Resistance 2 - PS3 Game Review

 This is a pretty standard first person shooter with a single player option, but the real fun is in online multiplayer action. Like most shooters, you have a variety of weapons and you can be on teams or go solo, depending on the match style. About the only thing that sets this shooter apart from all the others is that one side is human and the other are aliens. It doesn't really matter which side you play because the weapons and controls are all exactly the same. The only difference is how your characters look.

I was actually invited to beta test this game on the PlayStation Network, and this allowed me access to some maps and weapons that were new to this sequel. I played the beta for several weeks, but wasn’t too compelled to buy the game until now that the used copy price has gone down some. Here lately, I’ve found myself in a FPS slump while I am waiting for the new Call of Duty game to come out. I wasn’t too impressed with Killzone 2, and I found this game to be too much like it, only with graphics that aren’t nearly as good and weapons that aren’t that fun to shoot.

The graphics in this game are good, but I’ve seen better on the PS3. The environments look pretty nice even though they are not interactive, which is a letdown. However, something about the character models and overall look of the game reminds me of the awful Quake Wars: Enemy Territory for the PS3. The way the characters move seems too stiff and the maps have a lot of areas that I find myself tripping over. The humans look too much like a bunch of stick figures who are not articulated enough, and they all move so fast that it doesn’t seem as realistic as it could be. One thing that Killzone 2 got right was making the character models look good, but in this game they look like something from the 1990’s.

Resistance 2 game doesn’t have good movement controls in the way that if you push against something, you’ll just stop moving instead of going around. This really interrupts the flow and is only made worse by the fact that you can’t jump very high and lots of obstacles are only waist high. While I am playing and running around the boards, I always get the feeling like my character should be moving faster. It’s like being stuck in a dream where you can’t move as quickly as you need to be. Once somebody has opened fire on you, you are pretty much a goner.

I did like the level designs in this game because most of them were rather large, and big open places make for good shoot-out matches. The action doesn’t always converge into a few select areas because things are so open, so you can be a team player or go Rambo and it can work out either way. Overall, I was impressed with the levels for their size and versatility, but I was let down by how I kept running into things that stopped me dead in my tracks.

One of the selling points of this game is that it supports up to 60 players at one time in an online match, but you’d be hard pressed to find that many in a ranked game. If you don’t play a ranked game, then you won’t earn experience points to unlock other items. The way this ends up working out is that you have to shortchange yourself in one regard in order to get the most from the game’s most unique feature. I don’t like that. There is extra content you can buy from the PlayStation Store that will give you more maps to play online, but I am not spending any more money on this game.

In the end, I still enjoyed playing Resistance 2 and thought it had some good points. It’s a good first person shooter for the PS3, but not as much fun as the original. You’d be better off just waiting until the new Call of Duty game comes out next month.

Need some more great PS3 games to play and have a great time with? Here are some other articles on Bright Hub that cover some of the hottest PS3 games out there:

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