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| Source // PlayStation |
When the PlayStation 3 first came out, most players could only afford to play free demos on it. Thankfully, this was a time when demos actually did exist, and one of those demos I played a few times was for Resistance: Fall of Man, an alternate history/universe sci-fi Second World War first-person shooter pitting men against monstrous aliens up and down the United Kingdom.
I didn't end up purchasing Resistance, nor did I look into Resistance 2 when it came out, a sequel that no doubt improved on the original, but didn't catch my interest in any way.
The 1001 write up mentions how there are multiplayer matches that support up to 60 players, which was pretty much an anomaly in terms of player counts on the PS3. Wikipedia mentions how those servers' plugs were pulled in 2014, so I guess all we've got to enjoy these days is the story.
But what is that story? Who are these angry-looking fellas from another planet? What do they want with good ol' Blighty?
What's that? We're in America now?
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| Source // PlayStation |
Frustrations
Meet Sgt. Nathan Hale, bearded white guy with a buzz cut and a frown carrying a bunch of weapons to defend 'Murica from the bad guys.
Not generic enough for you? How about the fact that he was the hero of the first Resistance, swooping into the fight to show the Brits how it's done, and now he's been absorbed into a super-soldier program where he's been purposely infected with the disease that has swept across the globe and turned everyone into deadly Chimera aliens, but the clock is ticking and he's not going down without a fight?
I supposed I should set the scene a little more. In the late 1940s, a virus emerged in Russia a turned the unfortunate into husks. Britain held out for a few years before it all turned to shit, at which point the Americans were called in to help out. But it's more than a virus. It's aliens.
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| Source // PlayStation |
With aliens comes alien technology. The Resistance series isn't a World War II shooter with aliens, nor is it a Sci-Fi shooter set in the past. It's a fusion where your carbine rifles are just as effective as your alien machine guns, or your Magnum revolvers are kitted out with explosive rounds that detonate when you want them to.
On paper, that's interesting. In-game, it's various shades of yellow.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Resistance 2 starts in the thick of the action with a tutorial section disguised by an invasion by alien forces, one of which is a ruddy great big stompy robot that you slowly whittle down while dealing with ambushes from the Chimera and their drones.
The game plays pretty much as expected, with buttons for primary and secondary firing modes, grenades, melee attacks and so on. If you're familiar with any first-person shooter on a console, you're familiar with Resistance 2.
Gone is the health bar of the first game, replaced by regenerating health provided you duck into cover for a brief spot of calm once in a while. The screen edges turn bright red when you're shot at, and the colour drains from the screen the closer you are to death, and it'll happen, even on Casual difficulty.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Two years go by as we're enhanced to become a Sentinal, a super-soldier who needs regular doses of inhibitor juice to ward off the inevitable, which in this case is turning into a hideous alien and/or dying, I'd imagine.
It just so happens that seconds after we've been given an adrenaline shot to recover from a procedure that doesn't appear to have worked as intended, the base is overrun with aliens and we have to flee. I sure hope someone boxes up a bunch of inhibitor juice before we leave...
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
No promotional screenshots for this largely underground base level, but it's full of water and dangerous things of all sizes that now live in it, drones of all sizes that mercilessly hunt you down, and Chimera troops of all sizes Hell-bent on shooting you in the face.
It feels thoroughly generic. Did it feel generic at the time? Hard to say, but playing it in 2021 I can't say I'm amazed by what I'm seeing. The graphics aren't terrible, and they're not all as yellow as I assumed they'd be, but they're not wowing me.
Once you got to the surface and saw the scale of the invasion of the USA, then you could argue that they wowed me. Again, no screenshots of this showpiece, but basically the sky is full of alien craft, and not buzzy little single-seater fighters, but humongous capital ships full of Lord knows what. We're very much in the thick of it here, definitely the underdogs.
But having never played through Resistance: Fall of Man, this had no plot significance to me, and didn't pack any punch. Yes, the sky is crammed full of danger, but we all knew it was going to be. You don't keep a player underground for so long only to reveal an alien blimp floating over the city, do you?
It's a spectacle, but one that you basically run past to get to the next bit, where, what do you know, we can't escape because nobody picked up the inhibitor juice.
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
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| Source // PlayStation |
After going back for the juice ourselves and fighting our way out, finally emerging on a helipad under attack from a giant Kraken, the action is moved to California as we convoy our way through the forest only to drive straight into one Hell of an ambush.
More fighting through the smoke - which I guess is a nice change of atmosphere, brief though it may be - and we take a detour through some swampy path through the grass, where far too many annoying drones are patrolling, and invisible beasts are literally going all Predator on us.
I was playing on Casual difficulty and had already died a lot. I died walking down two steps at one point, though I hope that was actually because of getting shot at by a 300-foot tall robot. I died an awful lot to the various boss fights I'd come across, where some of the deaths were a result of enemy attacks that I knew nothing about until they hit. The Kraken's breath isn't just graphically a nuisance, but is deadly to exist in for a few seconds? Gotcha, thanks...
As the drones flew through the forest, I was huddled behind a rock, dying. They're not too hard to destroy, and zooming in with a weapon does appear to have a slight auto-lock snap to help you out, but there were so damn many of them and they all wanted to focus on me that I was honestly fearful of dying to what must be the weakest foe on the battlefield.
Not having the greatest of times then, I ventured forward into more of a clearing where my useless AI buddies were getting ripped apart by invisible enemies. No problem. I've got an alien machine gun whose secondary firing mode is a tracker, and whose primary fire mode has bullets that follow the tracker.
Tag the invisible foe, fire like a maniac, job done. They actually go down quite quickly once you've done that. Shame I was reloading while the second one sideswiped me for an instant kill.
So there's two of them, no problem. Oh, I missed the tracker shot. Why can't I shoot another. WHY CAN'T I... well, too late for that attempt.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Final Word
I don't know how long I was playing Resistance 2. I picked up a few PS3 trophies, though. Woo. Proof that I tried? Proof that I didn't care, perhaps.
Did I get annoyed for dying so often on the easiest mode? Yeah, sure. Could I have actually played better, and smarter, and not put myself in dangerous situations again and again? Yes, I could. Do I want to give it a second attempt then, and play it properly, without being a grump about everything? Well, no, not really.
Resistance 2 is too generic to me. It may have weird weapons that no other game has or a setting that nobody else has thought of touching, but it has tropes that don't grab me either. I don't care about Sgt. Nathan Hale, partly because I haven't experienced any growth of character with him, mostly because he's a bog-standard action man turned super-soldier. Big whoop.
I'm sure if I looked hard enough I could find a generic first-person shooter that has similar elements that I like, which would suggest that it is perhaps a case of how you put the parts together that is interesting, more so than their final form.
Resistance 2 isn't doing anything wrong, really, but it's not doing anything amazing right now. Did the multiplayer save it? I know I'll never know for sure. It sounds like they put as much effort into it as they did with the setting, which again is something different and unusual from what you may have seen.
But is it enough? Have the parts been put together interestingly? Not for me, I'm afraid. It's going to be a long time before it gets a second look.
Fun Facts
The co-op campaign takes two to eight players on a journey that fills in the period where Hale is undergoing his super-soldier stuff, in the early 1950s. Sounds ambitious. I'd imagine that too isn't possible any more these days?
Resistance 2, developed by Insomniac Games, first released in 2008.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2008.