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.