Resistance Fall of Man Review
The 00s was an interesting period for fps games.
You had stuff like Solider of Fortune and No One Lives Forever in the year
2000. And then you had stuff like Serious Sam The First Encounter, Return to
Castle Wolfenstein and of course Halo Combat Evolved in 2001. With Halo CE's
release and later Call of Duty 4, the fps genre would have a strange period of
having 2 weapon limit and regen health shooters being the norm. Now, I want to
talk about a game that came out in a time where the norm wasn't full set yet
and instead of the Halo and CoD way of doing things it combines aspects of 90s
shooters like Half-Life and Doom, the Halo series and also the WW2 setting of
games like Call of Duty at the time and that is Resistance Fall of Man. I see
this game get a lot of hate in from some people and it has a cult following in
others. I fall into the latter.
I feel a lot of the reviews for this game that I have seen both written and
video form doesn't really do this game a whole lot of justice. The game does
borrow a lot from other shooters before where unlike something like say, Duke
Nukem Forever where it only borrows stuff from the past 15 years after Duke
Nukem 3D's release because the devs thought it would be interesting, this game
borrows from them and makes it for a interesting and unique experience
combining the old and the new.
Now, I will talk about how the game does a good job at combining the old and
the new. The game takes the ability to hold all your weapons from Doom and Half
Life while adding a Radial Menu to select weapons, not too different from
Insomniac's previous series Ratchet and Clank. Which is a system I think the
Doom reboot games' console versions adopted. It also takes elements from the
Halo series like the partially regenerating health, the ability to throw
multiple grenades, a melee attack and some enemy types being similar to the
Flood. It doesn't end there either, it also takes the iron sights from the Call
of Duty series as well but unlike that series, you are still accurate to
varying degrees when shooting from the hip all though it will be easier to kill
enemies more efficiently when using ADS.
All of this combines for a game with combat that feels unique in a lot of ways.
With the health system, it's about being careful to duck behind cover while
also choosing when to go out of cover and starting taking out enemies out in
the open. It's not a full on cover shooter but you can't just rush in and kill
everything in sight by holding down the fire button either. The enemy AI also
plays a role in this, more on that later. An issue with this system that I do
think Halo and even CoD to some degree do better is that in those games, the
player is given an audio cue and in CoD's case an extremely on the nose, "you
are hurt to cover" warning on when to hide and wait to for health to
regenerate. In Resistance, you aren't given that and I think this could lead to
why some dislike the game. In R:FOM, knowing when you are in critical health is
like driving a car where you looking in the mirror and driving on the road at
the same time. I don't mind it and it never bothered me but some people would
probably rush in blindly and not even know they had one bar of health left. A
way to fix this is to probably have Nathan Hale either have a breathing sound
to know when the player need to recover a health block and then the screen
turns yellow maybe to have the player know that they are at critical health.
I mentioned the enemy AI before, and I am shocked by how much enemy AI still
holds up in this game, this is something not even the Resistance Sequels really
improved on. It's better than enemy AI in games today. The Chimeran Hybrids
will, hide behind cover, throw grenades to flush you out, rush and flank you,
and move out of the way when shooting at them and even dive out of the way when
the player throws grenades. They will also operate turrets when they are nearby
and the Steelheads that pop up later do a good job at keeping the player on his
toes. This game's AI is up there with the Replica Soldiers from FEAR, Killzone
2 and 3's Helghast and Halo's Covenant to me. It helps do a good job at making
firefights interesting and dynamic because the player not only has to watch his
health but the Chimera themselves too.
There's a wide array of enemy types in this game as well which is something
once again the Resistance Sequels don't really improve on. There's the before
mention Hybrids and Steelheads, Angel, Stalker, Leapers, Menials, Howler,
Traphunter, Slipskull, and Grey Jack, and Titan among others. They even combine
several enemy types at once in some levels which the players on his toes even
with the smart enemies they have to deal with.
