Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)

[PipeBombGK1]

Quote:
September 14, 2006 - Though the PlayStation 3 looks to have a pretty strong launch lineup from third-party developers, Sony itself may send off the console with the strongest game of the bunch. Resistance: Fall of Man is wrapping up development over at Insomniac Games, the folks who brought us the Ratchet & Clank series on the PlayStation 2 and started the Spyro franchise on the original PlayStation. While the game may seem to be a departure for the studio, what with its rather dark and serious atmosphere, not to mention the fact that it's an FPS, after we spent a day in Burbank at Insomniac's offices and got the rundown on practically every minutia of the game, we're only slightly hesitant to say that this is the game Insomniac was always destined to make.



Though the game's events take place in 1951, the story stretches back much further than that. As early as the 1930's, Russia became closed off to the rest of continent, presumably to restructure itself internally. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, an alien race set up shop inside of the country and began preparing itself for world domination. Skip ahead to 1951 and practically all of Europe has been decimated, the Chimera washing over that half of the world with a wave of death. With the Chimera on the verge of making its way into Great Britain, England mounts up its forces in preparation for the onslaught.


Resistance's story follows the player's character of Nathan Hale, an American soldier, as told through the research of Rachel Parker. Hale's regiment had been hit by a group of Chimeran soldiers and left for "dead", infected with an alien virus. For some reason, Hale was the only soldier that actually awoke from the attack and managed to do so unscathed, immediately requesting to be sent back into action. Parker's research follows the events just after this, from July 11th through July 14th, the last day that Hale was seen alive.

Insomniac intends to make Fall of Man the first title in a much larger franchise. After speaking with a number of the team's members, it's quite obvious that the team has invested a lot of heart and soul into the project and they want to see the seeds they've laid out blossom into something bigger than a single title. One way Insomniac intends to do this is via hints and tidbits of information that may go unexplained in Fall of Man, but will be touched upon at some point in the future. While the cut-scenes will tell the major parts of the game's story, players will be able to find hidden bits of intelligence through the game that will clue them in to how some events came to be, be it via newspaper clippings, secret documents or the like.

Along with working nicely into the story design, England was chosen as the game's setting for its varied environments and classic cities. A fair bit of the country was modified for either gameplay or story reasons, but sections should be immediately noticeable as real-world places.


Obviously, these towns have been ravaged and are in the process of being overrun, but at the start of the game you'll find yourself in very familiar environments. As you work towards the later levels however, you'll begin to move into cities that have not only been overrun by the Chimera but have been modified with their own technology and architecture. You'll find alien assembly lines attached to old warehouses or mechanical tower extensions that build off of brick apartments.

Similar to the Citadel from Half-Life 2, you'll be able to spot a Chimeran Node in the far off distance at some point in the game and work your way towards this monstrous structure. Resembling a mountain, but highly mechanical in nature, we're not privy to what's inside yet, but it's pretty obvious it can't be good.

One of Insomniac's greatest proven strengths is its ability to come up with some truly inventive, useful and, most importantly, fun weapons. Resistance: Fall of Man really looks to shine in this regard, but one thing we learned with our time with the game is that this is much more of a thinking man's arsenal than what you'd find in any of the Ratchet games. If you don't use the right weapon at the right time, you're likely to wind up toast.



A good example is the Auger. This shotgun-esque Chimeran weapon fires a bolt of electricity that cuts not only through air but solid objects as well. It pauses for a second to burn through, but its almost complete disregard for cover makes it extremely powerful. Coupled with its alt-fire, an energy shield that you can place at will, it will likely be one of the most useful weapons in the game.


Against anything but someone else carrying an Auger, that is. Since the Auger is capable of penetrating its own shield, that essentially negates half of its power so you'll want to pick up something with a little more accuracy and speed, like the Bullseye.

The Bullseye is carried by the game's basic grunts and is a standard Chimeran rifle that fires laser-like rounds as its primary fire. These shots aren't very powerful in and of themselves, but the weapon's alt-fire allows you to either target a single enemy that all of the bullets will track or create a floating target that will collect bullets and then fire them into an enemy, useful for prepping before a big attack or around a corner (or shield, in this case).

This plays into the somewhat unique fact that unlike many other games with specialized weapons like Resistance features, your enemies have access to the exact same arsenal that you do. As a direct result of the design, any given weapon is likely not ideal when faced against an opponent with the same weapon as you won't have any sort of advantage. Switching to a differently-enabled weapon that can take advantage of another's weakness is the key to victory. Again, this is a thinking man's arsenal.

Other weapons we had a chance to see in action included the Fareye, Sapper, LAARK, and Hedgehog grenade. The Sapper is a black-ops weapon that human technicians reverse-engineered from Chimeran technology, one of a few others that you'll find in the game. This weapon is essentially a blob gun, firing giant balls of ooze that stick to the environment and clump together, enabling you to even hang a chain from a ceiling. The alt-fire triggers one of the balls, causing all of the blobs attached in its chain to detonate and take down whatever's nearby.


The LAARK is an advanced human rocket launcher that allows the user to not only aim but slow down and even pause its trajectory. One great use of this would be to fire a rocket past a corner, pause it in mid-air, run around the corner and send it flying at a group of enemies. Even better for groups in some cases is the LAARK's alt-fire which instead of shooting a singular, powerful rocket, a host carrier is launched that emits a series of smaller, homing missiles. These don't do as much damage, but they can be extremely effective on groups. This even works with the LAARK's slow speed, being as the mini-rockets are dispersed over distance rather than time, allowing you to slow down the rate that the smaller rockets eject.

