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There's an obvious question to get out of the way before we even begin to discuss Resistance: Fall of Man. No, it's not the PlayStation 3's answer to Gears of War. Next query, please. On the other hand, Resistance is a remarkably polished launch title, the sort of fully-realized effort we almost never see in the first months of a console, much less on day one.
For their first major foray into shooter territory, Ratchet and Clank developer Insomniac hasn't broken any molds. Instead, the company has added its characteristic weapon fetish to the best gameplay and narrative elements from major titles like Call of Duty and Half-Life 2. In doing so, the team has synthesized an experience that doesn't define any true next-gen talking points, but is fun, enthralling and tremendously satisfying nonetheless.
Early accounts pegged Resistance as an alternate post-WWII reality, though the storyline is so far into sci-fi territory that it's a little more fantastic than that. Not that we're complaining. As the game has it, viral aliens landed in Russia in the '30s, and quickly spread across Europe. World War II never took place, as everyone was fighting for survival against a race that infiltrates and replicates by dropping bombs full of virus-laden insectoid carriers into urban centers.
You play Nathan Hale, the sole survivor of an American force sent to help the British resist the alien incursion. Hale is a typical one-man army; a crack shot with all that alien weaponry inevitably left lying around and able to heal himself to a certain extent after being infected with the alien virus. He's not quite the silent Gordon Freeman type, but close enough. Sadly, the most significant relationship to Half-Life is the tale's nebulous conclusion, which leaves a few too many questions.
The story is told in well-written and performed cutscenes, primarily narrated by a female British officer with real insder knowledge at her command. The frequent story intrusions are at times only buffeted by five or ten minutes of gameplay, and yet they don't break up the flow of play at all -- credit Insomniac's ability to blend action and story with the feeling of momentum Resistance generates.
The basic gameplay is pure FPS style -- you won't be opening any locked doors or hunting keycards, thank heavens. Instead, it's all about figuring out how to use the widely varied weaponry to your best advantage. The aliens' basic Bullseye rifle fires energy rounds, sure, but the alt-fire shoots a dart that tags enemies and acts as a homing beacon for the fire, allowing you to shoot around corners and over cover. It's a cool feature that really comes alive when the spider-like humanoids are quickly crawling the walls, leaping to fast to hit with an unguided stream of bullets.
Then there's the Auger, which fires through any object, if slowly, and can throw up a shield that will block all but incoming Auger fire. Or the FarEye sniper rifle, for which the alt-fire slows time for a few seconds to enable the perfect headshot. Even the grenades get inventive. The Hedgehog hovers for a moment before ejecting a lethal spray of darts, while the Air Fuel Grenade releases a large cloud of flammable gas, then ignites it to incinerate everything in the room at once.
For the first third of the game, we almost thought Resistance was too easy. But then it breaks open into a much more frantic set of levels and missions, almost as if the opening act is meant as a long-form training mission. And it works. The enemies, of course, have all the weapons you do, and they'll take cover and flank your position when not simply charging en masse. And with some of the massive beasts and machinery, a simple charge can be enough to force a re-load.
A handful of vehicle missions pepper the story. We weren't that impressed with the Jeep, which doesn't feel much better than the one in Call of Duty 3. But the tank and stalker sequences are fantastic, with a real feeling of weight and power. In each, the controls are simple enough that you can just start blasting away, and the tank in particular easily trumps what Treyarch created for COD3.
As a debut next-gen title, we are disappointed that Resistance doesn't feature 1080p support. Even so, it's a fine-looking ride, with deep draw distance and a unique sense of art direction that appropriates the best elements of other major shooters while putting a distinctly Insomniac spin on it all. The graphics often take a back seat to the action, which is just fine -- like an excellent film, they serve the action, not the other way around.
More even than the graphics, Insomniac has done a phenomenal job with the audio design. You'll hear the creepy altered speech of the Chimera Hybrids, and the echoing sear of Auger fire as it slowly burns through wall after wall. (We did experience an intermittent issue getting sound over an optical cable on our retail PS3, but it wasn't consistent across all machines, and might simply be a launch quirk.)
As good as the single-player game is, Resistance gets even better in multiplayer. The co-op (local only, no online, sadly) is fantastic, with an increased difficulty and the ability to revive your fallen teammate. The vertical split screen works better than the old-fashioned horizontal split, especially since the game is optimized for 16:9 displays. At press time, the PlayStation Network has just gone live a day ahead of schedule, and we're just beginning to get real-world tests with the final network. But all the indicators point to true success: our networked games are fluid and emphasized cover and fast breaks to snag just one more kill. In that respect, actually, Resistance might end up being competition for Gears of War after all, and is possibly much more inviting.
Given Sony's next-gen HD push, we're disappointed that Resistance isn't a 1080p wonder. But it's a wonder for totally different reasons -- how many launch games exist that are worth playing six months down the road? Resistance is definitely in that elite camp, and with the strong multiplayer element, we're betting that it will maintain a presence for a lot longer than that.