Resistance 3 is a Sci-Fi first person shooter developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Resistance is the third installment of the franchise that has always seemed to receive mixed reviews within the gaming community. This sequel will be the first in its franchise to release supporting Sony’s 3D tech and move system. It is a PlayStation 3 exclusive and was released on September 6, 2011 in North America.
It’s been four years after the events of Resistance 2 and America has fallen to the chimera, the estimated date is August 1957. You play as Sentinel Joseph Capelli, a dishonorably discharged soldier who has taken to hiding amongst the remaining survivors, this includes his wife and son. Capelli was discharged because of his decision to kill Nathan Hale (infected hero of Resistance 2). This decision by the military was made after the discovery of a vaccine to the Chimera virus that was taken from Hale’s body.
But Joseph’s claim in hiding is threatened with the appearance of Dr. Fyodor Malikov, who shows up to request his help in defeating the Chimera. This journey will take Capelli far away from his family as he travels to the frozen lands of New York City to deactivate a worm-hole producing tower.
Functionality:
The controls for this game operate the same basic way as most FPS’s (first person shooters), movements and looking is done by joy sticks and firing by clicking R1 and iron aiming by L1. Along with the standard firing each weapon has an alt fire. These are activated by clicking R2. An example of alt fire is that bullseye gun can launch a tracker onto an enemy and any remaining fire will be directed to them specifically, no matter where you’re aiming! This is a great mechanic that has remained in each game, but for this game in particular it really only comes into use for certain big guys. Using it for the smaller ones just doesn’t seem as wise, you’re better off just guns blazing and aiming normally.
Resistance takes on an elder scrolls method to upgrades. The more you use a weapon the better Capelli gets with it, and by better I mean the weapon gains new abilities and a new shell. This was definitely and interesting mechanic and a great way to reward the player for using a weapon over and over again. Although there are really only two upgrades to each weapon and for the most part you will not be able to fully upgrade each weapon, unless you constantly switch when one reaches its final upgrade.
An example of the upgrade process, when you are constantly using the bullseye it will gain explosive rounds to the normal fire. This increases the overall damage of the gun. If you continue to use it will gain another upgrade which allows three tracers to be fired out to separate enemies, this allows the gun to fire in three directions and deal out a massive amount of devastation! While this was really cool when you got it to work, it was never something I continued to use in-game, it was just more easy to shoot without the tracers.
Another mechanic is the grenade system. Throughout the entire game you are provided with four different grenades to use. You start off with the EMP grenade, a great weapon against enemies with shields. Later you will gain the Shatter Grenade (like the standard Frag Grenade), Spike Mine (a mine that launches a ball in the air, which releases and array of spikes to kill all around it), and the Molotov Cocktail. All these grenades have their uses and the use becomes very prevalent in-game. I will say though, the main ones to use are the EMP and the shatter grenades. EMP is best used when fighting the bigger mechs, they typically have shields, and the Shatter helps a lot with big hordes.
You will also be allowed to carry four of each grenade type, so you can carry around sixteen grenades! This was great, it allows you to continuously have them and never get stuck in a stick situation that has no way out.
One of the main issues that was brought up about Resistance 2 was the fact that area difficulty wasn’t balance, there were a lot of areas in the game that would either be way to easy or way too hard. Well that has been addressed in Resistance 3, almost too much… The difficulty in this game is almost too low, I usually always play on normal and found myself wishing I had switched to hard. All enemies are easy to dispatch and moves have become very very predictable.
Now I realize that Resistance 2 was very unbalance but this one was just too unprogressive with its difficulty settings, even the ending wasn’t that big of a challenge. The only challenge I ever found in the game was knowing exactly where to go, it wasn’t always obvious. But this is usually sorted out by the game providing a small compass design on the map, after you spend around 5-10 minutes roaming around like a lost puppy.
While it is a nice change from how ADD the previous game was it is still far from what it needs to be.
Now the overall interface for the game was actually very well designed. You have a radial health bar on the bottom left and weapon/ammo info to the right. The design choice keeps the game grounded in the time period that it is spinning off of.
Along with that you can access your weapons by holding down R2 and using your joystick to choose you weapon of choice. This allows for quick weapon swapping and the most important thing, you get to carry EVERY WEAPON in the GAME! Finally it is nice to play and FPS that allows you to carry whatever you find and not just limit you to only two weapons.
The design for weapon swapping takes the same radial design as the health and is very well kept in with the overall game mood.
Presentation:
The graphics are… better than the second game, but that isn’t saying much. For Resistance 3, Insomniac decided to scrap the entire engine and rebuild it. This was a great call considering Resistance 2 had a lot of issue with how the engine decided to render the environment, mainly that blood looked like a bright red mirror. So when you compare the two games and the progression of its overall look, it is a lot better.
But there are some big issues, or design choices, that stand out with this game. One is that while the cinematic scenes look great the in game character looks too blocky. His hands and body seems like it was never smoothed out. So you get extremely bony fingers and posture. It would have been nice to smooth those out a bit more, that way the character seems more like a person and less like a box figure with a human head on top.
The issue of smoothing textures also arises in the environment; the very first scene of the game is the main character walking around the underground survivor hideout looking for people and weapons. All the surfaces on the walls look like a bunch of extremely defined rocks that are sort of smashed together, I am not discounting that this isn’t possible with a man-made underground settlement but it should have smoothed out a bit more to provide a natural look.
