Back in 2006, Gears of War and Resistance went head-to-head as the two big shooters for the holidays. The former was the first big game for Microsoft's then year-old Xbox 360 while the latter was the product of famed developer Insomniac and the only truly excellent launch title for the PlayStation 3. Now, two years later, the two are doing battle once again. We've looked at Gears of War 2—now it's time to check out Resistance 2.
Like its predecessor, Resistance 2 is strictly a first-person shooter that sticks closely to the fundamentals of the genre. As far as the core action and the single player experience goes, you won't find many surprises here: this is just a well-designed game with some great weapons and a great atmosphere. This time the battle against the monstrous Chimera hits America and, while the game play is iterative, there's a newly-found sense of scale and intensity in the multiplayer that make the game stand out in a sea of other shooters.
Insomniac has worked the PS3: this is a great looking game that runs almost flawlessly. In a sense, Resistance 2 is very much the antithesis of Gears of War 2. Microsoft's title focuses on a tight, intimate experience, placing you up close and personal with a relatively small amount of on-screen enemies. Resistance 2 is much more focused on the warfare at grand scales. Giant creatures and cityscapes fill the screen, and are often playable elements, rather than simple background scenery. Gears may be more immediately impressive, but Resistance 2 puts its console's power to much better use and is far less a flash-in-the-pan.
The increase in scale with Resistance 2 is impossible to ignore.
That said, the single player campaign of Resistance 2 is a somewhat run-of-the-mill experience. It has some memorable, edge-of-your-seat moments—and a fair amount of bonus content in terms of unlockables, trophies, cheats, and hidden intel documents to find—but these are countered with some pretty boring corridor sections and periods of relative inactivity. You'll get your money's worth in the roughly ten hours of solid action, but there is very little you haven't seen before, aside from some epic encounters late in the game.
Where Resistance 2 really shines is in its multiplayer gameplay. The array of standard deathmatch and objective-based modes, gorgeous and sizable levels, and laudable variety of weaponry should be enough to sate the average shooter fan. Playing these standards or the game's new "Skirmish" mode with 59 other players in the game's 60 man multiplayer is awe-inspiring, especially because the game performs so well online; there is little in the way of lag issues or performance woes that have plagued every other big PS3 online release.
The new "Skirmish" mode is an innovative addition in which constantly-changing objectives are assigned to squads of five in a team of 30. The two sides are always at war with one another on the battlefield, but each group has a specific task that can help win extra points for their side. An opposing five person squad on the opposite team is given a "rival" objective that directly thrusts the two competing groups into one another's line of fire.
On a micro scale, this creates a small game of five-on-five within a match full of 50 other people. In practice, this mode proves to be as dizzying as it is enthralling. The action is relentless, but the game's excellent objective-based system and squad-based organization keeps what could be a frustrating and confusing experience under control. Objectives are clear and the action is surprisingly organized, considering the scale.
Better still is the game's multiplayer co-op mode. Though the original's support for co-op ply on the main story campaign has been stripped for Resistance 2, the new co-op mode could very well be the one of the best online experiences in console gaming this year.
The game doesn't simply place co-op into the main campaign, but mirrors an MMORPG's "raid instances." You have a set goal, such as defending some soldiers or activating a series of switches, and find that hordes of enemies and boss creatures are in your way. These must be overcome by a team of up to eight players working in tandem. Each of the three player classes—the tanking Soldier, the healing Medic, and the damage-dealing Spec Ops—must be present in the team roster in order to be successful, as each class has important skills that help the team in very specific and wholly necessary ways. Doing your job well is satisfying, and it shows that the developers put care into the mode, rather than simply upping the player count on levels that already existed.
The game's co-operative multiplayer is worth the price of admission alone.
Level segments, each with a specific goal and boss, are randomly snapped together to keep the same level fresh across multiple play-throughs. The action also scales based on how many players are on the team and how the team is performing. Players have lots of incentive to perform well, as good performance rewards players with more experience points, which fuels a leveling system that gives players better abilities over time. It also earns more "Gray Tech," a currency that is used to purchase new equipment.
The play itself isn't the only thing worth noting—the game infrastructure is just as strong, thanks in large part to its excellent party system. Insomniac's flexible system makes social interaction painless, as you can easily invite friends to your party or join theirs. Once together you'll enjoy some very nice, party-based voice chat.
The community-based features go beyond chatting, though. Players earn experience across the campaign, the competitive, and the co-operative play, all of which contribute to their overall status in the Resistance 2 community. Further character upgrades are unlocked as a player's overall experience level rises, and the entire system is integrated into the Resistance 2 website, a feature that proved so popular in games like Halo 3.
Insomniac has an impressive resume of hits, and Resistance 2 clearly has earned a spot on that list. This is a game that manages to improve upon its predecessor in every conceivable way. Even though the game's campaign is a bit dry, the competitive multiplayer action and the addictive co-op will keep this game disk in PS3s for some time to come. Guerrilla Games is going to be hard-pressed to top this with Killzone 2, set to be released in early 2009. We're willing to go on record as saying that this game is better than Gears of War 2 in many ways, and could very well be the best shooter of the year.
