QJ staffer plays Resistance: Fall of Man (and wets himself)

When you’re on an enforced diet of Insomniac’s Resistance: Fall of Man, four hours a day at least, and in a darkened room, for the past couple of weeks, you soon develop a nagging fear of things jumping on you. And cockroaches. That is the price of evaluating the flagship launch title for the PS3, at the behest of QJ editors who I think might really be the dreaded Chimera in disguise.

This of course begs the obvious question: is the game any good? Does the game do the PS3 justice? For the most part, yeah. It is a pretty decent FPS package that manages to scare the crap out of you once in a while. The warning here is that it would disappoint those who expect too much of a first generation title for the PS3, but the truth is that expectations or not, Resistance does deliver a good, even, solid game. FPS aficionados will find that their US $60.00 (MSRP) was well spent (even if the pickings this early in the PS3S life are slim).

It is, in the words of a Famitsu reviewer, standard FPS fare: point, shoot, rinse, repeat. The fun here comes from all the assorted weaponry scattered on the battlefield. Homing bullets, bouncing bullets, energy shields, sticky alien bombs… if I’m not peeing my pants from the hundredth Menial to jump me (no pun intended), I’m having fun counting a thousand and one ways to make Chimera bleed.

The enemy AI is surprisingly good, which is one thing to congratulate Insomniac for. Even at the easiest difficulty setting, the Chimera display some rather aggressive and smart traits. Hide behind a low wall for cover, and some of them will bum-rush you as their comrades provide covering – yes, covering – fire. They don’t pop from cover at regular intervals, and they WILL seek alternate routes to flank you, which leaves you second-guessing their motives (and me peeing my pants more). Thank God for in-level checkpoints.

Okay, we’re through talking about smart, pants-wetting enemies. Controls, graphics, and more at the full article. We can’t say “Jump” anymore. Everytime we do, Chris L. jumps in fear. That’s part of the reason why we made sure he never played more than four hours a day through the game. He was running out of pants to wet.

When you’re on an enforced diet of Insomniac’s Resistance: Fall of Man, four hours a day at least, and in a darkened room, for the past couple of weeks, you soon develop a nagging fear of things jumping on you. And cockroaches. That is the price of evaluating the flagship launch title for the PS3, at the behest of QJ editors who I think might really be the dreaded Chimera in disguise.

This of course begs the obvious question: is the game any good? Does the game do the PS3 justice? For the most part, yeah. It is a pretty decent FPS package that manages to scare the crap out of you once in a while. The warning here is that it would disappoint those who expect too much of a first generation title for the PS3, but the truth is that expectations or not, Resistance does deliver a good, even solid game. FPS aficionados will find that their US $60.00 (MSRP) was well spent (even if the pickings this early in the PS3’s life are slim).

It is, in the words of a Famitsu reviewer, standard FPS fare: point, shoot, rinse, repeat. The fun here comes from all the assorted weaponry scattered on the battlefield. Homing bullets, bouncing bullets, energy shields, sticky alien bombs… if I’m not peeing my pants from the hundredth Menial to jump me (no pun intended), I’m having fun counting a thousand and one ways to make Chimera bleed.

The enemy AI is surprisingly good, which is one thing to congratulate Insomniac for. Even at the easiest difficulty setting, the Chimera display some rather aggressive and smart traits. Hide behind a low wall for cover, and some of them will bum-rush you as their comrades provide covering – yes, covering – fire. They don’t pop from cover at regular intervals, and they WILL seek alternate routes to flank you, which leaves you second-guessing their motives (and me peeing my pants more). Thank God for in-level checkpoints.

FPS controls on a console controller are FPS controls on a console controller, with the same advantages and disadvantages. The thing to talk abut here is the SIXAXIS motion-sensitivity, and here, Resistance does good, no complaints, though I/we have a few ideas of our own. That advertised “thrust the SIXAXIS forwards” for the melee attack doesn’t seem to work when we want it to (all the time in my case), but the shaking off the clutching Chimera does… which led other QJ staffers to wonder why I was convulsing like a rabid maniac.

