Posted on by Dale Dietrich

Resistance Fall of Man Mini-review

resistance fall of man cover art4 rating  (4/5) – shooter

Reviews: Metacritic 86%| Game Rankings 87% 
Reference: Trophies – none| wikipedia12
Walkthrus: WikiCheats | GameFAQ | IGN
Developer: Insomniac Games
Engine: Insomniac Engine

Note: The pros and cons portion of this post was written in  April 2008. I am posting this entry on November 4, 2008 – the day I purchased Resistance 2. I have back-dated this post to April of 2008 to reflect the time period when I played the game.

Initial Experience – Pre Rumble

I picked up Resistance Fall of Man (RFoM) the day I purchased my PS3 in August of 2007). However, my initial experience wasn’t good. After years of playing console-based shooters on my Xbox 360, RFoM didn’t feel right without rumble – regardless of its merits. After a level or two, the game was set aside … until …

Resistance Fall of Man – Post Rumble – Ummm…. Good!

In mid April, 2008, Sony finally released the Dual Shock 3 controller with rumble. After figuring out how to get rumble to work (details here), I gave the game another try.  I’m glad I did. I liked it so much I played through the entire game and then played 50% of it through again on the hardest level.

I was surprised and delighted with how much I enjoyed the game. It took me awhile to get into it but was really enjoying it once I figured it out (especially the unique weaponry).

resistance fall of man picture 1

Unfortunately, at the time I did not write a full review. I did write the pros and cons notes (below) during the early stages of the game. I thought I had written a much more comprehensive review towards the end but I can’t find it.

So, while there are more cons than pros below, and while the list of cons is still accurate, had I written a complete review back then, I would have written a much more complete and positive review.

resistance fall of man picture 2

Pros:

  • Frame Rates: Constant / solid frame rates – no nausea or headaches – except when driving (see below).
  • resistance fall of man picture 3 Creative Weapons: The auger’s ability to progressively shoot through solid matter was novel and interesting. The L23 Fareye’s (Sniper Rifle’s) ability to slow time was terrific.
  • Larger battles: quite good – first battle in Nottingham (for example) reminiscent of Call of Duty 2 and 4.
  • No escorts, ridiculous boss battles or timed missions.
  • Good Particle Effects: smoke, fog
  • Decent save points.

Cons:

  •  Slow load times: Due to the slowness of the Bluray drive (compared to the much faster DVD drive in the Xbox 360), load times are way too long. To add insult to injury, the game waits for you to "Press the START button" after each load. Why? If I start loading a level, Insomniac should assume I want to play it after it loads! 🙂
  • resistance fall of man picture 4Autocamera & Some Nausea: I dislike when any game controls the camera.  When driving, the game is constantly fighting you and pulling the camera back to center. For the first 10 seconds of every level, the game controls the camera. Both of these game mechanics make me queasy.
  • Can’t Jump: Can’t climb or jump over small walls – daft.
  • Poor Weapon Changes: The weapon change mechanic stops the game every time you need to change weapons. That’s so PS2! 🙂
  • Scoped Reloading Problem: Reloading a scoped weapon when scoped, moves you out of scope and then back in. The game should either leave you out of scope after a reload or keep you in scope the whole time. Going back and forth is disorienting and angered me throughout the game.
  • Auto-saving: It was unclear when/if the game was auto saving.
  • No Ability to Remap Controls. Virtually every major console shooter has adopted the Halo 3 control scheme wholesale. Not RFoM. Moving back and forth is disorienting. RFoM uses the green triangle for melee instead of red circle. RFoM uses R1 for primary fire instead of R2 like almost every other console shooter on the planet, etc., etc.
  • Boring Enemies
  • Plot Didn’t Engage Me. I didn’t follow or care about the story – but then again, few games (even the good ones) pull me into the plot.
  • Extremely Linear Path
  • Repetitive Game Play: Enemies followed predictable patterns. Big enemies were followed by little critters chasing, followed by big enemies, followed by little critters swarming … over and over …
  • Droning – Never Changing Music: I shut it off after an hour. I couldn’t take it any more.
  • Friendly Fire Didn’t Hurt Friendly NPCs: There was no way to shut this off.

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