Resistance 2 (2008)

Resistance 2 is a quality game and a good time but unfortunately it gave into the trends of the time losing its personality and changing the way it plays. It also put a stronger focus on co op and multiplayer.

The weapon wheel and the ability to have all weapons all the time gets thrown out and now you can only have two equipped at once. It’s less fun and takes away the ability to pick the right weapon for the right moment constantly on the fly. Movement has been changed to be a bit more sluggish but it doesn’t seem deliberate to create a certain feel. Sprint is added to make up for this but again it is just less enjoyable than the previous game. Health also changes to simple regenerating health with the screen getting redder at the edges instead of the regenerating and health pick up mix of the first game. You die quite a bit quicker too and the enemies die quicker as well. Check points are much more frequent and the game somehow feels harder but much easier at the same time. All this makes for a less enjoyable game. You can’t spend as much time out of cover and with the enemies dropping quicker you just don’t get the same tense, aggressive, longer shoot outs with constant weapon swaps. That’s not all though they also got rid of vehicle sections and added three different enemies that can one shot kill you; one in the water, one invisible ambusher and one floating un-killable swarm. One shot kill enemies can be done right but that’s not the case here. Then there are some sections of the game that just aren’t great and some of the chapters drag on too long. To finish it off the final boss is really underwhelming but at least the final minutes of gameplay are super cathartic.

It isn’t all downgrades from the first game though. Resistance 2 does up the scale and set pieces. It is technically a better looking and more impressive game. The environments are more detailed and the gore has been taken to another level. I prefer the first games style and bleakness though and it was more consistent. Resistance 2 is no slouch though it takes you to multiple locations across an apocalyptic, alternate history 1950s America. Chicago in particular was really good looking and the game does change things up regularly with some sections even feeling like a horror game. It’s pretty cool and I think the final few chapters are very strong and would recommend pushing through if you dropped or consider dropping this game. The Chimera are still great enemies; aggressive, cold, relentless, freaky looking, fun to engage and their lore is one of the more interesting things about this series. The story and characters are similar to the first game. It’s kind of forgettable but it does wrap up the main character’s journey well and his decline over the game added to the experience.

The unfortunate thing about going back to older games now, and trying to write reviews for them as well, is that the multiplayer is no longer available or just empty. You need to move past it or try to rely on memories from years ago. Resistance 2 does have a robust co op mode and there was 60 player online competitive multiplayer. I think my scores and opinions would have been a bit higher, not just for Resistance 2 but the others as well, if it was all still with us. Even with this issue and all my other complaints Resistance 2 is still a solid, enjoyable first person shooter that is an essential part of this series.

7.2/10

Resistance 2 is a direct sequel of the first game and impressed me just as much as the first game. Although the concept and story of the game is not new anymore, its improved visuals, enemies, locations and mechanics provided a great new experience for me.

The game follows the story of the Chimera invasion from the first game, which now have set their eight eyes on the United States of America. A massive invasion is underway, and it will be total war all over again. You play again as Nathan Hale, a sergeant that survived the first war in Europe and who is infected with the Chimera virus. You join a special squad called the Sentinels, which consists of soldiers that all have been infected by the virus but who, like you, can keep it under control for now.

You once again try to repel the invaders, destroy communications lines, towers, bases and eliminate Chimera commanders, while constantly suppressing the virus that roams inside you. Eventually, you successfully repel the Chimera in the United States, but the virus has completely consumed you. Your superior officer sees this and has no choice than to put a bullet in your head, ending your existence. It is as tragic and powerful story, in which you bonded with the character Nathan Hale for two games, and it all came to an end right here, right now.

Resistance 2 features some new weapons like the Marksman, an accurate carbine rifle that can also be used as a sniper rifle. You also got a freaking mini gun, where you can mow down rows of Chimera, Serious Sam style. They are great and feel natural to the game. You also got some new Chimera types, including long legged freaks that charge towards you. They are creepy and their human like shape is kind of disturbing to say the least.

The graphics look amazing in Resistance 2. They are improved and nicely polished from the first game. The biggest upgrade however are the animations and effects. They are mind blowing, smooth and detailed and impressed me just as much as my first-time playing Resistance: Fall of Man.

The sound is just as good as the first game, so are the controls. The inputs are the same and work just as smoothly.

There are some small downsides to Resistance 2. For starters, your glorious arsenal from the first game, in which you could collect a ton of different weapons, is gone. Now, you are limited to two weapons, just like many Call of Duty games, which is a shame considering that you want to carry a LAARK Rocket launcher for tougher enemies, but also need enough Carbine and Bullseye bullets for the regular horde. You also can carry a lot less grenades and grenade types as the first game.

The health bar is also gone and replaced with recharging health after taking no damage for a while. I know that this mechanic is the standard nowadays, but in Resistance: Fall of Man, it added a fair bit of challenge to keep track of your health and scavenge for health pickups.

I also found the story a little bit less interesting. This is mainly because the story “already has been done before” and this time, it felt less of a battle for survival and more of a hunting mission on various Chimera, outposts and facilities. Nevertheless, I had fun with it.

Overall, Resistance 2 is an excellent game with a solid plot, some good (but also some less good) improvements and overall, good play length and excellent multiplayer (that is no longer available unfortunately).

