Resistance 3 Review

Written by Cole Burton Monday, 12 September 2011 11:00

September is here, and with it comes the return of one of the PS3’s greatest franchises: Resistance.  Resistance 3 is quite clearly its own game; it's not Resistance 2.5.  There are several huge changes in the third installment, but are they for the best or do they scar the series?  Please be aware of spoilers from past entries in the series within this review.

Resistance 3 picks up where Resistance 2 left off.  Joseph Capelli, a character introduced in Resistance 2, has killed Nathan Hale, the playable character in both Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2.  Hale was transformed into exactly what he had been fighting for so long, a Chimera. 

After Capelli made the difficult choice to kill Hale, he was kicked out of the Marines for killing a hero.  This is when we learn that 90% of humanity has been executed, and the Chimeras are no longer fighting a war, but are mopping up afterwards.  Capelli, like many other Americans, continued his life in hiding.  He married a woman and even had a child during this disaster.  Nathan was still a fighter at heart, and his wife wanted the best for their son.  Her solution was for Nathan to accompany Dr. Fyodor Malikov to New York City, where he claimed he could stop the Chimera.

From there on out, you take a variety of different types of transportation leading to different places in order to get from Oklahoma to New York City.  While on this journey you will meet many different people, all of which seem important at the time, but very few will appear later on.  These people ultimately push you in the direction you need to go after you help them out with their problems.  The quest to NYC will span 20 chapters, taking around 10 hours to fully playthrough.

The most important change in Resistance 3 is the health regeneration.  Resistance 1 and 2 both went Call of Duty style, meaning you could take plenty of damage, relax for a few seconds, and you would be good as new.  Resistance 3 took this feature away and gave us back health kits.  The reasoning was that Hale’s slow Chimera transformation gave him the ability to regenerate health.  We learn pretty quickly here that Capelli is no Chimera.  The great thing about this health is you don’t have to hunt down health kits.  Well, not exactly anyway.  Health kits are scattered around everywhere, and all you have to do is take cover every now and then, and then grab some health.  The R3 Team didn’t want us to run out, shoot, heal, and shoot some more.  They wanted some level of tactics to it, without hitting insane difficulty and checkpoints with very little health.  For those of you who miss the Hale health regeneration, earn some trophies.  You will then gain points that you can use to buy special features like cheat codes, including health regeneration.

The unique weapons system of Resistance is still here as well.  There is the normal fire, and the great secondary fire.  Each weapon has an R2 ability that can help in many situations.  For example, the Magnum rounds you fire can be detonated with R2, and the Chimeran assault rifle can fire a tracer round, which will then force all of your shots to arc into the shot, regardless of where you aim.  Also, the more kills you get with each weapon, the more advanced you become with it.  As this happens, each weapon will become level 2 and 3, where new, stronger abilities become available.

The campaign in Resistance 3 was amazing, my favorite of the series thus far.  But, the value does not end there.  There are also co-op and multiplayer modes to be played.  The multiplayer does downgrade the 60 player matches from Resistance 2 to 16, but that doesn’t really make it worse, just less crowded.  All of the weapons from the campaign are available, and there is a variety of gametypes for you to play.  As you level up you can unlock more weapons and perks to upgrade your classes with.

Resistance 3 did not disappoint fans of the series even with some of its large changes.  It is the FPS everyone should be enjoying right now, at least until Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 comes out.  PlayStation 3 owners, do not pass this title up!