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dkirschner's Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
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| [February 25, 2014 10:45:56 AM]
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Got my PS3 back from the shop. I can't say it was free anymore since I had to drop some cash for a new disc drive. Now I can say I got it highly discounted, still a satisfied customer. So back on the wagon of playing all the PS3 exclusives and PS3 games that were region locked for my Xbox. Resistance was a flagship title for the console's launch in 2006. It's crazy to think I'm playing "new" games from 8 years ago. That last console generation sure did last a while. It was a pretty good shooter, nowhere near in league with Gears of War though, as far as flagship FPS titles went. The main difference is that Resistance isn't a cover shooter. It's more Call of Duty-esque.
I liked that the story was told as an account, and also that it wasn't an American-centric game. Granted, the Americans were the saviors sort of, but it mostly had to do with England. Just a nice change. This woman, head of a military caravan that encountered trouble, is the story's narrator. The caravan was taking an alien creature to drop it off to the Americans, who were supposed to use it to help with a last ditch effort in saving England and repelling this invading alien force, called the Chimera. Caravan got ambushed, and basically you go secure the caravan, traverse the Chimeran tunnel network, and eventually blow their invasion to hell. The story was cool because it told all these little stories about moments of heroism that you, American solder I-already-forgot-his-name, participated in that allowed for eventual victory. There wasn't much emphasis on character building, just telling this overarching story of the Chimeran invasion and England's fight to drive them back out. It's pretty obvious that this is set up to have more stories in sequels, of which there are plenty. At some point I'm sure I'll find out more about my character (he gets infected but has titular "resistance" to the alien virus that turns everyone else into aliens), and I'll probably have to drive the Chimera out of the rest of Europe, perhaps fight off an invasion of America. Yay.
So, first thing I noticed about the game is that it's hard. I died in the tutorial like 10 times and almost turned the difficulty down to easy. I'm glad I didn't though because it leveled off for the most part. The reason the tutorial was hard was because the main character hadn't been infected yet, and so his life didn't regenerate at all. You get damaged, you stay damaged. Your health is in 4 25% bars. Once you get infected, you can regenerate the bar that's part empty, filling that quarter. So like if your health is at 70%, it will regenerate up to 75%. If it's at 76% it will regenerate up to 100%, if it's at 5% it will regenerate up to 25%...It is a serious tactic to try not to get damaged below 75%, 50% or 25% so that you can regenerate more health. There are health packs scattered around. Other parts are really frikin hard too, like the first time you have to fight one of those big spider aliens that shoots explosive egg things at you (which is after a giant firefight and having to take down two stalkers!) and the part where you have to fight like 10 of those slender man things. Holy crap, I did those parts like 20 times. There's also an auto-checkpoint system, and I frequently had to re-do sections. Say within one checkpoint, there are 4 battle parts. Made it through 1, through 2, through 3, died on 4. Got to restart from the checkpoint at part 1. Although it was frustrating sometimes, as challenges tend to be, I enjoyed the difficulty. It forced me to learn which guns were good against which enemies, to be cautious, to handle multiple enemies of different types simultaneously, and so on. Definitely not an easy game, but quite rewarding to beat the hard parts.
Alien enemies weren't anything special until later on when more interesting types emerge like the stalkers and the aforementioned egg-shooter spiders. But most of the time you'll just be fighting hybrids, your basic grunt with machine guns, or some slightly different version of them. The challenge becomes conserving life and staying alive and using guns smartly. Guns also were pretty dull until later on, and even then, not too exiting. Basic machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifle..those are what you have through half the game. You regularly find a new one at predetermined spots. Oh, and ammo is strewn around EVERYWHERE, and often specific ammo in a spot will alert you to what gun you should probably think about using for whatever is coming up. Later, you get some kind of explosive globule-throwing gun that was handy against big hard enemies and some sort of ricocheting machine gun. The most interesting gun was probably this energy rifle which could shoot through objects. For each object it passes through, it becomes stronger. One type of enemy has this gun too, and seeing them was usually a red flag to run away, then come back and be really careful. When you run away, they still shoot at you, and you see this energy forming on walls and things, then "pew!" as it continues to the next surface, stays there a moment, then "pew!" through it to the next surface. Scary.
One cool thing about the weapons is they all had alt fire modes. That object penetrating gun had one where you create a shield that nothing can pass through (except object penetrating ammo), so that was great for when lots of enemies rushed at you down a hallway. Put up the barrier and blast them. The human machine gun has a grenade launcher. The alien machine gun has a homing beacon you can tag an enemy with and your shots will fly around obstacles to hit it. The sniper rifle can slow down time for easy headshots (super handy in the last levels). There were 3 types of grenades, your basic, these that shoot a bunch of spikes everywhere, and some others that incinerate an area. The latter kind was especially dangerous for me even. Toss it and run or get burned up too! Oh, and the Chimera would place these mine traps around sometimes, which were pretty cool. If you get near, one of those spiky grenades would pop up, or a laser robot, or this energy expulsion thing, and you have to shoot them or hide or get hit or, with the energy expulsion ones, either jump or duck to avoid the energy, depending on what height the thing rises to. Pretty neat.
Yeah, that's about it. Interesting premise, fun gameplay, nothing too amazing. Hopefully 2 and or 3 will take it to the next level and expand more on the plot.
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dkirschner's Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 23 February, 2014
GameLog closed on: Monday 24 February, 2014 |
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