Resistance 2 Review

 

Resistance 2 Review

Alright, this is going to be a weird review from me, I have bashed this game for a long time, I often considered this game to be the first disappointing game I ever played and consider this game to be one of the worst FPS sequels ever and I always preferred Resistance Fall of Man and 3 over it by a large margin. Recently, I beat the game a couple of months ago and I actually really enjoy the game now, I still consider this game to be the weakest in the Resistance trilogy but still a pretty good game nonetheless.

First, I will address a big reason why I was able to enjoy this game much more this time around and this is going to be a huge red flag for a lot of people, but hear me out, I think it is better that you play this game on the Easiest Difficulty. Easy Mode? Why is it that? Here's the big issue, the Normal Difficulty is borderline broken. You take very little damage and you are forced to take cover and hide behind things waiting for your health to regen. But isn't all cover based shooters more enjoyable on Easy? The thing is, Resistance 2 has a huge enemy count, has AI that will flank you too, even has enemies that rush you out of cover, and also has a number of Chimerian Titans this time around so when you combine all this with taking very little damage on Normal Difficulty, it creates for an infuriating experience where you will die a lot. The regen health often feeling like a handicap where every time the player rushes in and tries to do some serious running and gunning and tries to be the Chimerian Super Soldier that is Nathan Hale, they will just be seeing the game over screen a lot. It isn't far off from how Halo 2's difficulty is broken and both games focused on multiplayer too. The section with 3 Chimerian Titans with the exploding cars feels almost borderline crazy on Normal since you take very little damage and when you throw that in with all the cover around you that explode, it creates for a frustrating experience. Now, if you play on Easy, it has the health pool that should've been in the game's Normal Mode to begin with and you can take much more damage and actually do the running and gunning with the satisfying and great weapons that Insomniac is known for. It's much easier to appreciate the enemy count during the game's bigger fire fights.

Before I get to the good things, I will mention a few more negatives and okay aspects about the game. The Invisible Monsters are terrible, I will not be defending them, they are really obnoxious and I have no idea what Insomniac thought what kind of interesting gameplay would happen if they killed you in one hit. It's a bunch of trial and error and memorizing when the monsters will spawn so you can kill them before they hit you. It just feels out of place in a game like this since it's a shooter where you are mowing down dozens of enemies. The scripted sequences are a mixed bag, the one with the Bees are pretty bad since it requires you to know where exactly to go while being chased and you have to be running away at all times just to effectively make past it. The one with the Leviathan is pretty good and impressive at the time seeing that big monster move around and throw you, hitting it with a rocket after luring to a bunch of explosives felt satisfying. The one with time limit on the ship wasn't the greatest mainly because it just involving you running away before it explodes, there's not much going on. The final section where you get the ability to blow up all the enemies with your hands was pretty good, and felt cathartic too after struggling to get through the Chimera but now killing all them easily with flick of your hands.

I will address the other elephant in the Room and that is the 2 weapon limit, while I am not the world's biggest fan of it, I don't think weapon limits are inherently a bad idea. FEAR does it well and games like Bishock lets you hold all your guns and combat in that game is terrible. I think R2 handles it well enough. It isn't the Call of Duty way where you have dozens of interchangeable hitscanning machine guns, R2 does make you switch and use different weapons often. You won't actively be using the Carbine and Bullesye, some weapons which will be available during certain fights that will make you use them. When a Chimeran Titan shows up you will be using a Rocket and Grenade Launcher, during close quarters encounters with the zombies, you will have to and need to use the Splicer or Shotgun if not both. Areas with lots of cover will make the player and have an Auger be available. And compared to shooters like Halo, the weapons in R2 are a lot more interesting for the alternate sci fi setting that Resistance is set in. The Splicer is a great weapon that is very much a homage to Ratchet and Clank, the Magnum Pistol is great and lets you be creative with when to detonate the rounds, the Pulse Cannon is just crazy powerful and you already have interesting Resistance staples like the Bullseye and Auger. As much as I dislike that the weapon wheel is gone, I can tolerate it in this game.

I will mention some more positives, the damage animations and feeling of the weapons themselves are all very good and is a big improvement over Fall of Man, where the weapon feel and damage animations in the latter felt "good enough". Headshots feel very good and have a nice *spalt* sound along with the series' having the chimera groan after they get hit with a weapon. There's a nice amount of gore when using on grenades on enemies too. The Auger can now see through walls when equipped and it feels much better to use since it's easier to tell what you are shooting when firing with it, where in Fall of Man you just had to peak behind corners or just move the reticule around when behind a wall and hope it hits red and maybe you might damage the enemies. The Bullseye's tag is a lot more consistent this time around where in Fall of Man you either had a 50-50 chance of it not landing. A big surprise for me in this game is how big the enemy count was, I remember Insomniac said in an interview for R2 that they aimed for scale and it shows in the campaign and not just with the Leviathan. The enemy count in this game is crazy for a console shooter. The Chicago mission in particular had lots of allies as well as Chimeran foot soldiers, sentries and Stalkers all duking it out. It was really eye catching how much different variables and AI Insomniac had to put into. It almost felt like a Serious Sam game at times with the amount of enemies there were. Killzone 2 also had something like this which came out a few months later. The game tends to have an enemy count even in regular firefights that weren't really in shooters especially console shooters at the time.

