Sony’s big hope to compete against the Xbox 360’s Gears of War 2 this holiday season is Resistance 2. The first Resistance game was one of the biggest reasons to buy a Playstation 3 first arrived. Now three years after the original game the question begs, is Resistance 2 the heavy hitter that Sony needs or is it a blank?

Heading straight into the meat of Resistance 2, the gameplay it’s exactly what you’d expect from a game of its type. However what the game does do is it does it very well. The shooting mechanics are solid and it doesn’t provide many surprises with the usual primary and secondary fire and zooming. Much like the first Resistance you can melee attack by either making a sharp movement or just pressing down the second analog. Suffice to say nothing is exactly special when it comes to the controls. The guns you get are all interesting just like usual from an Insomniac game. You get either a twist on a World War 2 era weapon or a futuristic sci-fi style weapon. So you’ve got all types to choose from that will satisfy anyone who wants any type of weapon. The AI is okay where it’s smart to find cover and fire at you however that about the extent of it.

The single player component of the game is fairly solid. Like most first person shooters, the game is very linear. Most of the time through the single player there’s only one way to get where you’re going.  While the story is compelling enough to keep you going until the end, once you’ve done this there’s little reason to play it again save to play with the bonus options you unlock once you finish the campaign once. However the only compelling ones are Arcade mode which you must beat the game using a limited number of lives and Superhuman difficulty which can do once you beat the game on difficult. However for the most part once you do it once, you won’t want to play it again.

This leads to the multiplayer portion of the game where you’ll be putting in most of your hours. The most fleshed portion is the Cooperative mode which you and seven of your friends use various classes to try and complete objectives within a map. This is different from most games since you’re not doing the single player campaign but specific multiplayer versions of the maps found within the single player that been designed specifically for this. In order to succeed you must effectively work together with all 3 classes doing their specific jobs in order to complete the levels. This makes you feel like you’re a team instead of everybody just running off and doing their own thing. Besides the cooperative there are four other modes including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and a mode called Skirmish which two against two person teams face off trying to complete the most objectives that they are given to win. The modes are what you’d expect them to be with the only exceptional thing the first three being 60 person matches. Skirmish is great if you’ve got a single friend you want to play with, allowing you work together closely to try and win against two strangers. Throughout all the multiplayer modes you gain experience which allows you to unlock different guns and berserks. Berserks are special abilities that can use such as invisibility and damage multipliers which you gain once you’ve performed a certain amount of kills. This works sort of like the power ups in Call of Duty 4 however you don’t have to get a killing spree.

The graphics found within the game are among some of the best found on the PS3. The environments are gorgeous and everything looks crisps. The only complaints is that unlike most modern games, there isn’t much interactivity. Places which you should be able to get through you can’t it feels set back from many other games out there. The sound quality is fairly adequate with the weapons sounding as you’d expect them and musical queues added in at the right time

Resistance 2 is one of the most solid first person shooters released this year. What it does, it does very well including a solid single player campaign, with great multiplayer modes however with a limited selection of different modes. While the single player won’t keep your attention for long, the cooperative should keep you coming back for quite a while. Resistance 2 while having some innovation doesn’t stray too far from the path however for what it is, it’s very enjoyable.

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