Resistance 3 (PS3): Solid Shooting

I don't play very many first person shooters. After Wolfenstein 3D and Doom they all started to just feel like copies of each other. They never hold my interest for very long. But there have been a few exceptions to the rule such as Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Resistance: Fall of Man. I had only bought Resistance because it was one of the few launch games the PS3 had out, but never the less it had good enough story telling and a long enough game play to hold my interest and make it seem like a worth while purchase. But I was never a die hard fan of the series, so Resistance 2 and 3 both kind of slipped me by, but with a "buy 2 used get 1 free" coupon about to expire and needing a 3rd game, I took a jump on a game I probably wouldn't have ever gotten without a bit of prodding from some reviews I have heard. Will it hold up to my rigid fps standards?

RESISTANCE 3: (PS3)

Resistance 3 picks up four years after the events of the 2nd game where protagonist Joseph Capelli, takes out previous games protagonist Nathan Hale after he started to succumb the Chimeran infection. An act that was probably welcomed by Hale but frowned upon by the remaining U.S. military. All was not completely lost as Dr. Malikov was able to isolate the gene that gave Hale his resistance to the infection, and from that was able to develop a cure. After becoming vaccinated Capelli is dishonorably discharged and returns to Oklahoma where he tries to return to a life of semi-normalcy where he gets married to a girl named Susan and has a son, Jack. For two years they hide out from the Chimera until they start to note an increase of Chimeran patrol. After fending off  a minor attack Capelli finds a Terraformer, a massive floating laser that lays waste to anything below it, hovering near where they are and is closing quickly. He heads back to help evacuate everyone where he is found by Dr. Malikov who informs him that there is a large tower in New York with a wormhole open above it, causing the entire world to freeze over. After being persuaded by his wife to go, he leaves his family with Maliakov to get to NY and try to close this hole and hopefully find a stop to the Chimera. 

"Go cross the country on foot against the monsters we've hidden from for years
while we hide in this hole, honey." Yeah, I'll get right on that. Bitch.

Now I have heard that this game bears a striking resemblance to the story of Half-Life 2, but as I have mentioned prior, I am not a big first person shooter guy so all I know about the Half-Life mythos I know from what I learned form the Portal series. That being said, They have a bit of a interesting disconnect between game play and cut scene story telling in the course of this game. In between stages where you get a CG animation cut scenes, its pretty thick with drama and Capelli is very well characterized. He shows a pretty broad range of emotions. But when game play actually starts he virtually says nothing despite what happens around him or what others might be saying to him. Its kind of odd actually how he can be greatly characterized and silent protagonist at the exact same time. Its not really a detriment to the game but it something that seemed a bit odd that I noticed. 

The controls are a bit awkward, but not too much. Generally the controls seem kinda standard for first person shooters but this is one of those games where every single button has a function so it can be easy to mistake a button for one thing when it does another. Prime example of this is when I would want to change a weapon, I would always instinctively go for one of the shoulder buttons. But in Resistance 3 each shoulders have a use: Fire, Secondary Fire, Grenade, Aim. I would need to go to triangle button to pull up my weapons menu. The melee is on the R3 trigger which to me is a button that just shouldn't exist. I've never really found a way to press those buttons in way that is fluid and natural. I kept making similar mistakes during the entire course of the game but they were never in a critical point where it because too frustrating to play.

I am wondering if it is just because my LCD TV is getting out of date but the graphics in the animated cut scenes all seem very grainy to me and the further I played the game the more noticeable it seemed to become. The reason I question this is because when I play games like Final Fantasy XIII where some of the scenes can be very CG animation heavy, I don't seem to experience this. Perhaps its just shitty compression, but I only really noticed it in cut scenes and one specific sewer level of the game. Outside of that, the games world war II post apocalypse looks good, and the Chimera are all very cool in their design. There is a specific level were you are trying to navigate a small mountain town at night and several weak Chimera spawn out of pods around town. They appear out of nowhere and if you don't see them approach they can nail you for big damage fast. Its a genuinely scary and exciting to play in.

One of these guys sneaking up on you is a hell of a lot scarier than some armored human.

