Resistance: Fall of Man PlayStation 3

Fall of Man PlayStation 3

By huutiep  Feb 15, 2007 | 1 out of 1 found this Resistance: Fall of Man review helpful

Pros: Rock-solid design borrows the best aspects from the best first-person shooters; outstanding presentation, featuring great weapons and believable environments; replayable campaign pits you against an aggressive, fairly intelligent foe; fully featured multiplayer mode offers good variety and supports up to 40 players.

Cons: Derivative visual style and gameplay is well crafted but mostly unoriginal; the campaign's story and characters aren't well developed; two-player cooperative mode isn't available online

If you're going to make a first-person shooter, you might as well take aim to deliver the best of what this style of gaming has to offer. That's what Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games must have done with Resistance: Fall of Man. One o...f the most highly anticipated titles in the PlayStation 3 launch lineup, Resistance is a technically impressive, well-designed, intense action game that unmistakably draws inspiration from some of the finest recent examples of similar games. Resistance doesn't attempt anything wildly different than other first-person shooters out there, but by offering a strong selection of interesting weapons, plenty of ruthless foes to shoot them at, good level design, and an excellent presentation, it accomplishes what most such games fail to do. A fully featured multiplayer mode for up to 40 players rounds out an exciting campaign in what's an all-around great effort and a promising example of what the PlayStation 3 can do. Resistance takes place in a grim alternate reality in which World War II never happened, yet something possibly even worse happened instead. As political tensions run high in the middle of the 20th century, a monstrous race of horrifying creatures suddenly shows up and starts killing everyone. Initially presumed to be a Russian biological weapon, this fiendish species is known as the Chimera. It quickly overwhelms Asia and most of Europe before it focuses attention on the United Kingdom. In the game, you play as a no-nonsense American soldier named Nathan Hale, who is sent in to reinforce the UK's defenses. A brush with death early on gives Hale a unique perspective of his foe and, before long, he's lone-wolfing it against the worst that the Chimera has to offer. As Hale, you'll blast your way through the devastated streets of England and also find yourself deep within the enemy's own territory as you struggle to survive and turn the tide of a losing battle. The story is told from the perspective of a different officer who briefly interacts with Hale during his missions against a seemingly unstoppable enemy. Her solemn narration is easy enough to follow but not particularly engaging because by her own admission, she doesn't really know what's going on in Hale's head or what's going on with the Chimera. Brief but nicely done cinematic cutscenes using the game's 3D engine at least serve to give Nathan Hale a believably concerned look between battles. Still black-and-white images and charts that are made to look as if they could have come from the early '50s also help set the mood and premise of each level in the game's more than 10 main stages. However, the story in Resistance is there mostly to justify a number of fairly conventional, though very well done, first-person shooter battles. You'll learn a bit about the Chimera as you fight, and there's some resolution once you finally finish the campaign after countless grueling shoot-outs. But Hale's character is never developed and he almost never speaks, and the plot has some noticeable gaps. Ultimately, this is a game whose personality mostly comes across when you're shooting something. The Chimera and their ugly spider-like features make them easy to hate straightaway. Read more Less