In conclusion, for a game I disliked for so many years, I was shocked to find out that Resistance 2 at least when played on Easy can be a really enjoyable shooter. I do wish Insomniac balanced the difficulty better, this was also an issue with a game they made a year before with Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction.

Why I dislike Shinji Ikari

 

Why I dislike Shinji Ikari

I make it no secret that I am not the world's biggest Neon Genesis Evangelion fan. I don't think it's a terrible show, I think the show is overall "okay" but it seems in recent times, the show has gotten so much love to the point where it has even garnered critical immunity, and one aspect of the show that has gotten quite a lot of critical immunity is the character of Shinji Ikari. A couple of years ago, the character was often derided for being too "whiny" and others would also try to defend him and it sparked a flame war that went on for many years but now, it seems the former has mostly died off or at least are too scared to actually admit it without being attacked by legions of fanboys. What is the point of all this rambling? I want to go into specific detail as to why I think Shinji is not as interesting of a character as Evangelion fans like to think he is. I also want to credit a person named Archaeon for making me create this write up. His review on MAL managed perfectly encapsulates why I never liked Shinji even back when I was a teenager when I first watched the series. Now, let's get started.  

The biggest reason why I dislike Shinji is simple really, he doesn't have an actual motivation as to why he does what he does. He has nothing that drives him as a character. To put it very bluntly, all the guy wants is wants pity. Throughout the whole show, and I really do mean throughout the whole show, Shinji spends his entire character wanting sympathy from other people. He makes and the show will it ever so tell you that he pilots the Evangelion only because people actually acknowledge him. This wouldn't be so bad but the big issue is that Shinji never actually tries to make his life better for himself. It's not so much that he is "whiny" it's that he never really tries at all. A traditional hero in a story would have a character flaw but would have to deal with and also and this is very important, overcome his flaw and try to rise above that. If I wrote Evangelion, I could've written Shinji in one of two ways. One way is that he knows that piloting the Evangelion is the only thing people actually like him for so he tries to play that to his advantage and try to live off the fame he got for being an Eva pilot, then he realizes that the fame isn't what he really wants and then Karou shows up does what he does(I will explain this later) and then Shinji decides to bring the fight to the Angels and kill them once and for all because his hatred for the Angels is the only thing that drives him now. Another way is to have Shinji be extremely suicidal and have his attempts at piloting the Eva be constant suicide missions and every time he would fight he would always come out alive, thanks to his dead mom and Gendo's neglect, Shinji has some strong abandonment issues but then he slowly starts to build a bond with characters like Misato, Asuka and Rei, and then realizes he has something to live for. What do both of these scenarios have in common? They be more typical of a traditional story, yes, but at the same time, it would make Shinji more interesting to me because at least he would have flaws and try to overcome them. What makes fiction interesting is conflict and the issue with Shinji is that he doesn't try to actually try to fight the conflict that he has with himself. A part of me just wonders why he doesn't just commit suicide if he refuses to fight back and refuses to find self worth for himself to this degree. I don't get how he is relatable either, sure he connects to people who also extremely depressed and live crappy lives but at the same time, the guy can pilot a huge robot and can kill aliens. This isn't exactly relatable to me. The final nail in the coffin for Shinji's character is his relationship with Karou. Here's the thing with this, Kaoru only ever got to Shinji because he played with his emotions and gave him the very thing Shinji wanted throughout the whole series, you guessed it: pity. It's not so much this I have a problem with, it's Shinji's reaction to the whole ordeal. The guy acted like Karou actually did care for him and gets depressed yet again when all the latter really did was use him for his nefarious endgame. I try not to let a character be exactly like me, but I feel Shinji should've been really pissed and had enough of being used by other people and just wanted to kill the Angels to get it over with. If they went with this route, this could've given Shinji some degree of character since he is displaying character traits that isn't whining and saying, "I do and I don't" constantly. The thing Eva was written by a depressed person and it shows in a number of ways. For one, it's a story about humanity fighting against all odds yet the number one group that is the most capable has no one in the team who practices mental health to have them be in good psychological state.  

I will compare Shinji Ikari to two characters I think are more interesting. First is Tatshiro Sato from Welcome to the NHK. The latter is also a depressed nerd like Shinji but unlike Shinji he actually does try to want to make life better for himself despite not always succeeding, the difference here is that he Sato does try, where Shinji kills aliens and then spends multiple episodes wanting pity from people afterwards.

