Following up one of the premiere titles of the PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man became a best seller and a Greatest Hit; Resistance 2 brings nothing less to the plate. The game has been improved in every aspect. Although there are a few drawbacks, you will notice the improvements as soon as you step into the game without noticing the minor technical imperfections. Resistance 2 also brings back the story of Hale and the Chimeran forces, but this time they leave us with more questions than before. Even though they answer some of our questions from the previous title, the ending is quite a head-scratcher. Regardless of the the minor problems, Resistance 2 proves to be a step-up to an already great game. Resistance 2 is definitely a must-have exclusive title to Sony's console - possibly a system seller.
Resistance 2 picks up right when Resistance: Fall of Man ended. Hale survived the collapse of the London Chimeran tower as he was then picked up by the Sentinels - a special force of humans enhanced with strains of the Chimeran virus (think Alice from Resident Evil movies). For the sake of not revealing any crucial plot points or giving any spoilers, we will go straight to how the story telling improves or worsens: It worsens. Don't get me wrong, the story follows the first one, and adds more of untapped potential of the Resistance franchise, but the way it's delivered can be a bit convoluted. As you progress through the game, you'll find yourself uncovering a lot of answers to questions left by R:FoM's story. The problem is that as you get more questions answered from the previous game, you are then presented with more questions - possibly more questions than before - that go unanswered. (That of which will make you hungry for a R3 release.)
The story is more wrapped-up around Hale. This time is what Hale is, what he wants to do, what he has become, what his actions towards the war cause. Although you don't become "emotionally attached" with Hale, you live the story through Hale's eyes. His motivations of his actions are what will perhaps confuse the player leaving more questions along the way. This time there is no narration that will connect the plot points for you (which was a bad choice.) The narration on the previous game gave another perspective to the game story telling, tying up all loose ends that might of been left loose.
Thought the story leaves some unclear statements, this issue is a minor subject problem that is overshadowed by basically the rest of the game. The atmosphere of the game maintains the Resistance look and feel. The surreal environments mixed with popular landmarks can be admired in larger scales. Even-though you start out in Iceland, you move around and across the US fighting the war against the Chimeran forces; this gives you a better aspect of the war itself as you move around the invaded sites of the US. Every level in R2 will have you amazed by devastation caused by the Chimeran invasion. This can also be said of the various Chimeran creatures. As you progress through the game you will find yourself against over sized "monsters." Most of the time this monsters take up the full size of the screen; the sense of dimension if definitely nothing less than epic.
In the last game, Hale, along British troops, had intense fights against numerous Hybrids; this time around, the battlefield feels even more intense. At times there will be three times the number of enemies that was on the previous game. The AI is brutal and has been critically enhanced. Chimera will not wait for you in the safety of their cover, they will come towards you and annihilate you in one swing if you are not careful. NPC soldiers will also push through unlike the previous game. This will give you a rush, and with the many difficulty settings you have a great deal of hostile forces to tackle. It is also great to note that the frame rate is solid; you will notice no flaw despite the numerous enemies and foes on the screen.
The controller scheme has been highly improved. Thanks to the standard set on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the controller schemes are much like CoD4. The cool thing on this game is that you can map the button layout just about any way you prefer. You can also split the sprint and crouch settings. This gives you the freedom to do what you please with your control mapping.
Graphics - Although there are some technical and visual glitches, the scope of the game is big enough to overshadow these imperfections. Not often will you spot this little glitches, so there isn't much to complain about. The previous game had the best glass shatters of any game on its time, but this time I feel it fails on delivering good glass graphics. If you have seen the trailer of the "unfinished built" you noticed that Hale was thrown through some glasses, they immediately said that the game was not finished yet and there was more tweaking to do. When I played this level, I noticed no difference when the glass was shattered. That is one of the things that disappointed me a little. Perhaps its because I don't have an HD set. The fire texture is low-res, and some other issues that go unnoticed because of the dimension of the game. Also, when playing online (and most times off) you don't notice the details on the players and enemies. For example, in R:FoM (specially if you T-Bagged the number of Hybrids a achievement told you to,) you would notice the Hybrid's sweat, the eyes and teeth popping out. The texture was phenomenal, but when you do this and get up close to an enemy you will notice no clean texture - specially on the online side of the game. The reason to this is because of the immense scale of the game - at least that's what I believe.
