There are two types of shooters in videogames: realistic shooters where a single bullet can easily spell death, and arcade shooters where you can unload an entire clip into an enemy's chest and he'll still be shooting at you. Resistance 2 is the latter. I actually unloaded an entire clip of ammo from a carbine, the standard assault rifle in the game, into an enemy and all it did was make him go into a stagger animation as I reloaded. Maybe if the enemy had been more than just they standard grunt enemy, or maybe if it had been wearing any body armor, then this wouldn't have stuck out in my mind so vividly. After putting in dozens of hours into Call of Duty 4's hardcore mode with realistic bullet damage, at first it felt like almost every weapon was a different variety of pop gun. Once I realized that I had the same bullet soaking abilities that the enemies did it became forgivable, but I wanted to give fair warning so others don't have the same shock to the system that I had.

Resistance 2 follows the exploits of Nathan Hale, a US soldier who has been infected with the chimera virus but is somehow partly resistant to it making him a super soldier. The catch is, he isn't completely resistant and needs to take frequent injections of a suppressing formula or else he'll be completely turned into one of the hideous chimera, aliens that you'll be spending the entire game blowing into tiny pieces. The narrative is loosely held together by gorgeous cutscenes to show you arriving at the varied locations which act as the game's levels. It's a huge step up in presentation, and setting each level in a different location gives a much better sense of the massive scale of the chimera invasion than the first game ever did. And even better yet, the locations all look different so you get a real sense of progression. No more déjà vu from level to level as you'll never mistake the California lumber yard for the ruined streets of Chicago, Bryce Canyon, or a swamp in Louisiana. It's not a complete color saturation since that would kill the wartime atmosphere of the game, but just enough color has been added to really bring the locations to life. The same attention to detail has been put into the character models with the chimera looking more ferocious than ever. Every returning enemy type from the first game has been given a significant overhaul. Some of them, like the titan enemies, are almost unrecognizable from their previous appearance, but for all enemies it is unquestionably an improvement. This is a good looking game.

And it sounds good too. The music drives you forward in battle and sound cues raise the tension right when a big enemy steps into view. The voice work is also very good. Though often the lines being delivered are fairly cheesy, the voice actors do an admirable job with what they're given so that it never becomes overdramatic or evident that a voice actor is just phoning in a performance. There was one weird sound hiccup I noticed though, with one character's voice surrounded by radio static even though the character was standing right next to me without wearing any sort of radio headset. It's small, and perhaps I'm nit picking, but it took me out of the experience to wonder why I couldn't just hear him talking instead of hearing him through some imaginary radio that he wasn't even wearing. So much attention was paid to the detail of every other part of the game that this one instance (which occurred in two different levels) sticks out like a sore thumb.

There are a number of gameplay changes from the first Resistance that make Resistance 2 more similar to other games in the genre. Health now magically regenerates if you avoid getting shot for a few seconds just like every other FPS out there. To me this is actually a negative because the sectioned health bar from Resistance: Fall of Man was the thing I liked best about the game, but the regenerating health is more familiar so it's hard to argue with what I'm already used to. Resistance 2 also adopts the two weapon at a time structure started by Halo, doing away with the ability to wield an entire arsenal from the first game. The changes are made for the sake of accessibility, and anyone who has played a shooter on a console in the last three or so years will be instantly at home, but it causes a bit of an identity crisis making it harder for Resistance 2 to stand out among the wealth of other shooters that flood the market.

But you won't need to bring a whole arsenal with you, since the developers already give you exactly the right weapons for every situation. In fact, the game can be quite strict about which weapons you use at which times. If you see a shotgun, sniper rifle, or rocket launcher on the ground, you had better pick it up because the game has a situation right around the corner that you can't get past without one. Since the levels are extremely linear to begin with, the fact that you can't even be creative with how you approach each encounter is a huge hit against it. And while the weapons are interesting, for the most part you'll be dealing with the same typical weapons you'll find in any FPS. Each weapon also has a secondary fire to mix things up, but the weapons provided a majority of the time are the less interesting human weapons. Of course, that just makes it stand out even more when you get your hands on the more useful and unique chimera weapons. The weapons that really stand out though, like the auger that can shoot through walls or the splicer which fires homing saw blades, are very rare so unfortunately you won't get to use them very often. Resistance 2 does deserve credit though for having the most useful pistol in an FPS since the original Halo. Not only does it fire a powerful shot, but the secondary fire detonates the bullet like a grenade. So even if you miss with your first shot, you can still detonate the wall that you hit to kill nearby enemies.

The levels are still fun while they last and keep the intensity consistently high. Oh, and let's not forget the huge bosses that are in each level. The bosses are absolutely massive and are definitely the highlights of the single player campaign. But having made it through the campaign once, unless you're a completionist looking for all of the hidden pieces of intel, there's no reason to go back.

But the single player campaign isn't the reason to get Resistance 2. Multiplayer is where the game really shines, and where you'll be spending the vast majority of your time with Resistance 2. It is split into two parts: competitive and cooperative. The competitive multiplayer has your standard game modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, and core control (capture the flag), as well as the unique skirmish mode (more on that in a moment). You create a character to take into your multiplayer matches that will gain experience and levels (which unlocks more equipment to customize your character) as you play more matches. You can also unlock new "berserks" as you gain levels, which are perks that can be used after a certain number of kills such as upgraded defense, seeing thermal silhouettes of enemies through walls, or a ball that floats in front of you shooting enemies with lightning. Watching your experience points rack up with every bullet you shoot is an incredibly addicting and rewarding experience, and will keep you coming back round after round.

There's also the much hyped 60 player multiplayer. I was worried going into playing Resistance 2 online that the levels would be overcrowded and it would be complete chaos. This isn't the case because the 60 player matches are smartly reserved only for the skirmish mode. Skirmish mode splits each team of 30 into 5 person squads, each given a number of ever-changing objectives throughout the course of the match. Objectives can range from capturing or defending specific locations on the map to assassinating a specific person on the opposite team. The maps are huge, and it's possible that you may go the entire match without encountering any of the other 25 people on your team, but when you do it gives you an unmatched sense of a battle that's larger than just your own actions. I believe "epic" is the word that best describes it. It's worth mentioning that the graphics take a bit of a hit when playing online, with lower resolution textures and less complex object geometry, but since the result is a silky smooth, lag free online experience, the loss of detail more than acceptable.

There's also a full cooperative campaign. Where most games are satisfied to just allow more players to go through the single player campaign together, Resistance 2 provides a completely original campaign designed specifically for multiple people. For co-op there are three classes to choose from. There's the soldier who comes equipped with a minigun to tear through enemies, the medic who has a special gun for stealing health from enemies to heal your teammates, and the spec-ops class which replenishes the team's ammo by tossing clips to teammates. The co-op levels scale the number of enemies to be appropriate for the number of players, but it's always more than you can handle on your own, ensuring that teamwork between the classes is a necessity. The co-op campaign also has a system of gaining XP and leveling up, which encourages you to keep playing the levels even after you've finished the co-op campaign.

Resistance 2 is a great game, mostly because of the incredibly addicting multiplayer modes. If you plan to play Resistance 2 alone then you can go ahead and chop a whole point off of the review score, that's how important the multiplayer is to the game. But as long as you have your PS3 connected to a broadband connection, then Resistance 2 is one of the most addictive multiplayer experiences available on a console.

8.5 out of 10