Community Spotlight: Resistance 3 PS3 Review

Hi people. I'm excited to give you all another review from our community spotlight series. This is basically us hosting your own reviews, previews, opinion editorials, or anything really.

Once again Mr. Eric Geer graces us with a review. This time he sent us his review of Resistance 3 for the Playstation 3 system. We think it's awesome if you want to join in on the blog and take part in the conversation. So if you have something interesting or anything your passionate about, let us know by shooting us an email at whoburnedmytoast@gmail.com.  

Thanks again Eric.



Resistance 3:
By Eric Geer

The story starts 4 years after the Operation Black Eden(Resistance 2), where the United States is now the only nation surviving against the Chimera occupation. Joseph Capelli(You) and a group of survivors are living in secrecy, they went into hiding from the chimera patrols over 2 years. This is where you start in Resistance 3—holed up underground like a rat—which makes sense when you have followed through the events of Resistance.

Resistance 3 takes you through a war torn world that is changing rapidly from the Chimera take over—the landscape and scenery are slowly forming and being made in the eyes of the Chimera. Overall, Resistance is a solid shooter. The movement, accuracy and weight of the guns feel great. It doesn’t stop there, Insomniac games has pulled through again and offered up some of the same guns from the previous games as well as some strange new ones. You can see the full list here: http://resistance.wikia.com/wiki/Resistance_3_Weapons. One I found that was funny, but not particularly useful in all cases; was “The Mutator.” You end up shooting either globs(that can be charged for a super glob) or can be shot as a mist with your secondary, which cause the enemies to start to bulge into monstrosities, similar to those exploding zombies you find in Dead Nation or Left 4 Dead, but they stay in one spot and if used correctly can act as mines for other enemies that come your way.

Overall the guns and weapons are great fun in Resistance 3, and they only get better the more you use them—the campaign weapon upgrading isn’t determined by what guns you WANT to upgrade, but rather the guns you USE MOST. This upgrading happens automatically—so if you want the best version of a particular gun—USE IT. Another welcomed feature that went missing was the weapon wheel. Thankfully its back and you can hold onto all the strange and crazy guns you find along the way.

A couple other features that you may have missed from Resistance 1 include split screen and online campaign co-op as well as non-regenerative health. I enjoyed the non-regenerative health as it adds a level of throwback nostalgia, as well as a reason NOT to get shot—the intensity increases exponentially as your health diminishes and there are no health packs in sight. Only time the non-regenerative health can be frustrating is when you have to move through sections where you are required to kill EVERY enemy in order to move to the next section—this doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does and you are just about to die…you may find yourself rage quitting because you have to start from the last check point.

Moving away from guns now and welcomed returns, Resistance 3 tells a solid story though sometimes caught up in a repetitive cycle of enemies. You will run across a few new enemy classes, particularly a new flying chimera that fly around and find themselves nice perching positions to snipe you out. There are other’s but don’t want to spoil too much. The game mechanics/or level design can be somewhat repetitive and often times cyclical. Something similar to this: Story, small enemy, medium enemies, large enemies, story—rinse and repeat—sometimes you may sub large enemies with lots of small and medium enemies. Overall it goes through the same process, but where it fails to be fresh in this matter, it makes up in atmosphere—generally through the first three quarters, while the latter quarter you find yourself seeing lots of chimera architecture and the innards thereof. As Joseph Capelli you are on your way from Oklahoma to New York—so you will see lots of changes in landscape geographically but more so in variation of how strong the Chimera presence is and how much it has changed the landscape and this is all done through a wonderful new look and a large improvement graphically than either Resistance 2 or Resistance 1. The game looks good and mixed with the interesting atmospheres the game places you in a world of its own.

While we have looked at some good and bad things thus far, let’s delve deeper into some of the irks and miss-steps that I think make the game good, but not excellent. Often time, you will be working with an NPC on a particular mission—and many times this NPC has a mind of its own, whether smart or dimwitted. You will find yourself either sprinting after or more frustratingly waiting on NPCs to open doors or tell you the next objective. I found this most frustrating towards the beginning and end of the game—first you want the game to really get going only to get stuck at some door while hearing lots of guns and explosions going off just out front, or on the flipside you want to find out what happens at the end only to get stuck by an NPC clipped on the edge of the map or not even moving towards the next objective.

While you have the super smart and super dimwitted NPCs you might run into a bit of the same with the enemies. Either too smart or too stupid. Many times you will run into a some enemies and enemy classes that as soon as you enter a particular area will automatically see you(good luck sniping without enemy fire all over you, or avoiding those close-courters enemies when they know you have entered the map). Other times you will find that you are standing very close to you and just don’t see you and you can pick them off with just about any weapon in your arsenal (shotgun included). While there are some great points and some not so hot points—its feels like a good game, but it also feels a bit like the same thing. Insomniac did a great job, and they listened to fans, but I’m not sure they listened to the beat of their own drum and this is quickly noticed with the Competitive multiplayer—It doesn’t feel like anything new, it feels tacked on much like we have seen with the loads of FPS multiplayer games that have come out. It’s got typical match types: Team Deathmatch, Chain Reaction, Deathmatch, Breach, and Capture—you have probably played them all in a different game labeled under a different name. The weapon level up system is focused on skill points(surprise) and you will use them to upgrade your weapons, gain titles, and acquire gadgets(which are actually quite fun—an example of this is a “Decoy”—which can be used to project another self next to you—but beware of running it into walls or other objects as it will scramble your decoy and give away your true self). One thing I sorely missed from Resistance 3, was the large scale 8 player coop missions from Resistance 2. I thought that these were incredibly fun and would have liked to have seen this included opposed to the competitive multiplayer—it has more originality and feels fresh even years after the games release.

Overall, I would recommend Resistance 3 to FPS and single/co-op campaign players. I would not recommend this game solely on the multiplayer, as it’s just not something compelling enough to keep, IMO, your attention. While I may not be your average gamer and won’t fall into the standard Multiplayer gaming, there are definitely find a few that will find hours of fun in upgrading weapons and playing with the gadgets of the Resistance world, that you won’t find in other worlds.

Good:

• Solid Shooting
• Story Telling
• Interesting Weapons
• Atmosphere
• Graphics
• Interesting New Enemies
• Weapon Leveling System
• Co-op is back

Bad:

• Repetitive-Enemy Cycles/Style/Level Design
• Stuck in areas until enemies are dead
• Enemies too smart/too stupid
• Feels like more of the same
• Competitive Multiplayer

Ugly:

• Waiting on/Running after NPCs
• No large team co-op

Rating:
Buttered toast. (2/3)