Review: Resistance 2 - Nathan Hale vs Marcus Fenix

Mike Bantick
Wednesday, 19 November 2008 09:14

Opinion and Analysis

Both next-gen gaming consoles now have sequels to their most acclaimed exclusive shooters, so how does the first person alternative action of Resistance 2 stack up against Marcus Fenix and his blood soaked squad in Gears of War 2 ? Is it fair to compare Resistance 2 on the PS3 to the Xbox 360 bound Gears of War 2 ?  Both are gritty shooters based on a background of a hopelessly outgunned humanity, struggling to survive and fight back against aggressive swarms of ugly and brutish aliens.

Resistance 2
	Developer	Insomniac
	Publisher	Sony
	Rating	MA 15+
PS3

Both provide campaigns built on action-a-plenty and flesh out the story lines of their predecessors with light, shade and a pacing that any Hollywood director/editor would be proud to put their name to.

But in so many ways they differ from each other as well, and it is these differences that make the job of a games reviewer that much more fulfilling.  There is nothing worse than trying to come up with a different angle after sitting through a series of not-so genre spanning titles one after the other.

So, though on the surface (including the box cover descriptions), much of what Resistance 2 (the follow-up to the PS3 launch title Resistance: Fall of Man)  covers could be stored on the same shelf space as the Epic Games title, Developer Insomniac have managed to inject their own flavours into the game to spice things up.

The early parts of Resistance 2 are the weakest, as the obligatory linking of storylines must be played out.

After surviving the Chimera invasion of England, Nathan Hale (who’s boots you fill) is air-lifted to the relative safety of U.S soil.  All this takes place in an alternate history 1953, where Communist Russia never got off the ground, and an isolationist president has control of the United States.

Nobody had planned for the alien Chimera invasion, and the subsequent spread of the plague that turned ordinary Joe Public into abnormally toothed raving creatures.  So it is inevitable that after spreading through Asia and Europe that the battle would catch up with Hale in the U.S.  This is where we pick up Hales adventures.

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