While R2 offers absolutely nothing new, it gives you a helluva lot of eveything else.
+ Graphics are so amazing i can not find words to describe it
+ Boss battles are among the best i have seen in my entire life
+ Great Character and enemy design
+ Superb sound quality and voice acting
+ .... So Fun .... So Addicting
+ Customizable controls!
+ 8 Player Split-screen Cooperative
+ Fleshed out Multi-player with up to 60 player in a single map
Cons:
- Quite short Single-Player
- A few of the boss fights are underwhelming
Story:
After a valiant struggle to stop the Chimera invasion in Europe, mankind must make its last stand on the shores of the United States.
Mankind have not gotten an advantage since the players actions in R:FOM, rather the opposite. Mankind is now on the brink of extinction while the chimeran continues to evolve even faster, while human have gotten a bit more advanced from studying chimeran technology, the chimeran themselves have started building space-ships. So humanity's odds have only gotten worse.
Resistance 2's story picks up right where R: FOM left off, with series protagonist Sgt. Nathan Hale being escorted into a helicopter by soldiers dressed in black armor, right after he got through narrowly escaping a exploding Chimeran tower. The soldiers turn out to belong to a US government agency called the SRPA, a unit that deploys "Sentinels" , humans infected with the Chimeran virus yet have not turned, giving them better combat abilities than any normal human. Of course, the unit wants Hale as a part of their group, and Hale doesn't really have any say in the matter. Fast forward two years later to 1953, and Hale is now a Lieutenant in the SRPA, leading his own squad of Sentinels. Just in time too, as the Chimera have invaded (and pretty much occupied) the USA after their defeat in Britain, bringing with them an immensely stronger army than before, full of even bigger surprises. Hale and his squad suit up on a campaign that will take them from San Francisco to Louisiana, even to Iceland and Mexico, in the hopes to rid the world of the Chimeran threat once and for all.
While wrestling with this insidious war machine, Hale must also battle the virus raging inside of his own body that threatens to transform him into the very creatures he fights against.
A sinister and anamorphic villain, Daedalus, serves as Resistance 2's main antagonist. Daedalus wishes nothing more than to see humanity suffer right til the very end. While the basics of the story are presented, the background information that makes the entire narrative much more coherent are found in intel documents, hidden in every level. This makes Resistance 2 somewhat hard to follow. There are also a lot of cliches used such as escaping from a complex that's about to explode, lines like "I don't think we're alone here" and other novelties. However, Resistance 2 isn't cringe-worthy in this regard like other games of the same genre. The developers also did a terrific job on the presentation of the game.
While the game focuses less on story the its its predecessor, it still is a very deep and complex story that justifyies the game's name by following the first games story in a very good way.
Something else i truly enjoyed was the epic and completely, unpredictable ending leaving the player with an extremely strong urge to continue the series.
Graphics:
Resistance 2 has fully used all of the potential of the PS3. This time the visuals are truly jaw-dropping.
Textures are full of detail and heavily bump-mapped with a ton of specular maps to boot. Lightning is lush and vivid and creates an artistic design that is unique for Resistance 2.
It also combines an heavy amount of specular with a metallic shader to create an unbeatable visual beauty. And its excessive amount of motion blur and depth of field makes the games have a blurry design that blends in with the great lightning and shaders to give the graphics a style never seen before.
Characters looks a bit low-res though, but it is such a small thing in comparison to everything else it makes no difference.
Animations are smooth and looks absolutely real.
As per usual, the character designs are unique and incredible. Each chimera looks fantastically designed, as do the SRPA Troops. But one of the most notable character designs is the Leviathan. The Leviathan is a 300 foot giant, and is awe-inspiring. You can truly see the effort the developers went to in this department.
Special effects and the postprocess effects are also stunning and combined with the games artistic design of blur effects and lush lightning it becomes a colorful and impressive experience.
Speaking of colors, the game has a great way of displaying colors in the most beautiful way, red have never looked so red, green have never looked so green, yellow sunlights have never looked this realistic (with the possible exception of Crysis, but on a console, it truly is the best so far).
I cannot descibe the awesomeness of the graphics any better than this.
Gameplay:
I will say this right here and now: Resistance 2 is better than Fall Of Man in almost every way.
Resistance 2 has changed quite drastically since the first game. It ia still a run and gun shooter but had combined the feeling of a modern shooter with old-school gameplay.
As a matter of fact it truly gives an old-school feel when you mow down large enemies with large weapons just to pick up more ammo and repeat the process with your weapons of wonderful design.
The modern part of Resistance 2s gameplay is that it has converted to the typical regenerating health system as well as weapon wheel has been replaced with the two weapons system, again similar to just about
every other modern day shooter. This is a good fix, as it requires you to employ more, and varied tactics to progress through the game, and also, when a weapon appears, it gives a good idea as to what is to come in the not to distant future, the weapons are also less crazy and insane and more standard infantry issue. Despite this, Resistance 2 offer a nonstop slaugterfest of blood, giant boss battles and lots of sweet special effects.
