Re:Official review/preview Q&A thread
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Dec 15, 2008 13:50
I want to clarify my take of Resistance 2.
In terms of the solo campaign only...
The story sucks, but then, so do most videogame narratives. The cutscenes for the most part are really impressive and really well directed. I still hate Hale though, ...it's impossible to feel any kind of empathy towards him.
Chapter-wise...
Prologue - Opens well, impressive scale, introduces you to the magnum... which is badass, ...and the level design is pretty good. Taking down one of the games new enemies (the Goliath) is lame though.
Chapter 1 - Decent first proper level. Introduces a new (and really cheap) water based enemies called Furies. You can see them swimming... half of their bodies rising out of the water... but can't kill them. It's retarded stuff like that that really pisses me off. Later in the game some leapers attack you in water, and even though they're fully submerged you can still kill them... so why can't you shoot the Furies? The actual level itself is pretty good, especially towards the end... but the boss fight is just stupid.
Chapter 2 - Awful. This is where Resistance 2 (and the first game) really falls down. It's fine when you're in cramped corridors or fighting through alien architecture, but the real-world human levels are dull and uninspired. It's made all the more apparent because the environmental texturing is seriously sub-par... particularly anything organic (save for the enemy character models). When you litter these dull human locations with what are essentially meat sacks... and the texturing on them looks like something out of Goldeneye... it's bound to draw criticism. Now the game isn't ugly throughout because there are some really impressive locations, but like in the first game they tend to be the interiors of alien structures or ships. Chapter 2 also introduces a new cheap as fuck cloaked enemy. I don't mind monster closets in shooters but this is just ridiculous and repetitive.
Chapter 3 - The first part of this chapter is really good because it's set in an alien battleship, but the second half is a bit meh. There are some cool parts in the second half like fighting off a huge swarm of another new enemy called the Grim in a theatre, and then taking on three huge Ravangers in a town square... but the bulk of it is spent fighting through human buildings plastered with the awful looking meat sacks and is fairly dull. The chapter boss is really lame too.
Chapter 4 - Kickass. I liked pretty much all of this chapter. The exterior locations of pretty dull, but it's the desert and most of the chapter takes place inside a sprawling alien base so it doesn't matter so much. You get to use a badass chaingun too. The chapter introduces you to something called The Swarm, and after it chases you through a couple of corridors you're tasked with 'killing' it... the process of which is almost laughable. You do get to take on a couple of Titans afterwards though so it's not all bad. However, one of the things that really annoys me about this game is the design choice to only let the player carry 2 weapons. Granted that's something that has now become standard in first person shooters but it's retarded to drop down into an area where you're about to face off against a 2 Titans, only to find a rocket launcher that has enough ammunition to do the job but no more. I know, many videogames are like that, but it just feels lame. It's avoided in gears, so why couldn't they avoid it here. I get that they wanted to be able to supply the player with powerful weapons for short periods of time and then essentially take them away again... but that then detracts from the unique nature of the games arsenal and ways in which the different modes can be utilized. You simply can't be creative.
Chapter 5 - Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Chapter 6 - First part boring, second part better. Just like chapter 3.
Chapter 7 - The last chapter is good. There are parts i didn't like, and some of the environments look really bad, but as a whole the chapter is successful in bringing the action to a climax. The boss battle is pathetic though.
Weapon-wise...
Insomniac are known for creating cool weapons, and the stuff they've given us through the Ratchet & Clank games has been awesome. Fall of Man introduced some weapons that were cool... like the Auger (fires though walls/alt fire creates a plasma shield) and the Bullseye (automatic plasma rifle/alt fire lets you tag and enemy and shoot over cover or around corners etc) but nothing we hadn't really seen before in other games. Resistance 2 does even less. The new weapons just seem like pointless additions and don't offer any real gameplay changes. I understand that it's hard to come up with something new given the setting, timeline and semi-realistic nature of the game but seriously...
Magnum - Owns. Secondary fire detonates bullets fired, so it's good for taking out groups of enemies if you can time the detonations right.
Bellock (grenade launcher) - Lame. Doesn't help that the explosion effects are awful.
Wraith (chaingun) - Fucking awesome. Belongs in an AVP game :)
Marksman Rifle - Meh. It's powerful and has a three round burst but it's a completely unnecessary addition and looks shit.
Splicer - Fires spinning blades that ricochet of walls. Good for taking out Grims but useless otherwise. Looks cool though.
Spider Grenades - Pretty good i guess, but not as good as the air-fuel grenades. Another pointless addition.
Pulse Cannon - Lame. Basically a rocket launcher. Another pointless addition.
The enemy types are better this time around, ...they were way too samey in the first game. They're still not amazingly diverse, but there is enough variety now to allow for drastic changes of tactics and pacing. Save for the Leapers they all look graphically great too. I think they could be improved in terms of their actual design but they're not bad at all.
At it's best Resistance 2 is what i'd hoped Halo 3 would be. It's dark and broody. The alien structures and ships are pretty impressive and there are some really cool moments where you think 'if only the whole game was just like this'... but everything is inconsistent. It's a shame.