News

• Resistance 2
• Insomniac Games
  
• Reviewed on: PlayStation 3
• Also available for: N/A
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• The Good: Plenty of memorable set-piece battles. Deep multiplayer mode offers epic 60-player fights and a set of discrete, eight-player co-operative missions.
• The Bad: Lots of cheap deaths. Enemies often completely ignore computer-controlled soldiers and home in on the player. Boss battles typically force players into a succession patterned movements and attacks.
• The Verdict: The second iteration of Sony's flagship shooter delivers some truly terrific online play, but the solo campaign suffers design problems that pull the player out of what is otherwise a very compelling story.

Resistance 2, follow-up to Resistance: Fall of Man, an alternate history sci-fi shooter in which a strange virus turned millions of people into a race of monsters called Chimera in 1950s-era Britain, delivers plenty of memorable moments.

Upon touching ground in downtown Chicago, the latest city to be devastated by the now global Chimera menace, I faced a flood of zombie-like creatures in a narrow alleyway. I mowed down what felt like hundreds of them in under a minute, and they piled on top of one another in a long stack stretching back half a block. It was terrifying, and reminded me of the chapter in Stephen King's The Gunslinger in which Roland guns down a mob of mindless attackers leaving a similar heap of corpses.

Later, while splashing through the swamps of Louisiana, I stumbled upon an old colonial manse and used it as a base from which to combat a 10-metre tall monster, keeping tabs on him through windows as he lumbered around the building, all the while trying to avoid his fiery saliva, which, once spat, crept along the floors, walls and ceilings like a thing alive.

And I doubt I'll soon forget looking out over the bay in San Francisco and seeing the burning twilight sky filled with town-sized airships raining destruction down on the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's just too bad that the narrative spell cast by these and other riveting scenes – including an unexpected and decidedly daring five-minute finale – is sometimes broken by game-design gaffes that yank players out of the story like a loose tooth tied to a doorknob.

Death is cheap in post-invasion USA

Much of Resistance 2 features players fighting side by side with other soldiers – a smart and increasingly common way of making massive video game battles waged against legions of enemies feel a little more plausible. However, spoiling this effect is the fact that most of the time my squad mates were seemingly invisible to attackers. Chimera simply ran straight past them focused all of their attention on me. I spent much of the game feeling rather like monster bait.

No less jarring are Resistance 2's many “cheap deaths” – video game parlance for perishing under circumstances that offer virtually no chance of escape. Thanks to a plethora of monster closets, invisible foes who often killed me with a single swipe of their claws, and ambushes from which there was almost no hope of survival when first encountered, I found myself staring at a blood red screen more often than I'd have liked. A generous save system means I rarely had to restart from a location more than 30 seconds back from where I bit the dust, but the number of times I had to restart was nonetheless frustrating.

And then there are the boss battles. Resistance 2 serves up several monstrously large creatures that really are quite something to witness. Whenever one reared its ugly face I would spend a few short moments transfixed by the spectacle of the creature, then a few more wondering how in the world I could possibly hope to defeat it – just the sort of emotional response a player ought to have in such situations.

Unfortunately, bringing these beasts down is all too easy – once you learn their weaknesses and the cyclic patterns governing their behaviour, that is. Most of these boss fights involve a series of dodges and opportune shots aimed at an obviously vulnerable area. A few of those cheap deaths I mentioned earlier may be required to learn just what it is you're supposed to do, but don't expect any of these boss battles to prove particularly trying.

Even the greatest shooters tend to suffer the occasional game design gaffe, but when they pop up as frequently as they do in Resistance 2 they have a noticeable impact on narrative pace and a player's suspension of disbelief.

In multiplayer we trust

However, while the single-player experience is less than one might have hoped, Resistance 2 is nearly completely redeemed by its online functionality, which offers up deep, engaging and reliable (read: no lag or unceremoniously dropped connections – problems that have afflicted some recent PlayStation 3 releases) multiplayer gaming.

The competitive arena provides support for typical deathmatch and capture-the-flag – or “energy core,” as the case may be – games, but the highlight of Resistance 2's player-versus-player combat is its support for epic 60-player fracases.

A strange thing happens when so many people play together on a single map: bad players get a little better – there are so many enemy avatars running around that their bullets are bound to eventually find a mark – and great players get a little worse, often overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The chaos doesn't have much of an impact on the leaderboard ladder, but it does a good job of closing the scoring gap between the top and bottom rungs, creating the appealing illusion that everyone in the game is closer to the median skill level.

Of course, smaller matches for players keen to use tight squad tactics are also available, but the fun of having five dozen players going head to head is not to be underestimated.

Don't be surprised, though, if you end up eschewing competitive combat for co-operative play. While friends can't hook up with one another in the solo campaign, there are several discrete missions designed to let groups of up to eight players work together as teams of soldiers, medics, and special ops troopers as they take on hordes of computer-controlled enemies.

The groups of Chimera we go up against in co-op play are both larger and more aggressive than anything seen in the solo campaign, which all but forces players to stick close to one another and work as a group. During one game I stepped back and watched my fellow players take on a trio of two-storey tall Titan monsters. The soldiers put up energy barriers to protect the group and laid down a base of fire while the special ops guys were busy supplying ammunition and placing well-aimed rifle bursts. Meanwhile, medics alternated between healing the wounded and sucking life force from the massive beasts. It was an impressive display of teamwork.

And to top it all off there's a smart little multiplayer reward system that sees players earning experience points, levelling up, and unlocking new weapons and items. Online play this good doesn't really need extra incentives to keep gamepads in players' paws, but it's nice to know that the time we put in will result in a few virtual gifts.

Split decision

Players looking for a long-lasting multiplayer game to take them through the holidays and beyond probably won't do any better than Resistance 2. It's perhaps the most comprehensive and compelling online experience yet found in a Sony-published game. Count on the game's servers being nearly as busy next fall as they are now.

Still, as a guy who generally prefers going solo, I can't help but feel a little disappointed overall. I was anticipating a highly immersive thrill ride of a story, and while I received the thrills I was expecting, the sometimes-shoddy game design effectively killed much of the immersion for which I had hoped.

Lucky thing Resistance 2 finishes with such a cliff-hanger of a conclusion. Despite the vaguely sour taste left in my mouth by the single-player campaign, I'm craving to learn what happens next.