Resistance: Fall of Man

Back in 2006 the PS3 was launched and with it came one of the best launch titles any plat­form has ever received. Fall of Man was not only a Critical but also a Commercial suc­cess becom­ing the first PS3 game to sell over 1 mil­lion units. Some may ask “Why such an odd time for a review?” It just so hap­pens that we find this the per­fect time. With Resistance 3 finally announced, it only seemed obvi­ous to take a look back at the fran­chise and see what was wrong, what was great, and what made this one of the PS’s best IP’s.

Story

Resistance: Fall of Man takes place in 1951 over a span of a couple days. The world cre­ated is an alternate-history. After World War I the world remained peace­ful, no more World War II or the Holocaust. Instead the Chimera happened, a race of alien like creatures that quickly took over Russia, main­land Europe, and are in the pro­cess of cap­tur­ing England. This is where the player comes in as Army Ranger Sergeant Nathan Hale who is sent in with an American Force to sup­ply the British. Little do they know that they’ve walked into a night­mare with Hale some­how hav­ing semi-immunity to the Chimeran virus.

Resistance: Fall of Man isn’t like most other shoot­ers nowadays. The game truly puts in its best efforts to tell a fant­astic story. These are con­veyed strongly through slideshow-esque cutscenes nar­rated in third per­son by Rachael Parker, a key char­ac­ter in the game. These cutscenes are excel­lent drivers in the plot as they keep it inter­est­ing. Information is con­veyed to us in a very his­tor­ical way that just makes it feel fresh from all games on the mar­ket.

In terms of char­ac­ters, there are really only three. Nathan Hale of U.S. Army Rangers is the prot­ag­on­ist and only has three lines. Rachael Parker, head of British Intelligence who also nar­rates the story to us dur­ing all cutscenes. Finally there’s Stephen Cartwright, a Lieutenant in the British Royal Navy. Cartwright lends some comic relief to the plot with his British banter while Parker helps to cre­ate the tone of the game. While both are very much appre­ci­ated, you never really see either of them much in the game (Parker does nar­rate a lot but barely seen in per­son). This is a real shame because Cartwright is eas­ily one of the most like­able NPCs in recent FPS memory.

The show-stealers how­ever are the Chimera. The bril­liance of the Chimera is based in their story. Mysteriously they enter and mys­ter­i­ous they still are. A bril­liant stroke in the story is just how the Chimera and their pro­cesses are revealed as the game pro­gresses. It really sinks into you and the curi­os­ity it brings just begs for more inform­a­tion. Chimera are the per­fect vil­lains. They’re story is bril­liant, and even though we are left with more ques­tions than answers, they are still fas­cin­at­ing.

The story isn’t without its faults though. There are quite a few pacing issues within the story. Sometimes it can really drag on due to little expos­i­tion in between cer­tain mis­sions. There is also the blar­ing fact that so many ques­tions were cre­ated at the end rather than get­ting answers. Plenty of plot-holes pop up due to this, with some of them being a little bit alarm­ing.

Resistance man­ages to do the seem­ingly impossible in FPS games nowadays. No, it’s not per­fect, but it man­ages to engage the player in ways many games just can’t with their single-player cam­paigns. A great story is present with a truly mys­ter­i­ous vil­lain that will make play­ers want to play the next games just to learn more.

Score: 8/10

Design

Fall of Man fea­tures intense shoot-outs in loc­a­tions all over England. Every loc­ale is detailed to per­fec­tion; England looks com­pletely real­istic with actual build­ings and archi­tec­ture. Manchester Cathedral was so real­istic that Sony and Insomniac actu­ally got sued because of it. Some of these loc­a­tions, such as Manchester and Nottingham fea­ture huge scale battles that really put into per­spect­ive just how power­ful the Chimera are and how weak the humans are. Other areas like Cheshire and London fea­ture more enclosed areas that put your wits on end as you try to sur­vive in the dark. Intense vehicle sec­tions also appear put­ting you in com­mand of a tank, an unstop­pable jeep, and a Chimeran stalker. These sec­tions are very fun as you roll over Chimera and send them fly­ing with explos­ive rounds, though some of the con­trols do feel a little loose.

The game fea­tures plenty of unlock­able good­ies to keep play­ers com­ing back for more. Intel within the game details much of the back­ground story and also provides more details about the Chimera and the mys­ter­i­ous Cloven. While trophies didn’t mater­i­al­ize on the PS3 until the later half of 2008, Insomniac cre­ated achieve­ments within the game that unlock other things such as fil­ters, tex­tures and so on. It also helps that the cam­paign is very meaty, clock­ing in at around 10 hours, plus it can be played in Split-screen co-op with a buddy. Finally there are also weapons that can only be unlocked once the game has been beaten. Of course then you have to add in the fant­astic mul­ti­player that will add hours upon hours onto the already healthy dose of play­time.

Chimera are very for­mid­able. Unfortunately you’ll mostly just face hybrids, the most human-like of the bunch. Hybrids come in dif­fer­ent fla­vors with some hav­ing more armor and a dif­fer­ent gun. More inter­est­ing Chimera like the leap­ers and Angels don’t come around too often, but when they do you know they mean busi­ness, as they require more strategy. That is quite a prob­lem with Fall of Man. At times it can feel that there isn’t much vari­ety in the enemies with the Hybrids just being so sim­ilar. It’s a good thing though that you can tackle the Hybrids in many dif­fer­ent ways. The level vari­ety is what keeps things fresh and mov­ing.

