What Resistance 3 Could Learn From Two

Back when the PlayStation 3 launched in 2006, I went home with two games--Resistance: Fall of Man and Ridge Racer 7. I'd actually been able to beat Resistance and publish my review before its release, but I still wanted a copy for myself.

That's how much I liked Insomniac's alternate history shooter, which saw the England of 1951 besieged by the alien-esque Chimera. That purchase turned out to be a good call, as I've played through the campaign a few more times since then.

Resistance 2 and a sign of the unannounced sequel.

And when the sequel hit last fall, I bought it without reservation. Two hours later, all of my excitement had been replaced by frustration, the disc was back in the case and the case was on the shelf--where it would remain for close to a year.

With the recent sign that Resistance 3 is in the works, I opted to give Resistance 2 another chance. After wrapping it up this week, it's safe to say my feelings didn't change much and that I'm hoping Resistance 3 is closer to the first than the second.

Resistance 2 abandoned much of what I loved about the original. Where the first Resistance provided players with a cache of creative weapons and the freedom to experiment with them, Resistance 2 took a more guided and much more linear direction which resulted in a restricted experience that simply wasn't as gratifying.

Instead of tempting me to be creative with multiple approaches to a given situation, much of Resistance 2 felt like an experiment in trial and error to find that one correct approach. Worse, numerous areas featured one-hit kills that forced me to replay a section over and over until I had it memorized.

Resistance: Fall of Man

For example, there was one particular area where I had to get close enough to a foe to "lure" them into a trap three times. If I got too close, it was instant death, meaning that I spent a lot of time trying to do this three times without dying. How much frustration could have been avoided by replacing one-hit kills with more gradual damage, or removing that section all together, I can't even begin to speculate.

There are plenty of other examples. Multiple areas feature invisible foes that kill in one hit. Even better, they appear in groups of twos or threes, meaning I'd take one down, not notice the second, and then keep replaying until I'd memorized their positions. Another area repeatedly forced me to wait while a certain even unfolded and then crushed me to death with falling debris because I zigged when I didn't know to zag.

Another major issue stems from only being able to carry two weapons at once, instead of having an entire cache of weapons available a la the original. That means I was stuck using only the weapons the designers wanted me to, instead of having the freedom and variety of weapons to come up with my own approach.

And while we're on the subject of weapons, Resistance 2 falls short there as well. Part of the fun of the original Resistance was messing around with unconventional weapons--using the Hailstorm to bounce bullets off a wall and around a corner, setting a trap using the explosive sticky goop of the Sapper, that sort of thing.

Resistance 2

Sure, Resistance 2 brought some of them back, such as the Auger that can shoot through walls and the time-slowing Fareye sniper rifle. Not everything made the cut though, and their replacements, like the flying saw blades of the Splicer and the HVAP Wraith minigun, don't really change anything up.

Perhaps most frustrating is that these issues are, at least in hindsight, extremely obvious and could have been avoided with some slight tweaks here and there. It felt like the developers forgot what made the first Resistance so unique, and rather than build upon that, they tried to make a more conventional experience instead.

So please, Insomniac, if it's not too late for some constructive criticism, please take these points into consideration with Resistance 3. Give me the freedom to experiment with a variety of approaches and weapons. Give me more creative weapons.

And above all, please, please don't give me another Resistance 2.