Resistance: Fall of Man (the game’s prequal), I still found the plot fairly easy to sum up from the very start of the game.  Basically, aliens have invaded and taken over almost all of the Earth, America is last remaning place which has a slight form of shelter for man…  And you’re there (as a man going by the name of Hale) to keep it that way!  These aliens though, are not the skinny, gray coloured skin and shiny black eyes kind.  These aliens are bad-ass aliens — aliens on steroids.

You mainly end up having a good shoot-out with many lizard-looking aliens wielding laser guns, which ironically end up being your main source of ammo.  When roaming round the rest of post-apocolytpic America you also find ogre aliens with gattling guns, stealth aliens which own you in a split-second and giant ones which range from the size of a house to a how-many-story building.

These Earth-invaders aren’t happy with just nearly making man extinct; they do much cooler things.   They put humans into a meaty/fleshy kind of cocoon; devolving them into zombies with a — literally — killer instinct.  Zombies are by far the most enjoyable enemy to fight in Resistance 2; masses of them running at you in the back garden of an American shack is just so enjoyable!  You’re usually stuck there with a Carbine and/or Shotgun, trying to reload fast enough to stop them clawing at you, trying to melee them, trying to run away because you’ve just ran out of ammo; aaah!

My initial thoughts about the game were not good though; it seemed tedious, far too linear and basically like every other FPS game I’ve played.  The aliens don’t vary much at the start, the locations are fairly boring and there isn’t any real excitement.  Although this is a big put-off sometimes, and it’s easy to go and play/do something else; bad starts seem to be a characteristic consistent in great games.  I suppose linear gameplay is to be expected when playing a SP FPS, but I can’t help but be upset by it when I’m a RPG gamer at heart.   I simply feel R2 could have tackled this linear feel by having some additional objectives, alternative routes or even an alternate ending.

As for R2 being like every other FPS game I’ve played, this truly was nothing but an initial thought; once you get around 1/3 into the game it starts to get really fun.  You end up having to kill some really big aliens, see some fresh scenery and battles get more intense with three-times the normal amount of aliens being thrown at you.  Certain parts of the game are quite challenging and require more than just spraying your Carbine, timing is a key factor and without it you’re either over-run by zombies or a victim of a chameleon alien.  These factors are what make R2 a truly good FPS.

Although the plot is easy to sum up — and more than sufficient for the average game who is happy with shooting aliens — there are a few plot-holes.  The main one I found was a random flying alien called Daedalus, who turned out to be the king-pin of the galactic immigrants.  No explanation is given to what control he has over the aliens, why he wants to eliminate the human race or why he came to Earth.  Aside from that, other plot holes are fairly easy to cover up with assumptions; which I can’t reveal without having to type ’spoilers’ in capitals.

The graphics are perhaps the biggest let down.  There are lots of flat textures, in obvious places and in the opening scene!  As well as certain plants that look like they’ve been imported from the N64, being jagged round the edges and lacking any detail at all.  The water is quite humorous, moving slightly causes huge unnatural ripples which bring out its horrible block-of-brown appearance even more.  Apart from nearly all objects and characters being slightly jagged on the curves; blood is probably the biggest surprise.  I do not joke when I say it looks like Duke Nukem blood; either an explosion of random red lines when shooting or a perfectly round red circle of red when the enemy has been downed.

R2 did not have an impressive playtime; I completed it in less than 10 hours, and that was with dying all the time!  Aside from the bad start though; it’s definitely replayable.  You can either play again to try and score some more trophies or simply for more of a challenge on a higher difficulty.  However, the presence of a multiplayer makes up for the lack of playtime. Although I did not experience it, the game engine (which I’m sure is the CoD4 engine!) coupled with the diverse collection of weapons and levels will undoubtedly serve as a great multiplayer.

So, I think R2 — all in all — is really good.  If you’re a casual gamer who doesn’t pay attention to the most detailed of details and simply wants a really fun, exciting and intense game; then this is for you.