The game feels more traditional PC generation FPS than many of the ones that you play these days. There is no regenerating health bars or shields as you have to grab med-packs through play, you get about 10 different weapons to use that you have on you at all times instead of just the more commonly used 2 weapon slots that you just grab and drop weapons as you use them, There are no chest high walls or cover mechanics to duck behind them so you actually have to use terrain to dodge and cover from enemy fire. Its a refreshing change of pace that offers this tense moment of excitement when you are down to about a 4th or less of your health, desperately spraying fire around at a swarm of Chimera while scrambling from cover to cover to try to find a med-pack somewhere. There is a particularly difficult point near the end of the game where you have to take an outpost and defend it against wave after wave of enemies. It was difficult yet fun to play all the same time.

But if I had to summarize why I actually enjoyed this game when I traditionally hate FPS titles is functionally for two reasons. First off is the weaponry. As stated before you get 10 different guns to use but in most shooters, despite having different kinds of weapons they all work the same way: point at something, shoot. Resistance 3 boasts a mix of WWII weaponry and sci-fi Chimera weapons each of them with two different methods of fire. The Bullseye can be compared to the gun in the film "Fifth Element" where you can hit a enemy with a tag and then unload your clip, all the bullets homing in on the spot you tagged, which is great for enemies with an exposed weakness. There is the Atomizer which is basically a lightning laser that torches nearby enemies and will occasionally jump to a new target, but if you are getting swarmed you can drop a device that causes a lightning vortex that thrashes and zaps anything that steps into its field. There is the Mutator, which can blobs of plague that causes enemies to explode into a pile of toxic blobs on the map, or you can fire off a can of gas that causes enemies to vomit themselves to death before turning into toxic blobs that can explode and infect other enemies. Or you can use the auger, which allows you to see through walls and fire blasts that go through any hard surface and increases strength as it does to hit enemies through 3 or 4 levels of cover. They are different and throw in interesting new dynamics that make them much more fun to use than just 30 gun options that fire bullets straight in front of you. God when I got the Mutator I couldn't wait to unload the gas bombs on a group of enemies to see them simultaneous spill their insides until they turned, only to see their buddies run in to help and start vomiting themselves. Hilarious.

You're supposed to shoot through cover with that thing, dumbass.

The other thing that I like is the aside from the various forms of regular Chimera there are, and there are a good mix of different types all notable from each other, is that the game remembers that boss fights and mini-bosses are fucking awesome. Circling around cover as a massive Widowmaker is trying to stomp me into paste while I try land the one exposed red spot on its body to dump a full clip of my Bullseye into. Wandering the mines of a mountain village, there is a massive worm-like Chimera bursting through the walls as I'm trying to blast it in the eyes when it gets stuck to stun it long enough to throw a gas tank in its mouth for big damage. This to me will always be more fun than just waves and waves of cannon fodder enemies because this forces you to use all the skills you've learned in specific situations, or at the very least gives some variety. 

There is multiplayer too, but again, I bought this used and I refuse to pay for an online pass. Besides, if you've played one FPS with slayer, CTF, and king of the hill, you've played them all. I don't care. Actually, After writing this and looking back at my receipt I see that I was still provided and online pass for the purchase of a used copy of the game, so maybe I will give the online a try. Good on you Insomniac Games, nice to see someone still taking care of the consumer.  

There is one massive flaw in the game though. Well really, its not even the games fault. But when I took this game home, I popped in in and was met with a PSN update. Ugh.. fine, let that go. Takes almost 20 friggen minutes to upload and install. Fine, Moves on to the next screen: What? Oh for fucks sake! Losing my patience, let that go and came back around 98%. Soon as that finished I got ready to start and... Installing trophies. Ok, fuck you game. I'm going to make a sammich. This is the worst problem with PS3 games. You really need to find a means of installing the game within the first level of the game. Nobody likes having to wait the moment you put a game in. You want to play it when you get home! So start finding a way to put the game in, press start, and while I'm playing the first level of the game on the disc, in the background it is installing the rest of the game so when I finally pass that point it can install the rest. I can't be shooting for the stars at this point, that has to be something that can be done in current gen technology. I might not have all the times down, but if you look at Rooster Teeth's "Rage Quit" you can see that I really am not exaggerating about the length of the install. 

All in all for a guy who doesn't really like or play first person shooters, I found myself really enjoying this game and ripped through it inside a couple of days. It did feel significantly shorter than the first Resistance title but I don't really count that against it since the standard game these days lasts about 5 to 9 hours of play length. Compared to other shooters this game may not break the mold but it was fun enough for someone who doesn't touch these games. Now I felt I needed to get the 2nd one just on premise, so I did.