Home page » Video Games

Search:

Refine search for Video Games

The water effects actually one-up Bioshock for realism. In a way you can see this as Insomniac's attempt to do a sci-fi FPS in its own house style, appropriating the Pixar-quality surface and lighting techniques we've seen in Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty and putting them to use in a more realistic action game. Where Resistance looked like a merge of all the games that it was aping, Resistance 2 is a game confident in its own distinct identity.

That identity still isn't particularly original. It won't take you long before you see elements of Halo, Gears of War and Call of Duty, while the way in which the game steers the narrative along can be very reminiscent of Half-Life 2. In fact, the way the game plays with its fifties America setting, using period styles and music, also makes you think of Bioshock at times. All the same, the blend of fifties style, recognisable locations and a gritty, modern take on alien invasion seems a lot more coherent this time around. Insomniac knows what it's doing, and knows how to put not just big, but enormous action set-pieces together.

The majority of these are fantastic. The game begins with a big'un - an assault on an Icelandic base by a huge Chimera walker - and only goes up from there, throwing in some genuinely huge battle sequences, fleets of Chimera battle cruisers attacking San Francisco, some stressful sequences fighting cloaked, flesh-tearing monsters in the backwoods and zombie-like critters in a small mid-Western town, daring raids on Chimera spacecraft and all out war in the canyons of Utah. On top of this the game throws in some of the biggest and most impressive boss battles ever seen in an FPS, featuring a range of beasties that will make you feel very small and very vulnerable indeed.

And in these high points Resistance 2 is the equal of any FPS you've played. It has Half-Life 2's drama, the orchestrated action of [link:http://www.trustedreviews.com/gaming/review/2007/11/14/Call-of-Duty-4-Modern-Warfare/p1 Call of Duty 4 and the epic feel of Halo. On top of this the best feature of Resistance - it's large and ingenious weapon set - is duplicated here, with a heap of guns, each boasting some clever secondary fire mode you can exploit, and each blasting the enemy to smithereens with colorful lashings of gore. If Halo is very much classic space opera then this is its B-movie shadow, splashing around blood, guts and monsters like there's no tomorrow. The Chimera aren't as convincingly intelligent as the Covenant hordes, but they put up a decent fight, and there are always - always - enough of them to give you a tough time.

Add your comment

© 2003-2009 TrustedReviews & IPC Media
About Us | Contact Us | Legal | Privacy | RSS