Audio/Sound - The sound within R2 is a big part of the game, much like any other. The outstanding voice acting of Hale and his comrades puts you right in the action. The ambient sounds in the game draw you even closer to the experience of the ongoing war against the Chimeran invading forces. As you make your way through dozens of creatures you'll hear unnatural and unnerving sounds. You will also blow many of them up and you will hear a explosion sound with a slimy shower of blood.
Online/Co-op/Competitive - The online on Resistance 2 is presented in a way that most games are now being presented: the online is seamless on any game screen, right on the main screen you could be in a party or check your status or clan. You can jump on a Co-op match to a Competitive in no time. The eight player Co-op experience is one of the best, and probably the only you will find on the PS3. Its clean, and enjoyable through and through. You have three classes to chose from where you can explore a different point of view behind the story. The point behind that is to broaden the war conflict. It isn't just Hale fighting this war. This leans you towards the fact that you must push your way through as a team. The three classes, Spec-Ops, Soldier, Medic, make you work as a team to survive the many hostile you'll stumble upon. The game will scale depending on the number of people on your party. For example, if you have 2 players you will face a dozen hybrids, but if you have a full party, that dozen will transform into four dozens. So, basically the game is always evolving dynamically.
Obviously Resistance 2 also features a Competitive mode that is incredible. You have your normal deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, capture node modes all with up to 60 players on the game. Its incredible how there is no lag, despite the many things going on the screen. Kudos to Insomniac, but the one that stands out is Skirmish: Skirmish mode is pretty much like co-op, but against other people. Your squad is given a task and adversary squads are given theirs. The end result is little fights going all around the map. This gets you more into the game and is quite fun. Working together will also help.
To tie all ends, Resistance 2 is a must have title for any PS3 owner - specially being a exclusive title. Resistance 2 expands on its predecessor in mostly every single way. The single player follows up a controversial story that ends, well, in a strange ending, the co-op is engaging, and the competitive is fun and, well, competitive. There is lots of replayability with trophies, and other unlouckables. The community support is phenomenal both in-game and on Resistance 2 website. Despite the little issues that go unnoticed because of the game's great scale, Resistance 2 is a excellent title to have have in your collection.
While it's been on ice for as long as it was around, the Resistance franchise has no shortage of quality.
My take:
Single player
3, 2, 1
Multiplayer
3, 1, 2
Overall
3, 2, 1
I beat the lengthy single player in 1 multiple times and spent hours in the online too. Plus 1 featured my home town! Special mention to the audio design in 1: playing that with surround headphones blew me away.
Note: I have the platinum for Resistance 2.
Resistance 1 MP will always be my favorite. Call it nostalgia or whatever, but that was my jam, felt more balance, natural.
i have the platinium too , 10k kills in online ranked matches was no joke . Took me 3-4 months straight grinding but it was fun . To put it in perspective you only got like 25 kills per match if you were 1st place every match that's at Least 400 matches in 1st
I only played the 3 main Resistance titles. My ranking would be;
1. Resistance 3
2. Resistance: Fall of Man
3. Resistance 2
Man I loved 3's campaign. Another gem stuck on the ps3 and who knows if insomniac will go back to the franchise.
Resistance, Warhawk, MAG, Motorstorm, there's so many first party gems on PS3 that Sony has just left to die...
Burning Skies was about 3 hours long and rather inconsequential. You haven't missed anything
Honestly, Burning Skies was shit. There's no two ways about it. At first I thought it looked terrible, then I second guessed myself. Big mistake.
Retribution has this really cool feature where you could use a PS3 to link a controller to it and play. So if you had a 2000 or 3000 hooked to a tv, you can use a real controller. All of this predates the PSP Go's ability to sync a sixaxis to it via bluetooth.
While the studio is best known for Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet, and Clank, and Spider-Man back on the PS3 the studio broke from creating platformers and made one of the highest regarded science-fiction first-person shooters of all time. This was Resistance and it remains one of Sony's most acclaimed and dormant franchises.
Agreed. Until they do a new entry, I'd love to get the two portable games remade into console versions. Maybe in a nice compilation with the mainline titles.
Burning Skies wasn't a great game.
It was only a couple of hours long and there was nothing memorable about it.
I'd love a new entry
Resistance 3's campaign was gorgeous for the time - and an awesome game to boot.
I remember being put off by it because McHale wasn't the MC but it turned out to be my favourite campaign
by and large though the Resistance IP featured many protagonists (4 altogether I think if you include the portables). One of the reasons I enjoyed it was not being shackled to individual story arcs. Very rare for a major franchise.
My favorite resistance game as well! It seriously had creepy, scary a$$ moments bro! It made me want an action horror game from insomniac!
