Fall of Man was a hot mess and it showed. It was a frustrating clunky, one-foot-stuck-in-the-last-generation game that just didn’t show off what the PS3 could really do. It almost seemed like it was being developed on PS2 and got ported over later on. Resistance 2 fixes nearly all the issues with Fall of Man, but because there were so many problems Resistance 2 didn’t get a chance to really shine. It also holds on to some of its predecessor’s problems.
First and foremost, Resistance 2 looks miles better than Fall of Man. Even years later the game looks great. With highly detailed textures, the scale of the game has increased tenfold. No longer are there boring JPG mountains in the background. We get full-on battles and giant building-sized ships in the sky, giant aliens roaming the city, and more enemies on screen. The weapons look better and have moving parts, characters look better, the Chimera have more detail, and overall the game looks like a next-gen game should. It’s part of the upper echelon of PS3 games graphics-wise. However, that’s about the peak here. The story still doesn’t explore the Chimera enough, their planet, or their origins. Nathan Hale has been updated with a voice and infected by the Chimera, but it doesn’t make him more interesting. He’s still a typical white bald dude from the 2010s. The secondary characters are dumb and their origins aren’t explored. Again, there’s no reason to care for anyone here.
With the story being a toss-away the gameplay has improved to an extent. There are more weapons and this time around you only get to hold two a time instead of all of them. This makes you strategize your needs based on the current situation. Some of the original weapons return such as the Carbine, Bullseye I and II, Fareye, Auger, and the Rossmere. However, the Auger has been improved by letting you actually see the enemies through walls this time. There are some new interesting weapons like the Marksman with a secondary fire that shoots a plasma ball, and the Magnum which has explosive rounds. The weapon arsenal is better than ever and the aiming has improved as well. The weapons have weight and the Chimera aren’t bullet sponges. They actually have animations to show they’ve been hit and you can interrupt their shots.
There are boss fights this time around which are pretty cool and cinematic. Your environment is the United States this time around and you jump from various cities such as Chicago, Louisiana, San Francisco just to name a few. The varied locales are a nice change of pace from the previous game, but the game changed its boring color palette from gray to brown. Everything in this game is brown with very little color. At least we get new enemies to change things up like big Titans, these guys rush you and have shields, there are Chameleons which will one-hit kill you unless you shoot them down (one-shot kills them), and Mauraders which are giant four-legged creatures that show up a couple of times in the game. The largest problem from the last game returns and that’s the insane difficulty. This game is so poorly balanced. It starts out easy and nice and then about halfway through you’re restarting areas over a dozen times because there isn’t enough ammo in the area, you don’t have the right weapons, or cover is poorly paced, or there are just too many in the area for you to take on. You die in just a couple of hits, but the health meter was axed for regenerating health, and the “red screen”.
The last few levels of the game were insanely hard and unfair. The game is only about 6 hours long, but it took me over a week to finish it because of the constant deaths. The campaign isn’t worth playing again and the multiplayer servers are shut down, but I do remember playing a demo of the multiplayer back in the day and it wasn’t anything special. Resistance has never been a fun multiplayer game, but the co-op campaign might make it more enjoyable and less difficult. While I praise the game for fixing many of the problems from the least one it introduces new ones and retains a few major problems.
First and foremost, Resistance 2 looks miles better than Fall of Man. Even years later the game looks great. With highly detailed textures, the scale of the game has increased tenfold. No longer are there boring JPG mountains in the background. We get full-on battles and giant building-sized ships in the sky, giant aliens roaming the city, and more enemies on screen. The weapons look better and have moving parts, characters look better, the Chimera have more detail, and overall the game looks like a next-gen game should. It’s part of the upper echelon of PS3 games graphics-wise. However, that’s about the peak here. The story still doesn’t explore the Chimera enough, their planet, or their origins. Nathan Hale has been updated with a voice and infected by the Chimera, but it doesn’t make him more interesting. He’s still a typical white bald dude from the 2010s. The secondary characters are dumb and their origins aren’t explored. Again, there’s no reason to care for anyone here.
With the story being a toss-away the gameplay has improved to an extent. There are more weapons and this time around you only get to hold two a time instead of all of them. This makes you strategize your needs based on the current situation. Some of the original weapons return such as the Carbine, Bullseye I and II, Fareye, Auger, and the Rossmere. However, the Auger has been improved by letting you actually see the enemies through walls this time. There are some new interesting weapons like the Marksman with a secondary fire that shoots a plasma ball, and the Magnum which has explosive rounds. The weapon arsenal is better than ever and the aiming has improved as well. The weapons have weight and the Chimera aren’t bullet sponges. They actually have animations to show they’ve been hit and you can interrupt their shots.
There are boss fights this time around which are pretty cool and cinematic. Your environment is the United States this time around and you jump from various cities such as Chicago, Louisiana, San Francisco just to name a few. The varied locales are a nice change of pace from the previous game, but the game changed its boring color palette from gray to brown. Everything in this game is brown with very little color. At least we get new enemies to change things up like big Titans, these guys rush you and have shields, there are Chameleons which will one-hit kill you unless you shoot them down (one-shot kills them), and Mauraders which are giant four-legged creatures that show up a couple of times in the game. The largest problem from the last game returns and that’s the insane difficulty. This game is so poorly balanced. It starts out easy and nice and then about halfway through you’re restarting areas over a dozen times because there isn’t enough ammo in the area, you don’t have the right weapons, or cover is poorly paced, or there are just too many in the area for you to take on. You die in just a couple of hits, but the health meter was axed for regenerating health, and the “red screen”.
The last few levels of the game were insanely hard and unfair. The game is only about 6 hours long, but it took me over a week to finish it because of the constant deaths. The campaign isn’t worth playing again and the multiplayer servers are shut down, but I do remember playing a demo of the multiplayer back in the day and it wasn’t anything special. Resistance has never been a fun multiplayer game, but the co-op campaign might make it more enjoyable and less difficult. While I praise the game for fixing many of the problems from the least one it introduces new ones and retains a few major problems.