Doesn't this kind of remind you of a Galaga cabinet?
For a little while there, I was unashamedly stuck on playing Resistance 2. Sometime I felt like the only one. I tried justifying my love for the game more than once.
Now that I’m no longer obsessively striving to hit 10,000 kills in ranked competitive matches, I’ve achieved a bit of critical distance. And, frankly, I’d like to think I know what the game’s problem is. It’s one of critical perception.
In a post-BioShock, post-Far Cry 2, post-Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare world, Insomniac made an arcade shooter.
Don’t get me wrong; arcade shooters are just great. And Resistance 2 reviewed extremely well. But, despite stellar competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes, Insomniac’s game didn’t receive the same sort of mind share as their competitors’ efforts. It wasn’t multi-platform. It wasn’t talked about for weeks on the podcast circuit. It wasn’t as big, dumb, or fun as Gears of War 2, but its storytelling couldn’t hold a candle to the brilliance of any of the three games mentioned above. Naturally these factors coalesced, putting the title in an awkward spot.
Part of the challenge of selling a game like this is meeting genre expectations. I’d argue that, these days, Triple-A shooters are assumed to deliver more than arcade-caliber stories. Resistance 2‘s “go, Go, GO!” action hero pace isn’t conducive to delivering all that much in the way of layered characterization or complex information. As such, it garnered no more than a second-rate critical reception.
None of which is to say that most first-person shooting games actually achieve great success in terms of storytelling. Very few do. But virtually all of them are at least EXPERIMENTING, which is something Resistance 2 doesn’t even bother with. The aforementioned single-minded action emphasis is part of the trouble, but it doesn’t end there. In fact, it’s almost as if the game represents a willful regression. Insomniac’s title features cheap Chameleon kills, all-too-conveniently situated single-player weapon placement, and a persistent, cross-mode EXP high score system. Taken as a whole this leaves us with a game that feels a whole lot less sophisticated than its contemporary bretheren.
Damned if it isn’t fun, though…
Tags: 2K, 2K Games, Activision, BioShock, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Clint Hocking, Epic, Epic Games, Far Cry, Far Cry 2, Galaga, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Infinity Ward, Insomniac, Insomniac Games, Ken Levine, Microsoft Game Studios, Midway, Namco, Resistance, Resistance 2, Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal
