Resistance 2

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publisher:  Sony Computer Entertainment

The first game in the series left me with a bad taste in my mouth, so I wasn't too eager to play this one and though some of the original's problems still persist, for the most this sequel is a much better game than the first one.

Once again you play as... yeah I still can't remember his name, I would if the story was any good, but it actually manages to be even worse this time around, I really could not care less about anyone in this game.

Luckily, both the gameplay and campaign are much better this time around, for starters, they finally picked a health system, choosing the popular Halo health regeneration method, personally I could've gone with either this or the old healthpack way, I'm just glad they knew better than to insist on that weird mix they had for the first game. For the most part you'll use the same weapons as you did in Resistance: Fall of man, but this time, they're both easier and more fun to use, using the bullseye homing attack was a pain in the first game, but here it works exactly as it should, you also have a larger and more interesting array of enemies making firefights fun, with the exception of the boss fights, they usually involve you fighting some large creature in some very restrained and scripted environments,  those could have certainly used some improvements.

Speaking of things that could've been improved, graphically, the game looks pretty bad, the character models look better than the first game, but everything else looks so blurry or grainy, fire and explosions look especially bad as they seem comprised of little squares.

The multiplayer is still fairly active and it's quite possibly the game's highlight, featuring large maps, 60 player battles and 8 player co-op modes, competitive modes are extremely chaotic and enjoyable, though to be fair, I'm the sort of player that cares more about having fun instead of trying to increase his K/D ratio. As for the co-op, the game uses an exclusive co-op 'campaign', comprised of 8 maps with, all of them with a slew of objectives to complete, it's a nice touch and I like how the chimera here are MUCH stronger than they are in the campaign, but I still wish I had the option to play the singleplayer campaign with a friend.

Overall, Resistance 2 is not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, featuring a fun campaign and an excellent multiplayer, unfortunately, the online servers aren't as populated as they once were, making it a bit hard to find maps with more than 30-40 players.

Pros:

- Campaign is actually fun this time around
- Multiplayer is some of the best the PS3 has to offer
- Weapons are still fun and imaginative, but this time they're easier to use
- Improved enemy variety
- They ditched the first games' weird health system

 
Cons:

- The story manages to be even worse this time around

- Though the character models are improved,  the game looks pretty bad
- Dull boss fights
- How is it that I've been playing as the same character for two games and I still can't be bothered to remember his name?

Final Grade: B

I'm not a fan of this cover, it's like they didn't want it to be the typical generic FPS cover, so instead they used TWO generic FPS covers at the same time, I also disappointed to discover that there is no inner boxart, that's a shame considering the first one had it.

My copy came bundled with the game, manual, a PSN catalog and an advertising leaflet for the blu-ray movie 'Hancock'.

Let's start with the blu-ray leaflet, I only have one question: Why? I usually like advertisement leaflets in my games, but I expect them to be about...oh you know... OTHER GAMES!

Remembering the old Xbox Live catalogs from the first Halo, I had high hopes for this PSN catalog, but unfortunately, I found it to be really boring, Each game is only entitled to one extremely small screenshot and 3 lines short lines of text, how is any of this supposed to get me pumped up to buy them?

Finally we have the manual, love the 1950's cover, hate the fact that it's only 8 pages long with no backstory or character descriptions, it's mostly just legal info and a brief explanation of how to plug in your console and what gameplay modes are available to you.

With so much stuff inside the game's casing you'd expect at least one of them to be a winner, but instead it's just an exercise in disappointment

Packaging Grade: D