Resistance: Fall of Man PS3 Review

It has nasty aliens in it and it’s an FPS. There’s no doubting that one of the PS3’s biggest launch games, Resistance: Fall of Man has its similarities with the gargantuan Halo series, which it has to be said is also on another console. But we still wish people would stop comparing them to one another so much. Halo is Halo and Resistance is Resistance, got that? Ok lets move on.

Resistance takes place in an alternate history where world war II didn’t happen, well it did, but with the alien Chimera replacing German soldiers and much more high-tech guns being wielded. The game is set across a large amount of England and you take the role of American Soldier, Nathan Hale. Hale never has much to say for himself, so his exploits can be difficult to care about. But the narrated story itself is intriguing and its presentation is rather nice.

Being developed by Insomniac Games, the developer of the wonderful Ratchet and Clank games, a series which quickly became renowned for its inventive weaponry. It’s hardly a surprise that the guns featured in Resistance are a little bit different from the norm.

Here, there’s a gun that can shoot through walls, handy for the tougher enemies or to thin out enemy numbers, one that can tag adversaries to guide your gunfire towards them allowing you to shoot from cover. Even the grenades here are rather fancy, when hedgehog grenades explode, spikes will be sent in all directions, whilst the air fuel grenades, will cause a massive explosion that incinerates the Chimera. Many of these weapons, bring some whole new tactics to your gunplay and we very much enjoyed wielding them.

Apart from the weapons (which admittedly are the star of a game where you shoot things) it’s business as usual for the genre. You shoot, given the chance your health can recharge (at least here there’s a reason for it) and you get to hop into the odd vehicle.

The war torn setting is also something that us gamers have seen countless times, but with it’s crumbling buildings, smoky environments and just all round mess it’s effective, offering you a fine illusion of a war of a massive scale. Later indoor levels are less successful, due to them just simply not looking all that interesting and being rather grey.

The combat itself is everything we expect these days, which is to say big, loud and flashy. The enemies can handle themselves well and will make efficient use of cover and will dive out of the way of grenades, but stay short of displaying outstanding intelligence, you’ll perhaps die a lot at the hands of them, but only because of the sheer number of them that the game often throws at you. For much of the campaign you’ll be joined by AI team-mates, these fare worse then your adversaries in the intelligence department and it’s probably best to think of their presence as being solely to create an effective illusion of war, rather then of being any real help in your efforts.

From a visual standpoint, the game is somewhat lacking. Skirmishes are busy, the town stages are detailed and the window shattering effect is one of the most realistic we’ve seen and are ever likely to, but whilst generally it does look next generation, it’s hardly the huge jump we’d expect from such an important launch game and not the showcase of the machines power that you might have expected.

In the multiplayer department the game can be played in split screen co-op, not online though. Online players however are well carted for, with an extensive range of competitive modes and options, which don’t offer a lot new, but do have the advantage of being able to be played by an impressive 40 players, whilst the weapons themselves do manage to give the online its own identity.

Resistance: Fall of Man is an impressive early shooter for the PS3, with a nice toy box of weapons for you to play with both in the multiplayer and the pleasing campaign mode but no (warning, contradiction incoming) it’s not as good a game as Halo is, there we’ve said it, happy now, you narrow minded 360 fan boys? Good, now play Resistance, you might like that too.