Alrighty so this is part 2 of my 2-part beta preview extravaganza. As you may have guessed I’m talking about Resistance 2 for the PS3 this time. This is one of my most eagerly anticipated Playstation 3 exclusives based on the first game (Resistance: Fall of Man) which I just got around to playing not too long ago. Like the Call of Duty: World at War beta I wrote about on Tuesday, the Resistance 2 beta is multiplayer-only. There is an added bonus, however. The beta also includes some samples of the 8-player cooperative mode, an excellent added bonus.
Let’s start with the competitive multiplayer. First off let me say that this is the most beautiful multiplayer game I’ve ever played. I believe that the beta only includes one competitive map, but based on that map I have to say the graphics and environment are stunning. Generally in games like this you kind of expect the multiplayer portion of the game to be scaled back considerably to cut down on potential game lag. That’s not the case with the Resistance 2 muliplayer. Not only does it look like it’s been copy/pasted straight out of the game’s singleplayer campaign, but it runs smooth to boot. I never had a single issue with lag while I was playing. Granted, I never got into a 60-player match (obviously the more players there are the higher the possibility of slowdown) but in the 16 player matches I played everything ran very smoothly.
If you’re like me and you didn’t play the Resistance: Fall of Man multiplayer, let me give you some insight. In team deathmatch (my competitive mode of choice) you play on the side of the American forces or the Chimeran army. Each has their arsenal of weaponry from the first game, and you can choose between different classes to get the load out you most prefer. Personally I stuck with the standard weapons (M5A2 Carbine for the Americans, Bullseye for the Chimera) and both controlled great. One issue they were able to avoid was potential lopsidedness due to weapon balance problems but each seemed to have its own strengths and weaknesses to a point that you never felt outgunned. The controls worked great, and the online functionality is one of the better implementations I’ve seen on the PS3.
One cool thing about the competitive multiplayer (and I think it carries over into co-op too) is that they’ve integrated a ranking system much like Halo or Call of Duty. Basically as you get kills you get points, get enough points and you rank up, unlocking skills and goodies in the process. That’s always a nice feature to see and it’s becoming more and more of a standard lately. I didn’t have enough time to rank up too many times, but I did notice a lot of the other dedicated players’ skills. If you rank high enough you can unlock weapon upgrades, better armor, and of course different abilities. That always adds a ton of replay value, much like Call of Duty 4 and 5.
On to co-op! This is a feature of the game that Insomniac has really been hyping. I remember hearing about Resistance 2’s co-op not long after Halo 3’s co-op component was revealed. Everyone was so excited to see 4 player co-op in Halo 3 and then bam, Insomniac unveils 8 player co-op for Resistance 2. Not only that but they promised that the co-op would be focused to a story external to the singleplayer campaign of the game, which is a bit of a revolution in cooperative play. Usually if you get co-op at all it’s just the same thing you’d see in the singleplayer campaign, but with more people. The prospect of having entirely new content to play through with your buddies was extremely exciting. Now that I’ve played it though, I have to say I’m a little less excited.
Don’t get me wrong, the co-op levels I played were fun (the first was fighting off an onslaught of Menials, the second was based around taking out Chimeran artillery) but they didn’t exactly feel like a campaign. There was no interaction between co-op players, no real setup or story for the levels aside from a screen of text while the level was loading, and altogether it felt more like a scenario than an actual level. If you’ve played either of the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter games you’ll know what I’m talking about. Basically the co-op is veiled as objective based but when it comes down to it all of the objectives just have to do with eliminating all of the enemies on the map. That’s fun, but it’s not the cinematic experience I was hoping for.
Of course I only tasted a bit of the co-op, so I could be wrong on the overall experience. Hopefully they can tie the different levels together with a meaningful story. I think that would help a lot, and it’s entirely possible because hey – this is just a beta. Insomniac might have chose to leave out the story bits in the beta so they don’t let any of the story slip before the game has his store shelves. That makes sense to me. Either way Resistance 2 is still on my must-own list of games, and I can’t wait to get back to Nathan Hale’s story. If you’ve played the first Resistance game you’ll know it leaves off as a bit of a cliffhanger, so to see the resolution will be nice. Add to that the solid multiplayer offering and you have a lot of content to keep yourself entertained. Resistance 2 will be in stores on November 5th; if you own a PS3 I’d suggest picking it up if you can tear yourself away from LittleBigPlanet long enough to do so. =)
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