A Backlog Diary: Part 19- Vive le Resistance!

This week, I will be doing two blog entries; one rather short, and one rather long. The short one will be one of praise, carried out by myself, showering love on my latest completed game. The other will be a shower of bile and ridicule for Metal Gear Solid 4, which I am to complete tonight for completions sake alone. The bile shower will be brought to you by none other than my alter-ego, jebusdooms06 (he’s a somewhat more bitter character who came into creation the moment I turned into an adult funnily enough).


This is Metal Gear Solid 4, and not in a good way…

But today is not for phlegm showers. Today is for love, and love today is for the final entry in the series I’ve been ploughing through of late, Resistance 3.
It’s hard to put into words how much I was surprised by the jump between Resi 2 and Resi 3, but it is at least equal to the jump between Resi 1 and Resi 2. Resistance 2 sorted out the colour palette, the mechanics, the graphics and the pacing, but Resistance 3 has finally learnt the art of effective set-pieces. If I was to look back now, a mere week and a half after finishing Resistance 2, it’d be hard to name a bit where I had a particular fondness. It was a good game, don’t get me wrong, but in comparison to it’s younger brother, it only has that bit where you first me the tall running zombie-esque chimera, and that bit in the cinema I mentioned a blog or two ago. Ask me about Resistance 3 however, and I’ll recount my War of the World’s-esque boat trip, complete with apocalyptic sized walkers, zombie chimera dudes, the rotting husk of a Kraken, all punctuated by the onboard radio broadcasting messages that really give an insight into the world that has come to be. I’ll recall creeping through a valley, picking off snipers and dodging incoming fire from a patrolling dropship. I’ll mention the battle against Satan (not THAT Satan) in the mines, and that whole Ravenholm-eque bit in the mining village.


Pretty much the only thing Resistance 3 lacks


Interestingly, that is exactly my thought on the matter; Resistance 3 is what Half Life 2 would have looked like were it made today. Few games pull off the same level of show-don’t-tell well paced storytelling and action that Half Life 2 originally did way back in 2004, but Resistance 3 is the third time lucky for Insomniac. The colour palette was perfect for portraying the mood, with bleak white snow for the hopeless situation you find yourself in towards the end, dark fire-licked walls in the prison a sinister edge to match those who dwell there, sun-bleached towns revealing a land barraged by war, and misty rivers giving an air of mystery and tension in the wake of the unknown.
Gameplay is refined to match the age we find ourselves in, with most of the features in Resistance 2 still being present, other than the limit of two guns, which in the end has allowed for more combat creativity, as come of the guns are bat shit crazy compared to most other FPS’s. Then again, these are the Ratchet & Clank guys.
But the biggest boost to the series is the plot. It appears this is the last game in a supposed trilogy (though if recent history is anything to go by, fat chance of that.)
Set pieces are an effective tool for story telling, easily breaking the plot down into sections, and Resistance 3 handles this perfectly. The plot itself is dark, to say the least. Mankind have pretty much become the bipedal equivalent of sewer rats, and Joseph Capelli, the guy who shot Nathan Hale, is tasked with travelling with Doctor Russian to New York, where a big fuck-off wormhole has opened up for the purpose of the chimera equivalent of terraforming. Instantly, there’s a big boost to the plot; like Half-Life 2, it’s a journey, an A-B adventure. Resistance 1 & 2 were all over the shop geographically, but Resistance 3 has a singular goal, and I think that’s something to really appreciate from a game. A singular, all dominating goal is good motivation for a player, and if you add extra incentive through plot devices (like, I don’t know, cutting off a major characters head with a machete and then being forced into a mass punch-up in a hole) then it’s all gravy. One thing though; Capelli’s wife is kind of a bitch, huh?

Resistance 3 is getting a very well deserved 9 from me, and if you’re a PS3 owner and like the odd FPS but haven’t played Resistance 3, sort your fucking life out.

Tomorrow, I “critique” a crappy b-movie with interactive sneaky bits.