No matter what type of Chimera your dealing with, the game sports some very impressive and ruthless AI, that will flank, rush, take cover, and give you a run for your money.
There are also no vehicles in Resistance 2 but the ground combat makes up for it due to never getting boring.
Alot of the weapons found in R:FOM return i Resistance 2, the Folsom carbine, the Bullseye, Rossmore, Fareye, Auger and LAARK are back, while there are also new additions such as the Splicer that fires high velocity saw blades or the High Explosive Magnum that fires imbedding, explosive rounds that can be remotely detonated into exploding in a fierce blast of heat and smoke. Other new toys include a cylinder-loaded grenade launcher, which grenades spreads molten lava in lines along the battle field, a mini-gun that can deploy a barrier similar to the Auger, and a sniper lightning bolt gun.
The pacing in Resistance 2 is also much better, you constantly go from one epic moment to the next, always getting something new to shoot at. This is among the best parts of Resistance 2, the pacing leaves you with few few calm moment, but still enough to give you some rest between the shooting. The epicness of the game goes perfectly together with the pacing and creates a sense of being thrown from one unique battle to another. Truth is, Resistance 2 is one of the few FPS that actually can become addicting, have you ever played a really addicting FPS?
In Resistance 2, checkpoints are plentiful and never cause you to lose too much playing time when you kick the bucket. Of course, I need to mention the much talked about Resistance 2 boss fights, which are epic in scale, but unfortunately not entirely in practice. While bosses like the Kraken and the Swarm take some considerable skill to take out, others like the Goliath and Chicago's Leviathan only have Hale getting to a certain point and firing a couple of rockets in certain areas to beat them. The last boss fight is also pretty underwhelming. Still, the battles you'll be taking part in to get to these bosses almost all but make up for it. But even if a lot of the boss battles may seem very easy, the sheer epicness of their appearance and the setting you face them in gives you enough thrills to easily forget that.
Another thing Resistance 2 succeds in are the controls, not only are there alreadyua lot of control schemes to choose from, but you can also customize the controls however you want. If you have been familiar with the controls in another FPS, Resistance 2 allows you to set the controls to the exact same set as in that game, if you want to. But even then, i found the default controls very good and easy to learn too.
Sound:
The sound qaulity stays superb and offers music that really sets the mood for the game, enemy sounds that are even more impressive than in the first game, weapons that have powerful sounds, the voice acting stays good and the dialogue is pretty well too.
In the sequel Hale has also gotten a personality, in its predecessor he was just the typical silent hero who never spook but only kicked ass, now he talks alot and give orders and commands contantly on the battlefield. Hias personality also makes him a likable character that adds to the already high level of immersion.
Replay value:
The replay value offered in Resistance 2 is about as high as it can get in a FPS, i have already started my second playthrough and know for certain i will play it again after that, in fact, even it i had played the game 20 times i probably would still enjoy it as much. And even beside the fact that the game is so extremely fun you can also replay it to unlock higher difficulties and to collect intel found throughout the game that offers more explanation to the story.
On the alternate side of Resistance 2 is the multiplayer mode featuring competitive and cooperative play. Both options are available offline, but no bots are available. The big draw with Resistance 2's multiplayer is online. In competitive you can compete with up to 60 players in one game depending on the mode (Yep...60 players online...lag-free.). Of the available modes, there's your standard solo and team deathmatches, the Capture the Flag-like Core Control, and by far my favorite of them all, Skirmish. Skirmish is a team-based affair with up to thirty players on each side, and the goal is to get points by completing the given objective assigned to your squad. This can be anywhere from taking and controlling an enemy beacon to eliminating a specific player from the other team.
Cooperative is by far the coolest mode there is. Despite what logic might tell you, this mode is not the single-player mode with two players. Cooperative is available for up to eight players, each of which chooses one of three different yet almost equally important jobs. The soldier is the major offense, the spec-ops restores ammo, and the medic heals the group. It's more complicated than that, but for simplicity's sake, that's their main jobs. It doesn't matter how good individual players are, if some people aren't working at a team, then failure is the only logical conclusion. There's a total of six absolutely massive cooperative levels to play, and each map has three out of four objectives that will be assigned to the team. Each objective is assigned after the last is completed, and each has the team moving to a different area of the map.
The best part of the multiplayer in Resistance 2 is that everything you do awards you experience. Every bullet that hits, every kill that is executed, every objective that is met, every online match you win,
and so forth nets you experience. This means the player is making progress even when losing. This kind of attitude makes leveling up to gain new player skins, weapons, and abilities less tedious than only rewarding experience through winning.
While i have spent little time trying these things mentioned above, i must say i found it very enjoyable from what i have had time to play so far.