Remember playing this through online co op with the move controller and gun attachment! What a game!
I've said in the past I'd like to see this series return and have it take place years later, like in the present.
I'll give you an example if I'm not mistaken the last game ended in the 50s, so if it was to take place some time in the 2020s you'd have an opportunity to see how the world changed after the fall of Chimera and all the new technology that came out of that war.
Just like in our universe we all know WW2 happened, but we never experienced it, so if the next Resistance game takes place years later so too would people in that universe know a war look place against the Chimera, they just wouldn't know what it really was like.
So getting to see how that universe would respond to the Chimera reemerging would be interesting.
Imagine a little kid talking with his grandfather about the war and the kid just thinks it was just a made up bed time horror story and what was said was worse than what really took place, but now that the Chimera come back the kid will find out why years later the old timer adults were still waiting for the Chimera to return.
I think there is great potential for this series still and I really believe the best way forward for Resistance is make it have a time jump too.
So hopefully this series will return.
Great Idea. I'd play that version.
Resistance was a great game and of all the remasters.... I would play a great remastered version of resistance series as well
I was blown away when i played for the first time Resistance on the PS3. Great Game. Also liked very much an played for hundred of hours the Co-op of R2. The SP campaign of R3 is also excelent. I really hope that Sony and Insomniac annouced the Remaster of the Series and a new chapter. They got story to do that.
Resistance 2 was one of the first few games i played on ps3 and I loved it, would definitely finish that again :D
I loved all the Resistance games. But part 2 online was amazing. The Marksmen for the Spec Ops type class when it was fully upgraded was such an amazing weapon. Oh man I wish they release all the games again and let us play part 2 online again.
With Insomniac Games now under the Sony Worldwide Studios umbrella, the studio could bring a new Resistance game to life.
Insomniac didn’t feel all enthusiastic at continuing the series after the third installment
I don’t see how them getting bought out would encourage them to make a fourth game when they could work on another new IP or a sequel to Ratchet & Clank or Spider-Man.
Plus the third game ended on a deserved bittersweet note with a sense of finality against the Chimera. It’d be soul crushing even for this series to make all those sacrifices go to waste
Nah. Just a new killzone from guerilla games please.
Let insomniac do a platform game..
Thing is, there can be multiple teams doing multiple projects. One Insomniac team can do Spiderman, another can do Ratchet and Clank, another can do Resistance. It just depends on whether Sony is willing to grow the team enough and pay for more offices to do more work.
Fluttershy, Insomniac isn't Bioware, dummy.
There are plenty of publishers with multiple teams running multiple projects. Sony has several studios with numerous ongoing projects and teams. I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for plebs to grasp but the disagrees keep coming in lol
I want a semi-open world(think GoW) greedy, violent and super heavy atmosphere Killzone with KZ2's controls/feel with the best weapon audio possible and full on stealth elements for additional choice of approach.
As for Resistance (boy do I love this IP) I think Insomniac could do this game justice if they rebooted or continued the story with a different character. I just crave for Insomniac's weapon design ingenuity! As for multiplayer, they can go all out on a BR mode with some asymmetric PvPvE elements thrown in there like huge Chimera beasts dropping into the map at some random point and the team who kills it gets legendary loot.
Man just thinking about a modern Resistance game with a proper AAA BR made by Insomniac makes me salivate.
I love doing so too, but there has to be context behind it.
Killing the Helghast for example is entertaining gameplay wise as much as it is narrative wise because of all the lore behind it all.
The Chimera were said to have been defeated for good after killing of converting 90% of humanity’s population as well dramatically changing earth’s climate. If after all that the Chimera came back even stronger than ever, then would be far too bleak for there to ever be any reasonable chance of defeating them for good.
Dafuq? Killzone 3 was received just as well as Resistance 3 was.
And Killzone: Shadow Fall sold more than the last mainline Resistance game, showing that there’s more interest in the former series than the latter
KillZone Shadowfall was a borefest. GG has wrote themselves into a hole with the story for that game. I don't know how they're going to fix that.
Resistance has much better gameplay, world building, story, enemy designs, weapon variety, campaigns, etc. In terms of campaigns, Resistance is leagues better. But in terms of online multiplayer, I'd give that trophy to KZ.
