Over one year later, Resistance: Fall of Man, the most highly acclaimed game of the Playstation 3’s launch, is still regarded as one of the best games available on the system and still one of its best sellers. Resistance: Fall of Man was developed by Insomniac, a developer known best for their work on the popular Ratchet and Clank series. Resistance strikes a sharp contrast to that series, creating a dark and gritty atmosphere, as opposed to the more light-hearted, humorous and colorful universe in which Ratchet and Clank takes place. 

Resistance casts you as Sergeant Nathan Hale, a soldier in the American Army Rangers, sent to aid Britain in the fight against the Chimera, an alien race of unknown origin. The year is 1951 in an alternate reality in which the Nazi’s never rose to power in Germany and World War II never happened. The Chimera have spread across the isolationist Russia, destroying everything in their path and have moved in on England, wiping out much of its population. Of course, in the face of this terrible plight, it’s up to you to stop them.

The single player campaign begins here, thrusting you right into the conflict against the Chimera with nothing but an M5A2 Carbine and your wits. Resistance’s dark and gritty atmosphere is well established through narrated scenes and cutscenes scattered liberally between firefights. Resistance gains points for choosing something other than World War II to focus on, having chosen a historical setting. It’s also impressive that Resistance seemingly blends two separate time periods by thrusting futuristic weaponry and alien technology into your hands throughout the game. I’m not too far into the game yet, but things have been good so far and hopefully things will continue in a similar fashion.

Of course, the aforementioned firefights are most important in establishing the setting as well as keeping the player engaged and this is done quite admirably. Most importantly, these battles are also fun. Despite my personal qualms over the analog stick layout and convex triggers of the Sixaxis controller, I don’t feel hampered by them to any reasonable degree. The controller sensitivity feels right, the numerous weapons are fun to wield and the general mechanics work well. I am disappointed by the tacked on motion controls, which are used to shake off enemies that grab on to you and a couple other functions in multiplayer. 

I’m less enthused about the multiplayer component, which allows you to wage war with up to 39 fellow gamers across a dozen or so maps, not counting the few released as downloadable content. The pace feels a great deal faster than what you experience in the campaign, which can be quite jarring to players heading online for the first time and will have many wishing they could use an input device more precise than a controller. Nevertheless, despite these niggling issues, it isn’t bad at all. It takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of things, it’s quite fun. Latency issues are slim to nil due to the dedicated servers the game utilizes for its multiplayer frag-fests. The most players I’ve seen in any one match were 24 out of a maximum of 32, which was one heck of a match. I would like to play more matches of this size, but it seems players have moved on to other games such as Call of Duty 4 and as a result, there don’t seem to be many people playing the game.

Overall, I am impressed by Resistance, which holds up remarkably well for a launch title (certainly better than Perfect Dark Zero). The single player campaign is interesting, full of exciting shootouts and an interesting storyline and setting. While I had a few more complaints about the multiplayer component, they aren’t enough to put a significant damper on my enjoyment. The game is certainly not perfect but it’s something I can easily recommend to PS3 owners who are fans of the genre or those who just have a passing interest.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the human race isn’t going to save itself…