It’s not just smoothing though, the blending of the environment is a bit of an issue in this game. This is very strongly seen in the first area with the walls and ground. It looks like there was a tile design that is repeated continuously on a sharp building block surface. Now this is just the first scene, and this issue becomes less prevalent in certain areas but it just seems that it was a horrible way to present the very start of the game.
Another minor issue that was very noticeable in the beginning is that a lot of the characters had a weird glowing outline around them. Almost as if the game was having some issues with depth and setting them up in that environment. Again the main area you notice this is in underground levels, but that could just be because it was as obvious outside.
The character designs for this game are rather well done, in the conceptual sense. Although, I had some weird Edward Carnby (Alone in the Dark) meets Hugh Jackman connection in my head with the facial design of Capelli. But other than that, the other main characters look great and have a strong believability with their appearance.
Atmosphere:
The soundtrack for Resistance 3 was pretty good, I never really noticed the music too much since your guns and grenades take up most of the sounds in game. But the times it was noticeable it all seemed to blend properly in with the environments and provide that dark desperate feel to the game.
The sound effects are fantastic, the all add that extra little bit to the game to make it thoroughly enjoyable. Which is a great thing considering the main thing you hear are the guns going off. All this blends very well to just make you feel good as you bust through a room with your trusty shotgun (with combustible flame rounds) lighting up all those pesky Chimera in your path.
In all honesty I would say that the sounds for this game were great for what it was aiming for.
Plot:
The plot is okay, I mean for an FPS it is great but as a standard game plot it is meh. The main issues with the plot are just the unbelievable concepts they just casually throw out in the game. It just makes you stop and go “wait, what?” as you shake your head and start playing again.
I will give one example. The main objective in this game is that there is a tower over in New York City that is producing a “worm-hole” and Capelli needs to get there to deactivate it. Dr. Malikov explains this and mentions that he has no idea what its actual purpose is, but it needs to be destroyed or the entire world will freeze over and as he said “we won’t survive the winter”. Okay that is the overall story concept with this game, that’s it.
Now, a worm hole (in basic terms) is the concept of moving from one point in space and time to another. You do this without actually going through the distance between the two points, it is a direct transportation between the two points. It is a continuous idea that is used in fiction as a way for characters to move from point to another instantly.
With that said, how is it that Dr. Malikov doesn’t know what it is used for or why is it freezing the entire planet. The only justification for this would be that for some reason it is connected to a location that has a very severe winter storm that is blasting through the wormhole, But this doesn’t add up to why the planet is froze. That and the times you see the wormhole it is only a direct image of a different galaxy, so if that is the case it would be easily understandable that it isn’t connected to the planet side but to the space outside the planet. In that situation it would freeze the planet over, maybe if it is possible the space would suck create a vacuum on the planet.
But maybe this is an over-analyzation of the games idea, but it just seems a very weird choice on their part.
Along with this there is a moment in the game where it randomly decides to take on a mad max feel by having your character captured by a group of ex-con bandits. This just seemed way to random and really had nothing to add to the story, besides provide with a bit more gameplay and a weapon.
Besides all this I would say that there were a lot of areas that this game could have gone into but they didn’t. Like Hale’s blood as a vaccine, why not build off that and suggest maybe it isn’t a true vaccine? I know it is a concept that is done before but it adds a whole new element to the game, providing more time to play and more enemies to fight.
(WARNING: SPOILER ALERT, READ WITH CARE)
Now I have to mention this because I was pretty much on the floor laughing at this. The ending of the game finds Capelli in New York facing a big problem. There is no possible way he can get into the tower to destroy it, there are just too many Chimera at the tower. Well by the help of a helicopter he decides he is going to go to a space station that is floating in orbit (these are usually shooting a beam of energy destroying the world) and deactivate it. When the station is deactivated it somehow floats several miles over to the tower and destroys it.
Okay, it floats all the way over to the tower and destroys it… wow… All I can say is that is amazing luck and trajectory estimation.
And so you know, no they don’t explain what the worm hole is supposed to be doing. So Dr. Malikov’s concerns are never part of the overall game. Come on guys, don’t introduce concepts if you are not going anywhere with them.
Legacy Rating:
Will this game last through time? I would say that this game is by far the most entertaining out of the previous versions that have been released. But in all reality, this game is always going to be overshadowed by the original. Resistance: Fall of Man is still the best in the series, because it holds a better story and overall concept that is just never completely brought in any of the sequels.
How does it compare with other games? Well if we wanted to compare it to any other Sci-Fi shooter than I would say it is beaten out by many of them. More often than not you will enjoy Halo or Crysis more, towards the overall game experience. I will say that this game does have something to offer though, it is just plain old fashion fun! And that is kind of hard to find with games these days.
Buy or rent? Now the final question, do I buy or rent? I would say rent. It is a fun game but there really isn’t much replay value in it. I mean the very first Resistance game allowed you to find a whole new set of weapons, and that is what made it replay-able. But this game doesn’t do that, so you are still stuck with the same weapons and the same feel. It is just too generic to be a game to play over and over again. So rent it, try it, and have fun!
