Resistance 2 (Platinum)

Resistance 2 (Platinum)

Picking up immediately where 'Resistance: Fall of Man' concluded, Resistance 2 follows Nathan Hale as he finds himself once more in a world transformed by war and invasion. Undaunted by their defeat in London, the Chimera have continued to advance and are now poised to attack the United States. Entire cities have been leveled and communities annihilated. In this war where the odds are so heavily stacked against the human race, few are left who are willing and able to fight. Fortunately, Hale is not alone. A group of super soldiers known as the Sentinels will fight alongside Hale as they collectively attempt to thwart the inevitable.

Players will once again step into the war-torn boots of Nathan Hale, who not only faces near impossible odds on the battlefield, but also constantly struggles with the Chimeran virus raging inside his own body. In addition to an epic single-player campaign, Resistance 2 offers a truly unprecedented eight-player, class-based online co-op campaign with a separate, parallel storyline and 60-player online competitive multiplayer built upon a massive battles, greater intimacy mantra.

In the great console wars of the 21st century, the exclusive first-person shooter is an elite paratrooper regiment, pushing deep behind enemy lines, paving the way for the long-term advances, claiming back enemy territory and banging the propaganda drum every step of the way. Resistance: Fall of Man, launched with the PS3, wasn't quite up to the job. It was a good soldier, but not an inspirational leader.

So when you fire up Resistance 2, you may find yourself checking the box to make sure you've got the right disc. It's so different to its predecessor in so many beneficial ways that it's almost an entirely new game. Picking up the story of Nathan Hale, a US soldier fighting back against the mutated Chimera menace in an alternate history where World War II never happened, it wastes no time transporting him from the rubble of Britain, via an unscheduled stop in Iceland, to the new battlefront: America.

It's a change of scenery that seems to have inspired developer Insomniac. As amusing as it was to begin in Grimsby and Manchester, there was always a suspicion these alien suburban locations didn't click with the Californian devs. The result was a grey game, made up of monochrome rat-runs through scenery that - cathedrals and other controversial landmarks aside - could have come from any documentary about the Blitz. Here you're dropped into rich, realistic environments that immediately impress. The detail level is high, and everything - from incidental objects to character models - is more alive and immersive. These new HD vistas, populated by characters that talk and move like real people, reminded me almost straight away of Half-Life 2.

Control, too, has been completely overhauled. Primary and secondary fire is now mapped to the right shoulder buttons, with iron-sight aiming on L1 and L2 pulling double duty for both crouching (a quick tap) and sprinting (hold it down). Response feels faster, and the game's pace has increased to match the slicker interface. Weapon selection has also changed, with Hale now restricted to just two firearms at a time. Even the health system has been revised, although this is disappointing, since the original game's traditional health bar, divided into separately recharging quarters, was one of its best ideas. It's a shame to see it replaced with yet another encroaching red mist to warn of impending death that dissipates after a few seconds' rest.

It's traditional, of course, for shooters to showcase their evolution through new enemies and weapons, and Resistance doesn't disappoint on that front. In terms of new firepower, you get a well-balanced selection of human and Chimeran guns to play with, any of which will get you out of a tricky spot. Mainstays such as the Carbine, shotgun and sniper rifle all return, slightly tweaked, while some of the more popular Chimeran weapons also reprise their role. The Bullseye, for shooting around corners, is back along with the Auger, which can shoot through obstacles.

It's the new weapons that prove most interesting, however, and Resistance 2 can claim a special prize for having a desirable pistol. A powerful Magnum, it not only kills smaller foes with one shot, but the explosive bullets can also be detonated remotely. Given the game sometimes throws an astonishing number of enemies at you, it's enormous fun to plug one of the advancing horde then take out others by detonating the corpse. The splicer is similarly fun, launching saw blades that zoom and ricochet around, homing in on multiple enemies and shearing heads and limbs. The Wraith, meanwhile, is a powerful mini-gun that tears through crowds and deploys a handy forcefield. Whenever you run dry on one gun, you never feel sorry to have to swap it for another.

The gameplay has also adapted to this focus on mass destruction, showing off the robust muscle of the graphics engine in the process. While the campaign mode doesn't skimp on the tactical encounters that defined the original, pitting you against well-covered squads of enemies and forcing you to pick them off slowly but surely, it also draws inspiration from the manic shooters of the past for cathartic sequences. One memorable fragfest comes in an eerily deserted Californian town. Alien pods distort quaint Americana, and the whole level has a classic B-movie feel to it, as the pods begin to hatch, spitting easily-killed but fast and ferocious mutated zombies at you. Eventually, seeking refuge in the town's cinema, you're faced with a heaving auditorium. There are easily thirty or more enemies, all skittering and clawing at you, and the mixture of panic and exhilaration as you carve a path to safety through their mottled, decaying bodies is far more thrilling than anything in the first game.