Another character comparison and this is going to be a weird one, but Naruto Uzumaki...from Part 1. Naruto actually started off his series not too different from Shinji and I used to dislike the former as a character but there is more layers to him than I thought. Naruto also never had much in the way of parental figures growing up but the biggest difference here is that Naruto never lets that get to him. Naruto actually TRIES to want make life better for himself. He spent his whole life being neglected by everyone in his village for holding a monster inside of his body, a monster who killed thousands of people many years back in his village, but the thing is, Naruto actually tries to stand out by acting like a goofball idiot. He wants people to respect him and look up to him and if he did what he was told, it would only have people ignore him and make life more depressing for himself. Naruto acts like a knucklehead because he knows it have people notice him more if he didn't act like one. What is the biggest difference here? Naruto doesn't spend Part 1 wanting to have pity from other people, he a motivation and drive to want to do what he does. That is what makes an interesting character, not them being exactly like me and having a similar life but how they choose to deal with problems.

Now I will address one more point before I close this write up, and it is the, "Get in the Robot Shinji" scene. Eva fans often say people hate him because of this scene. But here is my issue with it, for a character they try to establish as being "unlikable", I argue they don't go far enough with it. It's basically Shinji doing what he always does, piloting the robot so he can get sympathy from other people. Why not have Shinji refuse the pilot the robot so much to the point where the Angel causes extreme collateral damage? Have Rei actually pilot her Eva and then get beaten by it nearly to death? This could've at least taken Shinji's unlikablity to interesting places since it establishes that he hates his father so much that he would rather watch humanity burn then save it. Compare this another show Ashita no Joe, where Joe refuses to become a boxer at multiple points so much so that he lands himself in Juvie and gets into all kinds bad situations, they actually take his unlikablity to places and it pays off later where Joe realizes that boxing is what gives his life meaning and gives the motivation to not be delinquent.

In Conclusion, I dislike Shinji, not because he is "whiny" it's because he just wants pity and nothing else. Nothing that makes me want to admire him or find anything interesting to stand out. His refusal to fight his inner demons is what makes him so dull to me. 

Why are Superheroes so Dominant in today's Movies and Modern Media in General?

 

Why are Superheroes so Dominant in today's Movies and Modern Media in General?

Before I continue writing this, I recommend a video by Exalted Speed that helped me inspire the creation of this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAe1k04g-w&t=2s

Superheroes have been everywhere in modern media especially in movies and live action TV shows, in fact, they appear in almost anything of the live action variety nowadays. So much so that the term "capeshit" has been invented and there's a huge hype backlash going against them on the internet as of late. Here, I am going to examine why this is the case and the reason why they are so dominant in recent years.

As much as it pains me to admit it, when MCU fans use genre labels to try to distinguish the movies, they kind of have a point. The big reason as to why superheroes have yet to die out is because really, you can put these characters in almost any kind of genre and story and it's almost always a guarantee sell. You can make a superhero story about almost anything really. The first Iron Man was a military movie with Iron Man, Captain America the Winter Soldier is an espionage story with Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy is a sci fi epic, Spider-Man Homecoming is a teenage comedy drama, the Daredevil Netflix show is a courtroom drama, the recent Shang Chi is a martial arts movie with a superhero skin. This can apply to non MCU examples too, Logan is basically a western, Punisher Warzone can be viewed as the traditional action movies that superhero movies have mostly killed off, Man of Steel can be viewed as a coming of age Alien Invasion Story, both Justice Leagues are Seven Samurai with Superheroes. It's endless really, this is the reason why superheroes have lasted so long in Western Comics too. Why go out of your way to make a new original property which won't sell nearly as well, when you can make a Romantic Comedy out of Spider-Man and it will sell like crazy?

This now transitions me to my next point, before, Hollywood would rely on the power of the movie stars to sell their movies. In the 80s it was Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeanne Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren(who starred in a Punisher movie), to name a few. Then in the 90s, it was Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Steve Buscemi and others. And the original Superman movie needed star power in order to sell people that it was a genuinely serious take on the idea of the superhero, the advantage of the movie star is that since they are people rather than characters, depending on how attached certain people were to them, you could watch them in almost anything. Many people watched the Matrix for Keanu Reeves, many watched Men in Black for Will Smith, many people watched the first Mission Impossible for Tom Cruise. It gave the chance for a movie with less than "marketable" premise to make money because if you could land on one these big stars in your movie, it *could* sell well. Mad Max probably wouldn't have been as big if it weren't for Mel Gibson, same can be said of Lethal Weapon and Braveheart too. Sixth Sense probably wouldn't be as big of a hit if it didn't have Bruce Willis. There's many examples. Now, with the reliance on characters over actors is that the thing is, characters don't have to rely on making sure they remain acceptable in the public eye and add social media where it's harder to get away with making mistakes in public. That and the movies require so much money to make that they need to sell overseas, and a character with an "iconic" look will generally be enough to sell people of cultural and national boundaries more than a face of an actor and their acting nuances. That and when you add movie reviews and the internet into the mix where people will watch a movie based on if they do well with critics rather than a movie because an actor they like is starring in it and you can see why the movie star died out

Anthony Mackie makes a great point in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj8JK6c5x3M

On a side note I am surprised they let him say the stuff he did in that video.

In conclusion, I think these are the reasons why Superheroes have stayed for so long, it's because of how marketable they are and easy it is to shove them in any kind of story.