Insomniac Games has tried desperately this console generation to become a serious contender for the first-person shooter crown held by Halo and Call of Duty. Yet it has been unable to turn its Resistance series into a triple-A franchise despite the profile Resistance: Fall of Man enjoyed as a launch title for the PlayStation 3.
Resistance 3 continues the pattern, serving as a solid shooter that doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the herd of sci-fi shooters already available for the two high-definition consoles. It’s enjoyable, without being particularly compelling. It’s entertaining, yet seldom truly inspiring.
Resistance 3 casts the player in the role of Joseph Capelli, the guy who kills player character Nathan Hale at the end of Resistance 2 because Hale has become consumed by the Chimera virus. He embarks on a journey to destroy a wormhole and put an end to the invasion by the alien Chimera.
Resistance 3 gets off on the wrong foot with tiresome shooting gallery tutorials that FPS developers insist on putting in their games. You know, just in case you are one of the three people in the world who owns a PlayStation 3 but has yet to play an FPS.
There’s a long trudge through one of the last human settlements, where you see first-hand how the remaining humans scratch out an existence in post-apocalyptic America that is clearly inspired by similar vignettes in Metro 2033. Sadly, the leisurely walk through the encampment also draws the eye to some ugly low-res textures in the game’s environment.
Happily, things improve when the bullets start to fly and Insomniac starts to put the PlayStation 3 through its paces with some jaw-dropping particle effects. Insomniac nails the fundamentals of the FPS perfectly with Resistance 3, with exciting gunplay and encounters throughout its nicely paced single-player campaign. It is the balance of its selection of weapons that sets Resistance 3 apart from most other FPS games.
This is the first Resistance game where Insomniac really delivers on its promise to inject the wild and delightful weaponry of Ratchet & Clank into an FPS. Staples like the Bullseye and Auger are back, but there are some wonderful additions such as a cryogenic ray and a mutator that causes enemies to break out in diseased cysts before exploding.
You can carry all of your guns with you all the time and you will find a use for each of them during the course of the campaign. They all have secondary fire modes to add even more tactical options to the arsenal — something we see in far too few contemporary FPS games.
A neat touch inspired by Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank games is the fact that the guns level up and become more powerful as you use them to dispatch Chimeran nasties. The enemies are suitably vicious and each level is built with some clever flanking routes.
As good as the core of the game is, its shaky presentation and lack of original ideas hold it back from becoming a top-tier shooter. Though Insomniac tries to give the game a bit of heart by making Capelli a family man who is fighting for his wife and son, its storytelling is stilted and its characters are stiff and charmless.
Insomniac just doesn’t seem to connect as well with this darker, more grown-up material as it does with the cheeky and colourful universe of Ratchet & Clank. Perhaps the developer should rather have made a humorously irreverent FPS title like No One Lives Forever or Timesplitters than taking inspiration from serious sci-fi and military shooters.
The other major problem with Resistance 3 lies in its lack of truly surprising moments as you trek across America to reach the New York finale. It feels like a quilt made up of other games and seldom creates an identity of its own. When it does — notably in a clever twist on the generic underground mine mission — it shines. But these moments are far and few between.
Resistance 3 trailer (via YouTube):
You’ll see many FPS clichés throughout the game, from the train level to the battles with building-sized bosses. It harks back to the classic FPS games rather than likes of Call of Duty and Halo. Many of its best sequences are lifted directly from Half Life 2 and its episodes, revealing impeccable taste and a lack of creativity. Perhaps this simply exposes a genre that has become saturated and stale, but it is sad to see a developer with a sense of humour assimilated by the FPS borg.
Graphics 7/10
Resistance 3 has some lovely particle effects and looks fantastic in motion. Some of the textures don’t stand up to close scrutiny.Sound 6/10
The voice acting is wooden and sound effects lack a bit of punch, but the low-key soundtrack is pretty good.Gameplay 7/10
Interesting weapons and tight gunplay make up for uninspired enemies and derivative environments. Multiplayer is competent but unambitious.Value 7/10
Resistance 3 offers a reasonable amount of content for your money. But it’s open to question whether you’ll still be playing the multiplayer when Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 2 hit.Overall 6/10
Resistance 3 is an expertly assembled and entertaining game, yet it also emblemises a tired genre in need of some new ideas. A little more originality and another layer of polish would have lifted it from merely good to great.
The multiplayer component is robust, if unambitious, with a selection of traditional death match, capture the flag and king of the hill variants. Like just about every other shooter on the market, there are unlocks and medals tied to the multiplayer game to give you a sense of progression and keep you coming back for more.
The large-scale competitive skirmishes of the previous two games have been scaled down to 16-player matches. As a result, they are not as chaotic as the messy multiplayer of Resistance 2, but have little to differentiate themselves from countless other shooters on the market. But the maps are well designed and the shooting mechanics translate well enough to multiplayer to make it worth at least a few hours of your time.
The campaign can be played cooperatively online or split-screen, but the well-received dedicated eight-person co-op campaign of Resistance 2 has been scrapped. — Lance Harris, TechCentral
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