Pros: Shooting through cover with the Auger
Cons: Being the one shot at through cover with the Auger
The bottom line: Auger plus Gears of War could possibly equal ZOMG
While Insomniac Games is known for its exploits with Spyro the Dragon and more notably the Ratchet & Clank franchise, the company made its debut with Disruptor, an excellent FPS before the genre was 1) viable on consoles and 2) the new dead horse to beat. Because it came out so early in the lifecycle of the PlayStation (basically 1BFF7, a year before Final Fantasy VII), it largely went unnoticed, though it was a demo on the pack-in disc included with the Christmas 1996 PlayStations (I know because I own this disc). A decade later, Insomniac has returned to the origins of its first game on the PlayStation 3, hoping this time their effort results in the holy grail of game consoles – a killer app. Dubbed Resistance: Fall of Man, the 8th project from one of Sony's most important independent (as Insomniac is not owned by SCEA) allies is definitely the class of the PS3 launch, offering an exciting, action-packed FPS that is the best reason for spending your college and/or retirement fund on a PS3 thus far.

Resistance is built upon an alternate history where World War II was not allowed to happen. Instead, Europe slowly was toppled and destroyed by a bizarre group of sentients known as Chimera, apparently created from humans infected with the Chimera virus. Whatever the means, the Chimera easily dominated Europe and Asia, and is now headed to England, one of the last European countries standing – but not by much. Apparently figuring out that the Chimera will figure out how to reach American shores, the US sends a team to assist their English allies, including Nathan Hale, coincidentally a distant relative of the real Nathan Hale (the 'I regret that I have but one life to give for my country' guy, for those of you who failed US history, or perhaps just are Canadian), who is the player character. And thus begins one man's improbable journey to stop these freaky Chimera from toppling the world. The plot is a slow burn, with revelations here and there, but mostly it's just a means to an end, that being motivation to shoot up these mutated freaks. It is a first-person shooter, after all.

Insomniac has managed to craft an experience that straddles the line between Call of Duty styled battles and Doom styled individual tension. Many times, Hale will ally with dozens of other (very British) soldiers, and will take on Chimera forces in the same sort of scripted, wild style of the majority of every World War II game ever created. These stages take place in beat down locations throughout England, looking much like the war-torn locales one might expect. On the other hand, sometimes Hale goes it alone, or maybe with one or two allies, creeping through dark tunnels, a Chimera conversion factory, or the Chimera base itself, with a feeling of uneasiness permeating the entire time. Though there's few moments of silence through any portion of Resistance, there's instances where it's far too quiet, and then, the proverbial feces hits the fan. These moments can be occasionally freaky, such as when the weird Hybrid Chimera sneak up from behind and latch onto you, forcing violent shaking of the Sixaxis controller to kill them before they eat you, or whatever it is they do. To be honest I wasn't paying attention to what they were doing and more interested in getting them off me. Breaking up the levels into distinctly different styles works well and keeps the game from getting monotonous.

The Ratchet & Clank games showed uncanny creativity when it comes to weapon concepts, and Insomniac has carried this talent to Resistance in a big way. At the outset Hale only has a standard Carbine rifle, which is a nice starter gun or for taking out the little leech-like Chimera when they make appearances, but really, it's not a 'go to' weapon. Those are usually the Chimera weapons, such as the Bullseye and the Auger. Bullseye is pretty much the equivalent to a Carbine, but it has a nice alternate fire option, the ability to 'tag' an enemy, and then firing the gun like normal, which turns the bullets into heat-sinking missiles that will attack around cover or obstacles to reach its target. The Auger is even more fun though – it actually shoots through walls. The first time you see this weapon used against you, it's quite a surprise to watch the 'bullets' pierce through cover and hit for some damage, but it's more fun when you actually acquire it yourself and pull the same tactics. There's of course a standard sniper rifle and shotgun, along with some other unique weapons, but the Auger and Bullseye are likely to be the primary weapons of choice. Of course, Resistance has grenades, ranging from typical frag grenades to the Hedgehog, a Chimeran grenade that, upon explosion, fires hundreds of needles which usually causes instant kills for everything it hits.

Aside from the weapons, Resistance isn't what you might call revolutionary – instead, it's a highly polished and effective entry into a very cluttered genre. That being, it does everything very well. The Chimeran AI is smart, and knows when to take cover and when to start flanking or pulling a surprise attack – there are portions of this game that get extremely difficult and require pinpoint accuracy to conserve ammo for later stretches. Resistance also has a fairly lengthy single player campaign, with over 30 chapters that probably take 10-15 hours to finish depending on your choice of difficulty. The graphics, as already mentioned, blend realism with sci-fi extremely well, and it has a layer of polish that most of the other PS3 games lack in these early months, as even in intense firefights, the frame-rate never drops or gives trouble – it's as smooth as butter. Along with that is a solid soundtrack and great voice acting, full of British accents which is always a good time. Sometimes the on-screen action can get muted, and the lack of rumble takes away the violence of the guns, but when you're locked in a gigantic firefight, it really does look and sound like a warzone.

Along with the impressive and fun solo campaign, the multiplayer is a showpiece for PlayStation Network. Sadly, the cooperative mode is only offline split-screen, but it's possible, I'd wager, that it could be patched into the game later if Insomniac feels like it – hopefully they will, because co-op would would be welcomed by many. Alas, you'd have to just suffer with 40 person online play over a variety of modes, like regular deathmatches and CTF-styled events pitting humans versus Chimera – there's 5 five different playtypes in total, which is pretty good. It runs well on the network and supports voice chat, making it a very impressive demonstration of what PSN can do for the low cost of zero dollars. Not counting spending $60 on the game or $500/600 on the PS3 itself, of course.

Final Thoughts
Resistance: Fall of Man is a 'safe' game, as safe as an original franchise can be in this day and age. But it takes a popular genre, a new piece of powerful hardware, and a company known for quality gaming and blended together you get a showpiece for PlayStation 3 that's the closest thing the platform has to a killer app in the launch window. The game ends up doing many things – proving a PlayStation controller can do an FPS well, proving Sony can do online play comparable to what you can find on the Xbox, and most importantly, hopefully proving that Insomniac is a world-class game development house that's been ignored for far too long in many circles. Perhaps it's not the most innovative game on the planet, but Resistance is the sort of polished and fun shooter that people can rally behind and hope that the inevitable sequel is even better, and for Sony, show that yes, there are good games for PS3 at launch, no matter what the Internet may tell you.