I'd like to see them reboot it and go back to what Fall of Man was like
They could always do a reboot retelling like they've already done with Ratchet and Clank then do something completely new with a sequel
I'd love if they could restructure Nathan Hale and make him a better all rounded, developed character spanning the entire trilogy. At the end of the second one he could be transported to their world or something
Resistance 3 had a nice ending that closed the book on everything so I wouldn't want them to spoilt that, too many games come back and do the whole "Oh that great evil you got rid of? Yeah it's back"
I'm still amazed at how little recognition is given to the first resistance from "fans" esp the narration of RFOM during custscenes. Cornelia Hayes did an excellent job as Rachel Parker she gave the world an authentic sense of atmospheric urgency and dread that I haven't seen matched since Halo, It was even more engrossing at times then gears. The multiplater on Resitance 2 though just looked like saints row 3 version of gears...
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
The sound design in RFOM blew me away. Playing that with surround sound headphones was and probably still is awesome.
Ah RFOM! The multiplayer was SO smooth at the time. Even with a 350 mo- 500 mo connection. That was my first online experience back then!
Agree. I think the series has run its course. I'd rather see a great new IP.
they can start with an easy one. Resistance Trilogy Remaster for PS4 and includes trophy patch for RFoM. there is so much win in THAT. BUT...ONLY if they let us have back Resistance 2 MP...THE WHOLE THING!
that would be one hell of a housewarming gift for the fans!
"It’d be soul crushing even for this series to make all those sacrifices go to waste"
I have always felt that there is room for more. For instance the Chimera could have sent out a distress signal just before the tower/ship blew up to the real threat to humanity or what if thanks to the virus Nathan Hale somehow survived?
There are five games in the Resistance series. I think they could at least take the two portable ones and give them a proper big screen remake, like the GoW portables on the PS3 got.
No. let them work on what they want. I loved Resistance, but Insomniac proved they can work on New Ip and are hitting their Prime with the release of Spiderman, so let them work on what they want, and have a smaller 3rd party remake or remaster Resistance, and see if there's an audience for it.
Agreed. A new IP would be welcome. They've proven they can make a solid FPS, so let's make a new one!
Insomniac should do whatever they want, they deserve every freedom to deliver the game they want.
This.
When developers do what they want their products turn out better and we all benefit. When they're ready to do Resistance they'll do Resistance.
That's why they were independent and claimed to want that independence. If they wanted that freedom they should've stuck to their guns. Not took a payoff.
You're making it sound nefarious when this is hardly the case. There's a mutual trust here.
They know they'll be free to do what they want under Sony. Total autonomy - of course not, but Sony will likely approve and back anything they do.
This isn't to say Sony won't have any say - they'll likely encourage the immediate continuation of Spider-Man, but I doubt they'll mind and the fans sure won't.
Overall Insomniac is happy and trust Sony, or they wouldn't have taken the deal.
TheUndertaker85 - Haha, c'mon mate - Sony will let them do what they want. This acquisition makes sense on every level.
There needs to be mutual respect between publisher and developer.
They'll find that respect at WWS, this is good for Insomniac. WWS has a huge talent pool and they share knowledge and resources amongst each other.
Very excited to see what Insomniac can achieve under WWS.
https://www.polygon.com/201...
“ "It's hard for people in any industry to accept change, especially when you've been focused on doing things one way for so long," said Ted Price, Insomniac's president and CEO, in a recent interview with Polygon. "But as an industry, we're being forced to become comfortable [with], or at least accept, that change will be a constant for us."”
“ According to Price, Insomniac's independence is crucial to its ability to continually adapt to changing circumstances and try new things in all areas of game development. "We've always loved the opportunity to experiment with ... early on, game design models; now, delivery mechanisms and new platforms," he explained. And Insomniac's corporate culture ensures its employees are always challenged to "think creatively about not just game design, but how [they're] delivering [their] games and what audiences [they're] addressing with [their] games."”
“ Insomniac attempted to combine its history of creating hardcore games with a new platform, Facebook, when it began developing Outernauts in 2010. Price explained that the studio wanted to try a new business model but still deliver an experience that core gamers would appreciate. The company turned to Electronic Arts for help with the first half of that equation, and it didn't work out because, as Price put it, "the monetization and viral features that we had put in turned off a lot of the audience that we were hoping to attract."”
“ "I'm very proud of what we did with both those games because we took creative risks," he said. "And I think as a developer, taking creative risks is something you have to continue to do, even if people are telling you that all they want is the same recycled stuff over and over again."”
I think he means that sony shouldn't be too involved when they are making a game, just trust them to deliver if they want to make a new ip
Fair chance any remaster would be done by BluePoint. They've done amazing work this gen.