Intuitive and imaginative as such controls are, the SIXAXIS’ potential leaves a lot more room for control improvement. Imagine leaping off to one side to avoid enemy fire, rolling into nearby cover, just by thrusting the SIXAXIS to the left or right, that sort of stuff (is Ted Price reading this now? Just an idea!). With smart enemies, you’d want to wish you were in a John Woo movie instead. The “tilt the SIXAXIS” to bring up maps and stuff thing is pretty handy, but I think is also best left to button presses, which leaves the motion-sensing for other gameplay tricks.

Another laudable achievement is sound. Stereo works when stereo works, I always say. At times you could even hear the Chimera you can’t see, which is a good early warning device – not that it helps for jumping Menials or other silent, sniping enemies. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid? Environmental FX blend well with the environmental scenery (see below), as does the subdued BGM. Some explosions sound a bit muffled – I can’t tell if it’s the ammunition’s characteristic (rifle grenades, for example) or if it’s a distance factor, so I can’t judge this well.

Too much has been made of Resistance dropping to 720p, but it’s not at all that bad. The scenery is still quite crystal-clear, again given that this is a 1st-gen Sony next-gen. What’s nice is that, even on an SDTV, how they could make the burned-out shell of an English town feel so empty, so haunting, you’re afraid to go on, afraid of what’s around the corner (or maybe that’s probably because of the AI). All of this goes off at a steady framerate: even when the bullets start to fly, there was no noticeable drop.

If there is one criticism of the graphics, it’s that it’s too sharp at times when more subdued, softer textures would be appropriate. Then again, why am I worrying about landscaping and interior decoration when there are a bunch of mutant freaks trying to kill me?

(There may be temptations among some, especially “the other side,” to play a Gears vs. Resistance game in the graphics department. We’ve seen a lot of this elsewhere. Forget it: there is no easy comparison. The 360 is a more mature platform, from a dev’s perspective, than the PS3. There has been more time to learn the tricks of the next-gen Xbox that Epic Games have fully exploited to create the beauty of Gears, while, if Glenn Entis is right, everyone else has only just begun to tap into what the PS3 can do. Okay, now that we’ve eliminated that nagging temptation, moving on…)

Standard FPS fare, albeit nicely executed, often pants-wetting, meet standard FPS story. You play Nathan Hale as you trace the steps of your otherworldly (or alternate-worldly) story through a mutating, collapsing England. It’s not emotionally gripping in the dramatic sense, but it does serve to keep the game’s pace moving, and at the least, it arouses your interest in seeing Nathan’s story play out – and the only way to see that is to play the game.

Earning skill points to unlock all the hidden goodies does promote a bit of replay value (especially since the clues to unlocking them in different levels are cryptic at times), but the best replay value comes from those 40-player bloodfests called multiplayer. Unfortunately, for some weird reason, every time I tried to connect to the PS Net, the PS3 keeps timing out; until we’re done tinkering with the network here, we’ll have to pass judgement on that.

But from what we here have read, it sounds fun, it’s one of the best parts of the game, and this writer would love to make a follow-up to this by writing on the multiplayer carnage in Resistance. Because, from playing the single-player campaign, there is no sweeter sound on Earth than the dying breath of a Chimera… or human. I’m an equal opportunity deathmatch b***h.

Let’s wrap this up: Resistance rocks for a 1st gen PS3 title. Insomniac promised a PS3 FPS title (along with a bunch of other stuff), and they delivered a PS3 FPS title (the other stuff, well, more or less). Multiplayer’s where the game’s at, but with its aggressive, cunning AI, the single-player is worth a romp, even a couple of playthroughs – those Chimera know how to surprise you, especially at the harder difficulty levels.

Being one of the the first in the Sony next-gen lineup, it’s hard to establish whether it justifies the power and complexity of a PS3 (except probably for the AI), but I can say that if you’ve decided to get a PS3, then Resistance‘s worth plopping the extra US$ 60.00 (MSRP), if it doesn’t come in a bundle. Sure, some can say it could be better – we’ve got a couple of suggestions ourselves – but you know what? A bird in the hand, and this bird flies well for what it does.

Even when those later shooters such as Unreal Tournament 2k7 come out, Resistance: Fall of Man is worth keeping for its nostalgic value, for being one of the first PS3 games, one of the first PS3 shooters, one of the Launch Titles. And also because it’s, pardon my language, damned fun. If FPS is not your thing… well, you could always try out a rental to see if you can get in the flow.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some pants that need changing.