What gives Resistance 2 its unending replayability is the new graphics system used to draw the game. Resistance 2’s levels will feature set geography, like the placements of buildings and topological detail, but will also include a randomising element so that each time you play through, you’ll find new areas of cover and therefore have to develop new strategies. You won’t be able to read a ‘go here and shoot him’ walkthrough for the game because it just wouldn’t work.
Insomniac Games have a history of delivering what they promise - and Fall of Man arrived, as expected, with only minor alterations to its original specifications. Resistance 2 will feature 60-player online battles. When fighting with so many other players, you’ll need to take into account the effect of headset chatter. Players will be corralled into smaller, more workable squads. You’ll log into a lobby system and build up your team of four to eight comrades-in-arms, prep yourselves for battle by agreeing on roles, and then get launched into a full-scale war. Each squad is given objectives to achieve beyond the simple annihilation of the enemy and so the chaos of conflict is formalised into a workable arena. Good job, since these battlefields are sprawling worlds that will encompass everything from tight inner-city fighting to massive open-ground slogs.
By using dedicated servers rather than peer-to-peer networking, Insomniac hope to build a greater sense of an online PS3 community than ever. Profile pages will continually update onwww.myresistance.net andthanks to a totally open party and clan system, there will be no need to send out invites. Dedicated servers not only make 60-player fluidly feasible, they’ll also enable cleaner voice-chat - invaluable in a game where tactical player talk is vital if you don’t all want to get slaughtered in a haze of ill communication.
Fall of Man was developed before the PlayStation 3 was released and therefore before developers had the time to build-up the expertise needed to get the most from the console’s power. The levels in Resistance will not only be larger, but will offer more structural variety as well as featuring more vibrant digital lighting. Texture detail is up, as are the numbers of polys and on-screen baddies. It’slooking to be truly next-gen, unlike its predecesor which at times felt like a PS2 game running on an over-clocked machine. Enemies will display new behaviour patterns that change depending on how near they are to the player. At range, they won’t jostle about randomly but will dive for cover. When they get in close, this AI will shift to close-range mode, enabling them to work on you with new tricks that are dependant on how much they view you as a threat.
Resistance should amaze everyone who sees it in action.
Mar 17, 2008
