Resistance 2 rant
So, after a long, long wait, I have finally completed my collection of next-gen consoles with the acquisition of a PS3. This is a good thing overall, and I played through the Ratchet and Clank:Tools of Destruction title with relish and much giggling. I also played through the lovely Resistance:Fall of Man. Much joy was had during both forays into PS3 gaming, as should be. Then, having defeated the Chimeran angels and blown up the A-01 tower in London, I launched the sequel.
To say I am thus far disappointed is a bit of an understatement. This is the absolute first time I have been utterly disappointed by an Insomniac title, and the disappointment is huge. Where the original excelled, the sequel sucks ass in direct proportion. Even the cinematic bits are lackluster.
Lets start with the controls. First of all, the good - I like the L1 zoom bit, although it isn't anything that I really missed in the original title. Outside of that nominal improvement, the default mapping is pretty bad. Normal and alternate fire on the same side of the controller is not particularly intuitive, especially considering that the original had the modes mapped left and right (which makes a lot more sense - harder to accidentally trigger alt-fire that way for one thing) Re-mapping controls would certainly be an option, I suppose, but I'm rather disinclined to bother in light of the other failures in this particular title.
The story is arguably decent-ish, as far as such things go - I mean, it's not particularly ground-breaking or anything, but it is at least somewhat coherent and cohesive overall. I won't go into details, however, as I find myself too irritated with the game as a whole to really get engrossed in the story, which is a bit of a shame.
Level design is pretty bad - first of all, they went from a gritty washed-out palette to a brighter more colorful one, and this really doesn't fit well with the content. It'd be like Fallout with happy colors - just doesn't cut it, regardless of how bright and cheerful it may be - this is a war game, bright colors are out-of-place. As far as playing through the levels goes - the levels feel like you're being led around by the nose for the most part, and the firefights are more annoying than challenging. Yes, it's lovely that one guy can charge into a heavily-fortified enemy-occupied battlefield and emerge victorious and all, but it gets old when that's largely the main focus of the game. Dull levels make me unhappy. This game has lots of them.
Next up, the models used in the game... First off, this game takes place 2 years after the events of the original - why is it, then, that several of the weapons seem to be very noticably different? And what the hell's with the little fidgety bits on the Bullseye, anyway? One would think that a piece of combat gear would be devoid of such things, since, you know, fewer moving parts = greater reliability. Bleh. Also, to compare and contrast a bit - the original games had weapons that looked like they were 50's era weapons. Even the Chimeran weapons looked like they could conceivably exist. Why, then, do the new weapons appear to be about 30 years more advanced? Yes, the reverse-engineering of Chimeran tech would advance the state of the art, but you do not gain 30 years of manufacturing tech in 2 years. Bleh. There are weapons that are lovely that I avoid using where possible because they serve as huge distractions from the game world. This upsets me greatly.
Also - you can only carry two weapons at a time in the sequel, which makes sense from a reality standpoint, but severely limits strategic options in fights. Of course, since the fights are rambo-esque in the first place, I suppose this is less of a problem than it might be, although as this change was implemented in the sequel as opposed to the original, I have to wonder why they bothered.
Overall, I give this game a thumbs down. I will complete it and then it will sit upon my game shelf as mute (and unplayed) testament to the fact that even awesome developers can produce shite if they put their minds to it.
To say I am thus far disappointed is a bit of an understatement. This is the absolute first time I have been utterly disappointed by an Insomniac title, and the disappointment is huge. Where the original excelled, the sequel sucks ass in direct proportion. Even the cinematic bits are lackluster.
Lets start with the controls. First of all, the good - I like the L1 zoom bit, although it isn't anything that I really missed in the original title. Outside of that nominal improvement, the default mapping is pretty bad. Normal and alternate fire on the same side of the controller is not particularly intuitive, especially considering that the original had the modes mapped left and right (which makes a lot more sense - harder to accidentally trigger alt-fire that way for one thing) Re-mapping controls would certainly be an option, I suppose, but I'm rather disinclined to bother in light of the other failures in this particular title.
The story is arguably decent-ish, as far as such things go - I mean, it's not particularly ground-breaking or anything, but it is at least somewhat coherent and cohesive overall. I won't go into details, however, as I find myself too irritated with the game as a whole to really get engrossed in the story, which is a bit of a shame.
Level design is pretty bad - first of all, they went from a gritty washed-out palette to a brighter more colorful one, and this really doesn't fit well with the content. It'd be like Fallout with happy colors - just doesn't cut it, regardless of how bright and cheerful it may be - this is a war game, bright colors are out-of-place. As far as playing through the levels goes - the levels feel like you're being led around by the nose for the most part, and the firefights are more annoying than challenging. Yes, it's lovely that one guy can charge into a heavily-fortified enemy-occupied battlefield and emerge victorious and all, but it gets old when that's largely the main focus of the game. Dull levels make me unhappy. This game has lots of them.
Next up, the models used in the game... First off, this game takes place 2 years after the events of the original - why is it, then, that several of the weapons seem to be very noticably different? And what the hell's with the little fidgety bits on the Bullseye, anyway? One would think that a piece of combat gear would be devoid of such things, since, you know, fewer moving parts = greater reliability. Bleh. Also, to compare and contrast a bit - the original games had weapons that looked like they were 50's era weapons. Even the Chimeran weapons looked like they could conceivably exist. Why, then, do the new weapons appear to be about 30 years more advanced? Yes, the reverse-engineering of Chimeran tech would advance the state of the art, but you do not gain 30 years of manufacturing tech in 2 years. Bleh. There are weapons that are lovely that I avoid using where possible because they serve as huge distractions from the game world. This upsets me greatly.
Also - you can only carry two weapons at a time in the sequel, which makes sense from a reality standpoint, but severely limits strategic options in fights. Of course, since the fights are rambo-esque in the first place, I suppose this is less of a problem than it might be, although as this change was implemented in the sequel as opposed to the original, I have to wonder why they bothered.
Overall, I give this game a thumbs down. I will complete it and then it will sit upon my game shelf as mute (and unplayed) testament to the fact that even awesome developers can produce shite if they put their minds to it.