Other enemies are less successful, though. Furies are indestructible aquatic creatures that patrol submerged areas killing anyone who lingers in the water - a fairly crude way of keeping you on track. The same is true of the chameleon monsters that suddenly lunge towards you, shrouded in a Predator-style cloaking device. They're easily killed, but with little warning and another one-hit kill mechanic attached, they feel like a cheap shot used to strike up lazy scares, at odds with the more balanced and thoughtful design elsewhere.

For all its ability to surprise you with masses of enemies, the graphics engine doesn't always hold up under pressure either. There's a fair amount of clipping - one defeated Titan ended up half embedded in a warehouse before exploding messily - and it's reasonably common to find a lone Chimera stuck in a corner, obliviously trying to walk through a solid object. Such hiccupy moments tend to stand out all the more because of the extremely high graphical standard in general, and if you can forgive such lapses you're left with one of the best-looking games on the PS3.

The campaign mode is hefty in size, at least for the genre, offering around ten hours for an averagely skilled player on normal difficulty. It's well-paced, and throws up plenty of varied scenarios to test your mettle. The story feels somewhat perfunctory, though no worse than any of its rivals, and even the predictable excursions inside enemy ships are more bearable than similar levels in other games, even if the sweeping alien architecture may leave you wondering if you're fighting the Chimera or the Covenant. Speaking of which, Resistance 2 is arguably more cohesive than any of Halo's single-players, and while the game never quite matches Bungie's highs, it never plunges to the same depths either. Even in a battle against an alien swarm that some will peg as a Flood rip-off, the challenge is more balanced, the outcome more interesting and the integration into the wider gameplay more satisfying.

Then again, Halo never got its highest marks for the solo campaign, but for the huge strides it made in first popularising and later defining console FPS multiplayer. Resistance 2 brings its own innovations to the table, though they're more evolutionary in nature. Insomniac's boast of increasing the number of simultaneous players for competitive games from 40 to 60 could well fall into a pit of PR bluster, were it not that the team has obviously considered ways to balance that many players rather than just bolstering the net code to allow more people in. Rather than having sixty people running around at random, these large-scale matches have their own dedicated mode - Skirmish - and players are split into a number of competing squads. Each squad has objectives to meet; objectives that are also being attempted by a rival team. So rather than one giant battle, you get a series of smaller confrontations all taking place on the same map.

It's either a stroke of genius or a fiendish cheat, depending on how you view the world of online play. Certainly, depending on the map and objectives, there will be times when you won't even notice that there are dozens of other people elsewhere in the same game. When the combinations click, however, the result is quietly impressive - a traditional and accessible multiplayer that convinces you you're taking part in a larger war. It probably won't be enough to impress Warhawk fans, but in the realms of FPS it's a shrewd idea.

Resistance 2 saves its most innovative ideas for co-operative play, however. The traditional answer would be to let players go through the single-player side-by-side, but instead, up to eight players join forces and take on a series of miniature campaigns that run alongside the main story, suggesting some of the other events that are occurring while Hale does his hero thing. There are six maps, drawn from this game and the original, with a set number of different objectives attached to each. The game randomly selects and shuffles three of these objectives for each game, throwing in some boss encounters to spice things up further.

You choose from three classes - Soldier, Spec Ops and Medic - with each relying on the other two for success. Soldiers are tough, well-armed and can use their Wraith mini-guns to create mobile shields to protect other players as you push forwards. Medics can heal wounded teammates, but rather than removing them from active duty the game allows them to join in the combat as well - drawing health from enemies to heal themselves. Spec Ops troops can fling fresh ammo to other players but also deal in heavy damage, making them the frontline choice for larger boss battles.

Each also has an optional "Berserk" - a gameplay buff activated by filling a meter with enough kills - and these offer benefits, like Prototype Ammo, which allows Spec Ops players to dish out extra-powerful ammunition; Ring of Life, which creates a healing circle around a Medic; and Overload, which allows a Soldier to take enemies with him by exploding upon death in a manner similar to Call of Duty's Martyr perk.

Each class earns experience based on successful execution of their roles, as well as completed objectives and defeated enemies, and this then plays into a simplified levelling system. New abilities and Berserks are unlocked as you advance through the ranks, while "grey tech" retrieved from fallen enemies can be used to purchase new armour and weaponry, which customises your character's appearance. This currency can be carried from one class to another, so you can use a successful Soldier character to build up a Medic on the same account without tiresome grinding each time.

It's a simple system, elegantly executed, and by keeping the classes to just three it creates an instinctive symbiosis between players. One class cannot succeed alone, so working together is your most attractive option simply because it works. The only potential downside is that you will, inevitably, run out of combinations of maps and objectives sooner or later. Some may also mourn the lack of a traditional co-op mode. It'll take you a decent amount of time to explore all the co-op options, however, and even more if you want to level up each class and earn all the bonuses, medals and other rewards for good play.

Overall, multiplayer is the satisfying other half to a formidable package, and Resistance 2 is precisely the sort of exclusive game that the PS3 needs. Improving tenfold on its predecessor in almost every area, it not only belongs on the shopping list of existing Resistance fans, but those who were underwhelmed with the original will also want to check it out, and then fight for it on the internet. It's the way of the warrior.