For those who do not want to play nice with others, the Competitive online mode is still there, with Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Skirmishes-which are objective-based battles-and Core Control, Resistance’s version of Capture the Flag. The servers work great, there are plenty of people to play against, and you can now fight with and against up to 60 players.
Despite all of the advances, there are still some issues to be had with the newest entry in the series. For starters, the single-player mode is, even with the improvements to weaponry, health, AI, and graphics, a step backwards from the first. The story is far weaker, and the campaign itself is significantly shorter. The pacing of the story is much improved, with fewer down moments, but it’s a poorer tale you’re working through. It’s understandable, given the nature of the second fleshed out campaign, that Insomniac did not throw another 15+ hour campaign mode at us, but it’s still a shame that it is not there.
Some of the boss fights in Resistance 2 are excellent, with huge enemies that need to be strategically dealt with, but there are others that will bore you. Sink enough bullets into certain bosses and they will die, without much strategy at all other than holding down the fire button. Yes, they all look impressive, but a little more strategy would have gone a long way, especially when you consider that the campaign is already shorter than the previous outing.
Thankfully, the campaign is not awful-it’s just not as good as the first game. You will want to play through on the unlockable hardest difficult after completing single player, despite the flaws, and the co-op and online experiences mean that the chance is there for you to gain much more from Resistance than what the nine hour or so single-player affair offers you. Playing through both campaign modes multiple times also gives you the opportunity to collect all of the hidden Intel, in order to expand what you know about the Resistance universe.
Resistance 2 is both a step forward and a step backwards for the series, as the new co-op mode and larger-scale online modes are significant boosts to the replay value of the title while the single-player may make you wish for the original’s epic feel. Thankfully for Insomniac and holiday shoppers, the improvements far outweigh the problems, and it is a must buy for Playstation 3 owners and the kind of title that attracts people to buy the system in the first place.
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