Now of course, I have to mention the weapons, even people who dislike the game
can't say they dislike the weapons. And boy there's a lot of them but I want to
touch a specific aspect of the weapons that not many talk about and that is how
much the game makes you switch weapons. Yup Doom Eternal may have gotten a crap
load of shit for making the player actively switched weapons but this game I
feel, did it first at least I can recall. In Resistance, you can't just
Carbine, and Bullesye your way through the game, there's going to be points
where you are going to use a different weapon to make firefights easier for
you, on top of that you get multiple grenade types too and you will need to use
all of them throughout the game in order to beat it. For example, for the
Slipskull enemies can be take out with either using the Bullesye tag or you can
use the shotgun. For the Grey Jack you can either use the shotgun or use the
Sniper to take them out. When there are hordes of enemies, it's best to use
grenades to take them out because standard enemies take a lot of damage before
they die which I feel is a good thing because their AI can shine more. The
Leapers can be beaten with the Bullesye, Carbine or Shotgun. The Carbine's
grenade launcher can come in handy during tougher fights at at least if there
is a lone Steelhead or multiple. The Auger is at it's best when there are lots
of enemies behind cover. The Air Fuel Grenades are best for narrow corridors.
The game also does away with certain weapons sharing ammo like lots of 90s fps
games and instead gives you limited ammo for each gun, which means you are going
to have be careful on when to use powerful weapons. The Hailstorm's Turret
while powerful, is something you have to be careful when using because ammo is
limited. I will also mention that there are guns to unlock after the 1st
playthrough and this is a novel concept to this day especially in FPS games.
While I did find some weapons useful like the Bubble Grenades, Reapers, and
Mine Launcher, the rest I found useless. I just wanted to point out that this
is something more games can explore given the current gaming industry, I doubt
it will happen ever again, outside of a Ratchet and Clank game.
Now, finally, I want to mention the "hard difficulty" that I hear
about this game. And I find this baffling, I beat the game as a 12 year old kid
and I found it mostly manageable, if not easy. Compared to other hard console
shooters like Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, console Medal of Honors, and Black. This
game feels a lot more fair by comparison. In those above mentioned games, you
are basically a tank living off borrowed time. You can't reliably avoid damage
and the enemies use hitscan weapons pretty much meaning that if an enemy
attacks you, the hit is guaranteed. And you pretty much have to keep getting
hit hoping you find enough health packs to get to the end of a level or die a
lot and memorize the level to minimize damage. Resistance, this is not the
case, the enemies use projectile weapons and attacks can mostly be dodged if
not entirely. You have a wide array of different weapons and grenades to choose
from that can help level the opposition. Different weapons that aren't generic
hitscan. And I want to address another another thing about the difficulty and
that is the "checkpoints". Again, like the before mentioned games, if
you die in them, it's a level restart. Resistance does have checkpoints but it
doesn't baby you either, if you are good enough at the game, and understand
what I mentioned here, levels can be breezed on Normal Difficulty. And
Resistance isn't crazy with it's checkpoint, if there is a challenging section,
there will be a checkpoint before that. It's not like games like Timespilttes 2
where checkpoint placements are questionable, very few and get very little
health packs. In Resistance, the checkpoints are plentiful enough and you get
enough health packs to get by a level. It just baffles me how this game gets
attacked for it's difficulty while the above mentioned games do not. Don't get
me wrong there are some bad sections here and there like fighting the Titans,
that one awkward platforming level and the opening level in the Nottingham Base
mission but generally, this game is fair when compared to those above mentioned
games.
In conclusion, I feel this game is quite a great time and Insomniac did a great
job for making an FPS game for the time in over a decade. They made a game that
did an excellent job at combing every aspect of old and new shooter design. I
feel if this game came out now, with some tweaks, I can picture this game being
loved but of course, it came out a year before Call of Duty 4 and we all know
what happened and how Insomniac wanted to appeal to those people with this
game's sequel.
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