When i bought and first played through Resistance i was still feeling all warm and fuzzy from my experiences with Xbox 360 shooters; Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Lost Planet and GRAW 2.

What i found was that not only didn' t it live up to the months of hype but most of the game it also felt extremely bland and generic. It was underwhelming.

Over the weekend i sat down to play a number of first person shooters, including Fall of Man' s entire campaign [for the 3rd time] and came to the conclusion that compared to next-gen console FPS' s it didn' t come off quite as badly as i had first thought.

This is how i' d place them from best to worst:

Call of Duty 2
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Resistance: Fall of Man
Call of Duty 3
Prey
F.E.A.R.
The Darkness
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Blacksite: Area 51 [unreleased]
Quake 4
Perfect Dark Zero
Far Cry Instincts Predator
Call of Juarez
King Kong
TimeShift [unreleased]
Hour of Victory


If i factor in 3rd person shooters too it does fare worse, but not as bad as i expected:

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Gears of War
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Call of Duty 2
Lost Planet
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Crackdown
Resistance: Fall of Man
Call of Duty 3
Prey
F.E.A.R.
The Darkness
Stranglehold
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Blacksite: Area 51 [unreleased]
Quake 4
Perfect Dark Zero
Far Cry Instincts Predator
Call of Juarez
Earth Defense Force 2017
TimeShift [unreleased]
Hour of Victory
Tomb Raider: Legend
King Kong
Just Cause
Bullet Witch Gun


The only things that had impressed me in March were the enemy character models and solid framerate, but as i played through the game' s campaign mode again i started to see things that until now i' d never really noticed. The weather effects, the sound, the geometry in the later levels and even some of the lighting in the later levels.

The game starts out weak, but gets better the further you get into it. The outdoor areas look dull and uninspired, suffering from seriously poor lighting and low resolution texturing, but the indoor sections of alien bases are actually quite impressive, especially towards the end of the game. If they' d set the game in the future or on the alien homeworld then it could have been a killer app because the non-human/more futuristic environments are pretty badass.

One of the main talking points in the run up to the games release was on the games weapons. On my first and second playthroughs i found them pretty boring and unsatisfying, but playing through it a third time i found myself using he secondary attacks more and as a result enjoyed using them. They still don' t feel as satisfying as some weapons in other games but some of them (like the air fuel grenade) are far cooler and more inventive than i' d previously given Insomniac credit for.

The best parts of the game are from On the Ice onwards. Unfortunately that' s just a couple of levels from the end of the game. Some other sections earlier in the game are cool, and if you could extract the alien bases/underground sections and then tack the parts following on from On the Ice onto the end then you' d have a short (maybe 5 hours long), but killer shooter.

For a launch game it' s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But the lame cutscenes, the technical deficiencies, the dumb AI and the lackluster human environments keep it from being a " great" game. Instead it' s a " good" game with some excellent sections. Either way i feel that i was way too hard on the game at first and although the multiplayer still suck monkey balls the campaign mode is worth playing, especially if you can pick it up for less than full price.