It really does - sigh - feel like Call of Duty with aliens. Stupid spiny reptilian creatures with sharp teeth, flinty eyes and red pipes sticking out of their coolant garb. ' Stupid' in that they shuffle obligingly from side to side, fire in a scattershot fashion and display anything but ' next generation' intelligence, whatever the hell that' s supposed to translate into.

All the game can offer the player at the end is the chance to play through again and unlock some new weapons. If we' re honest, playing it through once was enough of a slog (and only out of duty) - the desire to run through a tired, derivative cookie cutter FPS like this would have to come with a cash prize attached to it to make us do it again. And the discovery of concept art as a reward for unlocking the various skill points felt like the ultimate slap in the mush. Are they trying to upset us?

The overall disappointment that comes from playing Resistance is troubling. For years, Insomniac has carved itself an impressive reputation, and had a golden opportunity to throw its creativity at a genre which has been stuck in its ways for far too long. That it merely aped almost all of the things wrong with this creatively moribund genre is alarming. That' s not to say that it' s a bad game at all, because in most senses Resistance bears a solid resemblance to a lot of very successful shooters of the last few years. But to simply come up with a game on a new platform that completely stands still feels like a huge disappointment from a studio that' s more than capable of doing thing differently to everyone else. Put bluntly, the combat and AI is merely average, the visuals don' t really wow, and the much-vaunted weaponry makes little difference to how it plays. To say we' re underwhelmed is the understatement of the year.