Score: 9/10

Gameplay

Fun, fast, and intense are the descrip­tions for Fall of Man. Unlike many mod­ern shoot­ers, Fall of Man doesn’t rely on the rechar­ging health and aim­ing down the sights. Instead it goes for a run and gun approach. Health is allot­ted to a 4-area health bar. Hale can heal one area provided that area hasn’t been fully picked off. Health Packs are avail­able, though become sparser once Hale becomes infec­ted.

Insomniac Games once again man­ages to outdo them­selves in terms of weapons. Ratchet and Clank showed their abil­ity to invent ways to destruct and Fall of Man takes it a step for­ward. Every weapon in here is unique with an inter­est­ing second func­tion. The Bullseye allows you to place a laser hom­ing tag on an enemy and have every bul­let fly off towards them. The Auger allows its ammo to bur­row through walls to hit enemies without you ever hav­ing to see them. Hedgehog Grenades erupt in spikes that shoot out in all dir­ec­tions. The weapon list is just huge and so fant­astic that it’s a joy to use each weapon. It is a pity that some of the more inter­est­ing weapons have such sparse ammo. Though the stand­ard auto­matic weapons (Carbine and Bullseye) pack a heavy punch that still makes them exhil­ar­at­ing to play with.

As a launch title, the game had to show off what the PS3 could do, even if it was some­thing bad. The Sixaxis con­trols make an appear­ance within the title, thank­fully not much. Certain Chimera can latch onto your “face” which requires a shake of the con­trol­ler to knock them off. These scenes are mostly com­ical due to some poor anim­a­tions and the fact that the Sixaxis con­trols just aren’t very pre­cise.

It’s clear that this game is addict­ing, why else would the game still be one of the more pop­u­lar PS3 titles. Most 2006 games have been dumped with many serv­ers off­line. Fall of Man still man­ages to draw in a giant audi­ence because it is fun.

Score: 10/10

Multiplayer

Resistance: Fall of Man shipped with a very impress­ive mul­ti­player mode that still remains unique even today among other titles. While the 360 had to wait a couple a months to get its first online hit, the PS3 received its on day one.

What made the online unique? Mostly everything. Players are split into two teams, the humans and the Chimera. Both fac­tions were dis­tin­guished from each other in that they both pos­sessed dif­fer­ent abil­it­ies that suited them. Humans could sprint and had access to a radar that pin­points where the enemy is. The Chimera have a Rage meter that increases dam­age they deal and their own speed, how­ever left on too long and it will dam­age them. This unique­ness given to both fac­tions adds a dif­fer­ent sense of strategy to how the mul­ti­player is tackled. Humans require more of a team-based play style while the Chimera work more as a one-man-army.

Fall of Man splits play­ers into two 20-player teams. A max­imum of 40 play­ers provides some intense fire­fights with even smal­ler counts provid­ing an intense exper­i­ence thanks to some smartly designed maps. The game never feels crowded or over-populated. Lag never becomes a prob­lem even with all the effects going off and 40 crazy people run­ning around. Balance also never becomes a prob­lem. The weaker guns have more ammo and are spaced around while the more power­ful guns are lim­ited in terms of ammo and loc­a­tion.

It is fun and people still play the game online. Fall of Man just does what few games nowadays do. It is fast, bal­anced, lag-free, and not aggrav­at­ing.

Score: 9/10

Presentation

Fall of Man set the stand­ard for all PS3 games to fol­low. The game was advert­ised with graph­ics that screamed real­ity. It really had a lot to live up to. Did it live up to it? Why yes it did.

Sprawling wreck­age from the Chimeran War on England littered the streets in strik­ing real­ity. Destroyed England had never looked so good. While it is true that not much color palette is shown, what is shown works well in set­ting an excel­lent atmo­sphere of lost hope. Areas such as the Manchester Cathedral, which were cre­ated from pic­tures and schem­at­ics of the actual build­ings, look abso­lutely fant­astic and photo-realistic.

Chimera tex­tures and mod­els look real­istic and hor­ri­fy­ing. Their size and looks are enough to strike night­mares into the hearts of young chil­dren. Humans aren’t so lucky. Some of the human tex­tures look flat and con­tain little detail with a lot of tex­tures repeat­ing. The same goes for the mod­els, which look less then spec­tac­u­lar and repeat.

Animations in the game struggle. It’s quite easy to see that the game was not motion cap­tured. In-game cutscenes look a little awk­ward at times with some weird facial anim­a­tions. Characters look stiff and some don’t even move at all.

Resistance: Fall of Man fea­tures some amaz­ing sounds. The soundtrack may not be that big, but what is in there is a fant­astic score that raises emo­tions when needed. Sounds for the Chimera, guns, and voice act­ing are excel­lent. The guns pack a ser­i­ous punch, the Chimera are scary, and the voice-acting works without get­ting in the way.

Score: 8/10

Final Thoughts

Fall of Man was and still is a fant­astic title that every PS3 owner needs to own. The game still man­ages to feel rel­ev­ant in today’s mar­ket and with Resistance 3 on the way, you’re going to want to know the whole story. Out of the 3 games out on the mar­ket right now, Fall of Man lands in 2nd place.