#i'd love a gen 2 game though since we got let's go for gen 1

[bluefuecoco]

pokemon presents next tuesday (8/8)! what are yall hoping to hear about?

i'd like a solid release date for the first dlc so i know when to look forward to

[skriaki]

Resistance: Fall of Man GAME REVIEW (PlayStation 3)

For better or worse, Sony has a history of trying new things. The PS2 in particular had such an overwhelming market dominance during the 6th console generation that Sony had all kinds of weird franchises going. Some of them never went anywhere, but others survived to fight the next console war. Ratchet and Clank was one of the success stories, from the now-famous Insomniac (recent developers of the PS4 Spider-Man game), and after a few instalments of action platforming they decided to mix things up.

Resistance is a first-person shooter and easily one of the better-known PS3 launch titles, though it has to be said that the PS3 had a notoriously shaky early life. Truth be told, MotorStorm is the only other launch game I remember with any clarity. So Resistance had a bit of a reputation boost by virtue of not having a lot of competition, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I've seen reviews that call it either a killer app or a massive disappointment. In reality, I think it's somewhere in the middle.

Far and away what stands out most is the setting. Resistance takes place in an alternate 1950s where the Russian Revolution never happened because the Tunguska Event of 1908 turned out to be carrying some kind of horrific virus. Russia went into lockdown for many years without anyone else knowing why, only for an army of mutated former Russians to suddenly swarm over the walls and overrun Europe and Asia. Being islands, Britain and Ireland hold out for a while until the monsters dig their own Eurostar tunnel. You play an exceptionally boring American soldier who's flown into York (the old one) without adequate briefing just as the invasion gets underway.

I really like this kind of alternate history setup, as evidenced by my covetous love for Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Resistance takes its wacky concept very seriously. England is a surprisingly uncommon setting for a game as well, especially outside of London, and it's cool to see a war-ravaged depiction of places like Manchester and Nottingham. This is the kind of game that might be overly reliant on text logs to flesh out its world, but I was always genuinely excited to find out details like America's militant isolationism (what else is new?) or the sad story of a squad hunted by unknown assailants. The Chimera are the real stars, especially since the human characters are pretty disposable, and throughout the story they become increasingly well-entrenched until it's clear that Britain has fallen and the Chimera have the home team advantage.

So the tone is as far removed from Ratchet and Clank's cartoon antics as it could possibly be, but the gameplay still bears some resemblance under all the grey and brown. Insomniac are famous for their crazy weaponry and even Resistance's starter carbine has a grenade launcher. All the guns have a secondary fire that helps give them a distinct place in your arsenal, rather than being fairly interchangeable like the rifles in Killzone, and Insomniac didn't miss the opportunity for weird alien guns. The Bullseye is inaccurate but the secondary fire marks a target which your shots will then home in on. The Auger can shoot through walls and the secondary drops a shield for you to hide behind. Even better, you can carry all the guns at once (which is something Resistance 2 sadly fucked up), so at any time you can bring up the selection wheel as the situation demands.

The Chimera are notoriously bullet-spongey, unfortunately. In particular they have this one animation where they *start* to fall over before standing up again, which is pretty infuriating. Death can come very swiftly on the harder modes, despite the health system which regenerates up to each quarter of the bar, so I personally didn't feel any shame playing on easy mode just to compensate for the more annoying design quirks. Until you know the levels it's quite common for a hybrid to sneak up and pepper your arse with lasers.

Still, at least the game runs well. It actually runs noticably smoother than Resistance 3, since a lot of later seventh-gen games sacrifice frame rate for graphics. Resistance 1 isn't much of a looker these days but it holds up better than something like Killzone 2 because it doesn't feel as if the PS3 is about to catch fire.

Unfortunately, some of that performance is probably due to the mid-game slump; halfway through the level design starts to rely on underground corridors without even a pretence of exploration. This is one of the main symptoms of Resistance's launchgameitus. It doesn't help that the story loses a lot of steam at the same time. But then there are some vehicle segments which almost have the opposite problem, particularly when you're driving around a lovingly-rendered but fairly empty Cheddar Gorge. This middle third is when I'd probably have gotten flustered with the occasional cheap death if I hadn't played on easy mode. Still, things definitely pick up when the military decide to make a final push into London (it's always fucking London) so they can attack the Death Star's thermal exhaust port.

Resistance is your classic launch title: a middle-of-the-road game which seemed better when everyone had a limited selection of choices and no money after paying Sony's extortionate price for a big black sandwich toaster. I probably wouldn't have been so forgiving if I hadn't played it in that context, but I can forgive a game for a lot if it tries something interesting. While the sequels upped the scale and tightened up the gameplay, the original Resistance has an atmosphere of mystery that was never quite matched. The Chimera are a threatening and unnerving presence, especially when we learn details like how those big metal bits in their backs are cooling equipment that keeps their hyperactive metabolisms from burning out. The contrast of mid-1900s quaintness with high-tech alien technology is also really effective, and despite being a completely stock protagonist I did feel a bit of Nathan Hale's awe and trepidation when standing in the shadow of an snow-covered London crawling with mutant abominations.

Resistance is series that never quite lived up to its full potential. Still, getting murdered by alien sharpshooters on the underground is still more pleasant than actually commuting in London.

(3/5)

Availability: Resistance 1 and 2 only seem to be playable on PS3, but physical copies are extremely cheap so don't be suckered into paying a tenner for the digital version. Otherwise you can get Resistance 3 on the PS4 store, either as a single purchase or as part of PlayStation Now. The latter service only lets you stream it, as opposed to downloading, but it's perfectly playable so long as you have good internet. I actually like Playstation Now quite a lot because the service got a big price cut (since Microsoft's Game Pass was kicking its arse) and you can download a hundred or so games, but the rest are stream-only. It'd be nice to get some modern ports but it doesn't seem likely unless the franchise makes a comeback.