Although the game is, like many, considered a classic or a relic, I still recommend it to everyone to try it.

When I think of the era of Sony moving from the Playstation 2 to the Playstation 3, the three companies I think the most about are Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch and Naughty Dog, and how that leap evolved these three companies away from the new generation of platformers into something wholly unique for each of them. Naughty Dog went from Jak and Daxter and crafted some of the most cinematic experiences in gaming history. Sucker Punch expanded the stealthy action of Sly Cooper into a larger, more detailed series like Infamous.

But the outlier in this to me has always been Insomniac. After Spyro the Dragon, Insomniac would make the great Ratchet & Clank series. In the current generation of games, Insomniac has made two of my favorite console-exclusive games: Sunset Overdrive for the Xbox One, and Marvel's Spider-Man on the Playstation 4. In between the platforming series and the open-world exploration came the Resistance series, which even at the time, seemed like the blandest, most generic direction for any company to go after such massive success. Having now played the first two games in this series, not only can I say my initial impression was right, but I can't remember the last time I played a game this bad from a company I would otherwise blindly trust with whatever they put out.

In some ways, the Resistance series sort of makes sense. I'm sure Sony wanted to have their own franchise to take on Halo at the time, and with both Resistance and Killzone, they tried (and failed) to match that success. Insomniac isn't a terrible choice though for this experiment, considering their penchant for interesting weapons in the Ratchet & Clank series, and how that series' later installments allowed for online play. But nothing about the charm, wit or beauty of Insomniac's other games comes through here.

Years ago, I played Resistance and found it mostly fine. Resistance had all the marks of a flawed but decent launch game, and the aliens-meet-WWII angle certainly felt like something that would be franchised out. But even though I hardly remember my experience with Resistance, Resistance 2 still feels like a step back. I certainly don't remember being this immediately bored or frustrated by its predecessor. If Resistance had been this bad, I absolutely would have never given its two sequels a chance.

The first half of Resistance 2 is about as boring as shooters get: you're walking through building after building, fighting enemies, finding whatever item you need, and the second half of the level is simply moving through the locations you've already been through. Even for a twelve-year-old game though, this looks rough. There were times when I would zoom in on an enemy and I could count the pixels. The locations are drab and a combination of gray and brown that doesn't do this story any favors.

While I did appreciate the game's attempt to liven things up in the second half with bigger areas and more opportunities for diversity, the frantic gameplay and attempts to bite off more than the game could chew only irritated me even more. There were frankly too many times when there were too many characters on screen at once, to the point that I had no idea who I was supposed to be shooting or who I was hiding from. The guns are clear Halo ripoffs, and over and over, there were times when the game would tell me to hide from enemies, only for them to still be able to hit me. The further I got in the game, the more I felt like I was just lucking through fights, rather than doing something right or wrong.

I hate to call any game "cheap," but that's how I constantly felt making my way through Resistance 2. Enemies seem to always know where I am and can easily hit me, no matter if I'm hiding or not. Very often, I had no idea what the game was asking me to do or where it wanted me to go next, and even the occasional on screen markers only confused things more. Random holes left in the ground would send me to my death and several times, the game would throw some new thing at me, then after I died, let me know, "Oh, here's how you should've handled that."

Two examples that really stand out, the first, an invisible character that often appears without warning until it's too late. If you're running or reloading, too fucking bad! You're dead. Unless a character yells, "Hey, watch out for the invisible monster," before you get attacked (which undercuts the impact of the character anyway), or you've already died and know what's coming, there's no real way to handle these guys. Another cheap example, in one area, you're inside a plantation style house, and a three-story enemy comes at you and starts enchanting the ground underneath you - an attack that has never happened before and never happens again. When I, of course, died, the game said, "Oh, when this happens, you should SHAKE THE CONTROLLER!" How am I supposed to know that, unless I die?

These types of things happen all the time, and Resistance 2 becomes a struggle to try and figure out what the game wants me to know what it isn't telling me. In addition to this, the story is boilerplate war crap, and there's truly no advancement or evolution of your character or weaponry throughout the entire game. It's all just level after level or mind-numbing slog. Which is insane! When you consider that Resistance 2's story focuses on a man who is rapidly becoming the type of monster he's been fighting, it's nuts that this game doesn't integrate some of your enemy's powers into your arsenal of attacks.

I clearly hated this game, in a way I haven't hated a game I've played completely through in quite some time. So then, why two stars and not one? I guess I'm sort of giving Insomniac the benefit of the doubt. I was honestly flabbergasted by the rave reviews this thing got, so maybe I am being too hard on a game that maybe was solid when it came out? I also think the story at the end does some neat things to set up for a third game (which, yes, I will be playing. I already own it...) and despite my many problems with it, it's not broken in an unplayable fashion.

But even in 2008, a Halo knockoff like this would've paled in comparison to what Bungie was doing - in a franchise I don't even care for that much! Resistance 2 looks and plays bad even for the time it came out in. It's a bore and an infuriating one at that. In hindsight, it's a damn shame Insomniac wasted their time with this franchise instead of further evolving, because looking back at their timeline of games, this is a huge step back from everything else they've ever done.