Resistance: Fall of Man
Every launch needs a must-have title. This is it.
Published: November 28, 2006
After a while, it becomes obvious that certain situations call for specific weapons, but things were kept open enough that there's often more than one weapon that can be used, and there are defaults that work for just about anything. Because of this, though, you're constantly being challenged to use cover, while betraying the enemy's with weapons that fire through or around it. Things are mixed up even more when you play through the game a second time, since another 4 weapons join the original 8. The same basic quick-swap system from the Ratchet games is here too, and it works wonderfully, pausing the game for a second while you swap weapons.
Well, it pauses things in single-player. It's in the 40-person online multiplayer that the game really shines, though. All that time and detail that went into crafting weapons in the single-player experience carry over seamlessly into multiplayer. In fact, they often work better because a human move so much more differently than even the most complex artificial intelligence (not that Insomniac skimped there, though there were more than a few instances of enemies just standing around waiting to be hit from long range in the single-player game, which isn't an issue in multiplayer).
It's not just that all the weapons were thrown into tweaked single-player maps (though, uh, they were); plenty of time was spent on making the online portion of the game (which, sadly, doesn't include co-op) feel like something that's complementary to the offline parts, but its own unique beast. As a result, you get the usual Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag Modes, but there's also stuff like Conversion, where you'll spend a set number of lives as a human then "convert" to a Chimera to finish things out, where the person that lives the longest wins. Breach and Meltdown modes have you assaulting an enemy's nodes or core by shooting out rods to try to capture an area in sort of a take on the Battlefield series' capture-and-hold dynamic.
Also like Battlefield, the maps scale in size to accommodate a growing number of players. 16-player maps are claustrophobic, but don't lack any of the detail or passages of the bigger maps, so by starting off in small matches at first, you'll learn the ins and outs of a particular map. Getting a full 40-player match going shows just how balanced Insomniac's level design is, for the games not only work at any size, but are again converted from the existing single-player maps (albeit with some very small changes). Best of all, every mode -- even your standard Deathmatch skirmishes -- are an absolute blast, and could easily stand as their own game.
The same balance that went into developing the weapons for both online and offline modes carries over into the core designs of the races themselves; humans sport a radar and can sprint indefinitely, but the Chimera have the ability to turn on "Rage Mode," allowing them to see through walls and do increased damage with weapons. Unfortunately, they overheat as they do this, making it careful dance of strategy. Both sides have their merits, and I kept going back and forth as to what was my favorite race; the Chimera have raw power, but humans are incredibly quick, and I really can emphasize how fleshed out the multiplayer experience is.
Part of this is due to the fact that the multiplayer is in no way playing second fiddle to the single-player portion of the game. There may be some small changes here and there, but the same sense of scale, the same detail in the models and environments, all this is present in both modes, and it's a jarring experience to go from something like the aforementioned first-person shooters that have a very obvious single- and multiplayer look to something that's more or less equal across both versions. Insomniac's two teams working on the online and offline parts of the game deserve high praise for pulling it off. Little things like an experience system with unlockable skins make it visually obvious that you've been playing the game for a while, and the whole MyResistance.net community site just adds to the online value.
