@ windbane: you can't say that to zen, he's the voice of reason, truth and everything else positive to this site! :p

ah yes, I forgot...

After reading your post...... I need to watch the Harry Potter movies

On topic:
R1: 8.5
R2: 9.2

That took you a while... it's been official for like six months now.

Resistance2 was a good FPS! Not great, not innovative not spectacular but good entertainment.
Personally I enjoyed the first one more because even though the story was not awesome the whole experience in a destroyed England with external story teller and the whole dark look was setting a much better mood. The second one seemed a bit off, esp. the weird bright coloured look. (Yes I like my FPS grey and brown, unless you are Halo its very very difficult to pull of a brighter look wthout looking weird.)
Second: story seriously the second one was terrible cliche and on some occasions pulled out of context. The first was much better at story telling mostly because they didn't tell much of a story. Everything was a bit mysterious which was much better than the explanations of the second. Sentinels, Daedalus, the weird swarm, please... (it had some cool points though Go Capelli go.
Third level design: The first one had some really cool levels where you were inside a warzone. The second tried but they didn't pull it of as well. The indestructible fish monsters and cannons were bad for immersion as well. Although the big battleships were cool.
Misc: Whoever had the idea that you are limited to two weapons should be shot. This was cool in Call of Duty4 but R1's fighting did live from its cool weapons. Limiting you was really stupid I also want my health bar back.

So all in all, R2 was cool R1 was better and both are decent FPS although not comparable to Halo or Half Life or Call of Duty or hopefully killzone2 which looks really amazing. I really don't know why it got such great review scores and the sales are more than ok for it.

My verdict is
R1: 8.1
R2: 8.8
COD:WAW: 8.0

Resistance 2's coop has been getting the most play-time from me out of all my games since I got 100% and all levels aced in LBP. Call Of Duty World at War has sadly been neglected. Next up, Killzone2!

I bought Res 2 on full price...Thats very rare from me.
How stupid I was...
Ok first Single Player is very bad.Story as well,but most of shooters have bad story so thats not the point..Few great scenes save a lot,but still its about good as...Legendary!!!! :O :O ok no.

Guns aren't good as were in Resistance 1.Nothing fun with them...

Online....Thats great.

I would say don't pay full price from this game...

Resistance 2 is great. Extremely fast paced action and a lot of variety in challenges and monsters. I personally liked the 2 game weapon setup coz it makes it more of a challenge to pick the right weapon for the job. I mean I pick up a Laark to fight the big monster and then immediately drop it and pick up a Fareye for taking out a few baddies up on the roof. Online competitive is fantastic. I am level 9 corporal now and I am going to work towards getting the lieutenant trophy, the wonderful thing about the team deathmatches are the presence of upward of 30 players in HUGE maps, which allows you to use so many playing styles. You can rush in like a tank, you can sneak around and snipe. You can flank the enemy and pop in grenades into their spawn zone. The huge maps and so many players means you get a lot of fun.
My rating: 9/10

Actually now that you mention it, that was a REALLY cool element of R1. Running through credible recognisable towns with believable architecture, with a very gritty believable WWI and WWII feeling to it but with the surrealistic twist of running into the crazy chimeran enemy. It was so bleak and really felt like armageddon with the last few survivors struggling for their lives. And you could enjoy all this with a buddy sittin next to ya.

And R2 was futuristic, macho, shiny, a bit Halo'ish. Loads of alien tech and architecture, massive fleets, crazy and OTT. I didn't play the online much at all though. So R1 campaign > R2. R2 online > R1

I enjoyed R2 but felt it showed some strange missteps. In summary I felt.

1) SP
While SP was tighter it strangely seemed even less focused in terms of a bigger plot. For some reason, despite picking up right where RFOM ended, R2 felt somehow disconnected to the first game to me, with too little exposition as to what the heck is going on.

While I enjoyed the improved graphics and wide range of settings I missed vehicles, and felt that too much effort had been made to match COD/Halo standards.

I also felt too much was added with too little explained. In RFOM we had Chimera, unseen Cloven and strange towers being unearthered. In R2 we had Chimera, still unseen Cloven, added unseen Grey Tech, an explanation (if you can call it that) that the towers are all around the world and buried millions of years ago and that the Chimera might not have built them but someone else (the grey tech authors?) did. Also the Chimera's goals seemed as unexplained as ever and while the additional revelations in co-op do shed more light on things I'd prefer the SP campaign to reveal info in an exciting manner, not require me to read it as text while waiting for an online game to commence.

In the end I felt like I was trying to juggle a big unexplained puzzle and just gave up and enjoyed the action and set pieces. But with RFOM having for me the best backdrop of any recent FPS (I love alternative history stories) I was disappointed the story seemed to be kept just out of sight of the player, delighting in throwing in puzzles but revealing little.

Also, I felt Nathan's plight, which was a great plot mechanic, was somewhat wasted. Apart from the very last level, and some cutscences, when actually playing nothing really made you feel you were living on borrowed time due to the Chimeran Virus. I really felt this should have been a much larger part of the plot and the game should have included increasing levels of change to the player throughout the campaign.

So, 8/10 for SP for me. Fun, but it seemed to waste a great premise with too much to puzzle and too little to understand.

2) MP

It's solid but the 60 player skirmish too repetitive. It needs a much broader set of objectives IMHO. I figured they were going to throw in a mix of goals but really you often end up running between two points on the map trying to win them back or hold them. I'm still impressed at the game supporting the number of players it does really well, but I wanted a deeper experience.

The stats, etc. are good, but I felt that while MP was fun it didn't really deliver the promise of an engine on consoles capable of supporting such large numbers of players. I would suggest Insomniac look carefully at PC high player count titles like Unreal Tournament, Enemy Territory, etc. to get a better feel for the more complex scenarios you can deliver with more players.

So, 7.5/10 for MP for me.

3) Co-op (online)

While I missed split screen co-op (and really they could simply ignore plot and given you an ally all the way through easily) I have to say the online co-op is the jewel of R2 for me. Big, expansive maps, 7 team-mates, hordes of enemies, varied objectives, and some truly wonderful set-pieces with masses of on on-screen action that makes 10 to 14 player console MP DM seem empty by comparison.

The stats and upgrades work well, the different classes work well and when you get a really good team the experience is I believe is unbeatable currently.

I know people miss split-screen co-op, but for me this more than makes up for the lack.

The only knock I'd give the co-op is that it didn't connect to the SP campaign as tightly as I thought it would. Each scenario is really a self contained fun romp with a text message before the match begins that reveals additional background to the SP campaign. It would have been even nicer to actually uncover stuff during co-op but as the mode is really about online action that blends the SP/MP experience I guess it's not too big a failing.

9/10

Summary)

So overall, I see R2 as a solid game with one standout mode and two solid ones.

A nice 88% game but it should have been a 92 or 94% star but didn't quite match the ambition of its design.

With hindsight I have to wonder whether for the first time Insomniac's drive to get out a game every 12 months in this case somewhat affected the game as I reckon another 4 months of development and time taken to put in much more explanation and focus in the SP campaign would have propelled the title to a much better level.

Still, astonishing to think that Insomniac have released two Resistance games, one full R&C game and a R&C PSN title in such a short period of overall time.