Resistance 3 follows the age old tale of alien invasion that games have been doing since the days of Space Invaders, with the twist of being set after WW2, and the aliens transforming humans into them using a virus. The first 2 games in the series featured a more military slant, with hero Nathan Hale launching an all-out assault on the Chimera before becoming one himself and being bumped off at the end of Resistance 2.
Flash forward a few years and the Chimera have all but conquered Earth, with the few remaining pockets of survivors hiding out and trying to get by. Enter our new hero Joseph Capelli (the man who killed Nathan hale) and his family. Joe just wants to keep his wife and son safe and escape his hometown after the Chimera discover them, but after Dr Malikov (a returning character from the first 2 games) convinces him that they need to travel to New York to shut down the portal that the Chimera are traveling through, the two set off on a cross country trip. From here, Capelli and Malikov will takes boats, planes and trains to get to New York and stop the Chimera from wiping out the human race, and it's a rough ride.
Right from the get-go it's obvious that Resistance 3 is an entirely different beast. The mood is far more dreary and depressing, with most of the game bathing in a grimy brown light, and the general feeling of defeat that most of the characters feel. It has some light hearted moments but for the most part this is one of those games that depicts war (and its aftermath) as a terrible thing rather than glorifying it. The plot of the game is structured in such a way as to make you really feel like you're just trying to survive, not win a war.
The biggest change to the formula here is the switch from large boss battles to smaller, more intimate fights. There are very few large encounters here, instead you'll find yourself fending off waves of normal Chimeran soldiers and the more vicious Feral Chimera in small towns. It's not until the end of the game that this focus shifts to more familiar territory but there is a very nice twist about 3/4 of the way through that lets you know that the writers wanted to try something a bit different.
The gameplay still feels the same as it did in the first 2 games, although there is a shift towards a more old-school style of gunplay, including non-regenerating health and the ability to hold every gun at once. While the variety of guns on offer is nice, they tend to follow the same sci-fi shooter rules as every other fps on the market. That is, there's a handful of good guns that you'll be using for most of the game, and the rest of the space is taken up by inventive weaponry that you will almost never find ammo for unless the game wants you to use it. The weapon select screen is also a nightmare to use, with the touchy stick controls almost always resulting in choosing the wrong weapon and getting killed. For once I actually missed the 2 weapon limit.
While Resistance 3 is a nice departure from the gung-ho shooters of today, and by no means a bad game, it has a hell of a lot holding it back. Not the least of which is the emotional distance between the characters and audience. The facial animations are stiff, and the voice acting is pretty weak, making some moments feel stiff and boring when they should be tugging at your heart string. In fact the graphics on the whole seem to have taken a step back, with most textures looking flat and nearly every level looking the same as the last.
The biggest problem with Resistance 3 though, is its lack of originality. There's a niggling sense throughout the entire campaign that you've played many games just like it, and one game in particular has been ripped-off to such a degree that they might as well have called this a remake. About halfway through the game you must make your way through a dark town filled with feral Chimera, a scene that turns the game into more of a horror movie than sci-fi. Shortly after you must make your way through a prison, before traveling to a tower that you need to destroy to stop the... okay it's Half Life 2. The whole game feels exactly like Half Life 2, once this became apparent to me I just couldn't stop seeing the influences everywhere, it's quite painful at times.
This point aside however, Resistance 3 is still a good game. The story is well told, the last third of the game is more enjoyable, and the action is well paced. The decision to move from action packed set pieces to smaller street battles was the right one as I'm not sure they could have gone much bigger than they did in the second game. It's a pity that the whole thing is held back by a step back in graphics, a wonky weapon select and poor character animation. You'll still have fun blasting away the Chimera and trying to salvage what is left of Earth, but don't expect anything ground-breaking.
7/10
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