Resisting innovation

Ah, the ’50s. A time of white picket fences, housewives and infestations of “flesh pods,” incubating zombie-like aliens in towns all over the United States. At least, according to the revisionist history of Resistance 2.

But far from the pulpy mash-ups of the era, Insomniac Games’ Resistance 2 takes place in a very serious alternate-history America, following the events of Resistance: Fall of Man, which chronicled the infection (from the 1930s onward) of Europe with a virus that mutates those infected into a breed of the Chimera, a grotesque alien race.

Resistance 2 picks up right where the last game left off–only instead of war-torn England in 1951, U.S. soldier Nathan Hale, infected with the Chimeran virus in the first game, must trek across the United States to once again rid the world of the alien scourge two years later.

After an introduction in Iceland, the game proper begins in San Francisco, which the Chimera are busily laying to waste. The sense of scale in Resistance 2 is monstrous–stepping above ground into a city harbor a fleet of gargantuan Chimera battleships mar the skyline, fleets of attack ships whiz overhead and past the Golden Gate Bridge the city lies in ruins.

As Hale progresses east from the West Coast, things remain bleak. The towns and environments have been ravaged, and either abandoned or occupied by Chimera forces (usually the latter). Like any good first-person shooter, the bulk of the gameplay is breaking through defenses, surviving vicious firefights and defeating screen-filling bosses.

Although the game’s episodic structure has you continuously changing locales, the gunplay is pretty solid throughout. Resistance 2‘s weaponry is a mixture of man and alien-made firearms, some of which are pretty imaginative.

As was the case in the previous game, the Chimeran weaponry often gives you a tactical advantage because of extra abilities, like a sniper rifle that fires electromagnetic orbs or a gun that fires saw blades.

The combat in the game is fun, but it wavers from too easy to really difficult. Enemy AI is good, but not amazing–Chimera soldiers will flank you, take cover and dive on grenades, but still manage to stay easy targets by not varying their strategies enough.

In fact, when the going gets tough, most of the time it’s because Insomniac decided to throw 30 or 40 enemies at you at once. That being said, enemy encounters are usually large-scale battles against heavily fortified Chimera rather than small skirmishes–something that makes for a real feeling of accomplishment when you’re leaving a corpse-strewn battlefield.

But for as much potential as the game’s alternate-history, sci-fi setting could have, I still feel somewhat conflicted about Resistance 2, because it feels like it’s missing something. The combat is fun, but it’s simple–every gun has primary and secondary functions, and you’ve got some interesting explosives, but that’s about it.

Even the original game’s innovative use of the PS3’s motion-sensitive dual shock (tilt the controller left to bring up a level map, right to check multiplayer stats or shake it to free yourself from grabby enemies) are nowhere to be found.

In an era where innovative first-person shooters like BioShock and Portal are doing new and interesting things with the genre, Resistance 2 feels a little disappointing, at least in its single-player campaign. The multiplayer, however, is pretty sweet, with online matches with up to 60 people per battle.

Insomniac has created a solid game, and it can’t be faulted on that, it’s just one that’s rather basic in terms of game interaction and innovation.

Resistance 2‘s storyline also sticks to pretty standard Hollywood military tropes, and I couldn’t find myself caring much about the few characters the game has. But maybe the most glaring omission is the fact that Insomniac doesn’t take advantage of the game’s setting.

The whole point of alternate history games is that history is screwed up. In most cases, it amounts to outcomes of wars or other changed historical events, reshaping society and culture in one way or another. Resistance 2 doesn’t exactly do that.

The Chimera may have essentially taken over Europe, excising WWII from the pages of history, but instead of seeing the profound effects of this, the treatment of the story just feels like a bait-and-switch of one global conflict to another.

Since the game takes place in the ’50s, it would have been interesting to see a clash of political ideologies, or at least how communism would have been affected by Russia falling against the backdrop of the Chimera’s widespread epidemic. The result is that from the standpoint of the story, you kind of feel cheated.

To further my point, Resistance 2‘s setting feels like a anachronism. Rather than trying to capture the culture and feel of the era the game purports itself to be in, Resistance 2 also takes a lot of hard-to-swallow technological liberties within its timeframe.

Apart from the Chimera’s weaponry, which is understandably futuristic, the manmade weapons don’t feel like they’re from the right period, and outside of old cars or the occasional “vintage” radio broadcast, there’s little in the game’s desolate environments that make it feel all that authentic. Hale’s own team is perhaps the most out of place, with uniforms and equipment that look and feel much too modern day.

Surreal period games have been done before, and much better–just look at Metal Gear Solid 3 or the aforementioned BioShock for a couple of good examples. It’s too bad the Resistance world isn’t more realized, because explorations of the subject matter could be downright awesome if handled properly.

Still, for its shortcomings, Resistance 2 is not a bad game. Insomniac obviously put a lot of effort into the design of the game, but the maligned focus makes for a single-player experience that isn’t as interesting as it could be.

The game’s epic scale works well, and the multiplayer is a lot of fun. For its part, Resistance 2 is solid, if basic game–just don’t expect Half-Life 3.

Resistance 2***1/2Sony Computer Entertainment AmericaPS3$59.99