Review: Resistance 2 (PS3)

Resistance 2 starts off directly where Resistance: Fall of Man left off. You continue the story at Lieutenant Hale where you get airlifted out of Europe. A lot has changed for this game, versus the first Resistance. The first thing that you will notice is the graphics. HUGE improvement (as you would expect since the first was a launch title)! Everything is far more detailed than in the first game (especially the character models). The very next thing that you will notice is that this game is VERY BIG. Everything about this game is huge! The environments are bigger and better, the enemies are bigger and better, and the game itself is bigger and better. And the third thing that you will notice very quickly is that you can only hold two different guns at a time. While that last one may seem like a downer to some, it actually makes the game better (in my opinion) and more realistic (have you ever seen a soldier carrying 8 guns like you can in Resistance 1? Didn't think so).

The game is very much improved from the first, almost to the point where it makes Resistance 1 seem bad. There is a single player campaign mode as well as a co-op campaign mode. There is a 60 player multi player mode that is almost lag free! Insomniac really brought their A game for this title. Aside from the things mentioned already, they ditched the crappy four bar health system for the regenerative health system that almost all fps's now use (thank god). There is a much bigger variety of enemies and many of them are massive! It is a lot like Gears of War 2 with battle sizes and enemy sizes. Not only that, but they also brought many theme changes to the game as well. Most fps's are either run and gun (halo) style or hide and gun (gears of war) style. Resistance 2 provides a nice blend of the two, where sometimes you will have run and gun action sequences and sometimes you will have large battles in which the duck and cover method is required. Not only that, but some parts of the game even left you with a sort of survival horror feel to it. At one point you have to go through a large train tunnel which has hundreds of Chimera eggs throughout. Needless to say, you don't have nearly enough ammo to destroy all of the eggs, so you have to slowly creep through the tunnel and random eggs hatch and attack you as you do so. It gives a feel much like Dead Space during those sequences.  Just before that event in the game, you get a sort of Left 4 Dead feel when travelling through a neighborhood in which all of its' inhabitants have been turned into Chimera eggs, ready to hatch.  When you get to certain areas, a lot do hatch and they attack you.  Because these Chimera have just hatched, they do not have guns so they sprint towards you and beat you to death (much like in Left 4 Dead) and yes, there are a lot of them, much like in Left 4 Dead when a boomer vomits on you.  Anyway, enough with other game references!

The game proves itself to be a serious competitor in the intense competition of FPS games.  With the combination of new elements (controls, guns, enemies, environments, etc) it really shines especially if you've played the first Resistance title.  They even got rid of the boring narrative story telling of the first for a more personal truly FPS style of story telling.  In the end, Resistance 2 gets a 9 out of 10.  I'd say it's a much have for PS3 owners.  And if you play this game before the first and think you want to go out and buy the first... you might be left disappointed because it is THAT much better than the first.

9/10

-CA