The Hedgehog grenade will be an instant classic. This alien bugger is tossed like a normal grenade but springs up in the air just before it detonates. Pausing for a second to "warn" nearby troops, 50 deadly spikes are then fire in every direction and literally impale anything around it. Watch out for these.

Lastly, the Fareye is the game's sniper rifle which works much like you'd assume it would, except that you have the ability to slow down time while using the scope. This lets you not only hone in on head-shots with ease, but also enables you to do things like snap individual air tubes from the backs of Chimerans.

Speaking of being able to snipe individual tubes from the backs of Chimerans, this brings us to the game's technical prowess and what the team has done since E3. Though Insomniac put on an impressive showing this year, the build we saw then pales in comparison to what Insomniac has running now.

PART II On next post.

[PipeBombGK1]

PART II -

Since the show, the developer has been splitting the game's subsystems off to individual SPUs on the Cell (like physics, AI, sound, etc.) and then cranking the detail on each sky-high. Particle effects are now used with abandon, clouding your view upon every explosion (in the coolest way possible). The lighting is some of the most natural we've ever seen in a videogame and the sound, well, you'll want to crank this one to 11.


Perhaps one of the most impressive yet non-hyped things about the game thus far is its AI. Enemies range in intelligence depending upon who/what they are, so animalistic creatures will still be single-minded, but the soldiers are a different story. They'll use cover whenever possible, fire off blind shots just to keep you guessing and even try to flank you when given the chance. In one case, we came into a room and spotted a Chimera on the other side, standing in an opposite doorway. It fired off a handful of shots and stepped behind the wall. Thinking that we'd flank him, we set off to the right and attempted to surprise him by going around the room. Not so fast, it seems, as the Chimera had exactly the same idea. Clever girl... err, alien..

Technically speaking, Resistance sports some rather impressive technical specs and tricks, all of which are easily noticeable in-game. For starters, the game sports 256 times the pixel and texture information of one of Insomniac's PlayStation 2 titles. Looking at any given screenshot should prove this to your eyes. Characters would average about 30 individual animations on the PS2, while Resistance sports somewhere around 400.

Not only do characters have a rather insane number of animation routines, Insomniac's proprietary engine is also capable of mixing them with ragdoll physics, enabling characters to be knocked down in realistic ways (as they're partly scripted and partly physics-based), and then get up again if they're still alive. A demo room we were shown had a line of hapless Chimeran soldiers standing still, ready to be shot. Regardless of where a killing blow was placed, be it in the leg, shoulder, head, chest or what have you, the character's body would kick realistically in that direction and flop against the ground or wall or tumble over a barrier in an extremely believable way. To put it shortly, Resistance has a simply awesome animation system.


With regards to the game's multiplayer, hoo-boy, we didn't quite see this one coming. Firstly, the game supports cooperative play via split-screen. You won't be able to play co-op online unfortunately, but the split-screen play looks to be flawless. We never witnessed a drop in framerate, texture or lighting detail. All three of the game's vehicles, the jeep-like Lynx, the alien Stalker and a third, unannounced vehicle, are co-op friendly.

One pretty cool aspect of the co-op design is that certain portions of the game will have co-op-specific encounters. The easiest and most likely example of this is that you'll find more enemies in certain key fights, but we're guessing it'll extend beyond this. Should these extra opponents take down you or your buddy, the other need either simply live long enough for you to recover/respawn, or run over and quick-revive you at the risk of being entirely vulnerable.

The absolutely killer part about Resistance: Fall of Man's multiplayer is its online play. When we say this was one of the most surprising things we've seen in some time, we're not kidding. The single-player portion was already extremely impressive, having us assume that the multiplayer would be good but something of an aside as it's rare for a game to nail both aspects. Instead, it looks like it could go toe-to-toe with Unreal Tournament any day of the week. Seriously.



The beauty here is in the chaos and subtlety of its play mechanics. While vehicles sadly will not be usable online, this is a direct effect of its focus on cramming everyone together in a small area. 40 players crammed together that is, meaning that vehicles simply wouldn't fit.


The online play will feature a number of modes including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Meltdown and Breach. Breach maps are designed around two reactors, one for each team, with each side attempting to ultimately destroy the other. A series of five nodes are scattered around the map that either team can take control of, allowing them to spawn there. Once either reactor is taken out, the game is over.

This likely sounds familiar, but there are a couple very interesting twists. For one, each node that a team owns gives them some sort of bonus at their reactor. The first gives them better RADAR, allowing the team to see moving targets more easily. The second gives the team more weapons at their base and captured nodes, allowing them to power-up more easily. The third positions turrets at the base, making it hard for the other team to enter unscathed. The fourth adds mines in the field near the base, which is obviously bad news for the opposition. Owning all five nodes simultaneously is the kicker as it completely seals your reactor's core and makes it impossible for the other team to win, at least until they regain a node.

As for Meltdown, the mode is something of a slightly stripped-down version of Breach that cuts out Breach's reactors and relying only on nodes. The advantage of this is that you're able to scale the size of the map and number of players, whereas Breach is intended for a 40-player server.

The other major gameplay twist to Resistance's online multiplayer is that you'll play as either the humans or Chimeran hybrids, each side having their own advantages and weaknesses. Humans have the ability to sprint, which makes them inaccurate, as well as a movement RADAR. Hybrids on the other hand can go into Rage mode, which gives them increased speed and allows them to see through walls. In this case, other players will be heat-highlighted, much like thermal goggles. The downside to this is that this kicks up the heat that their bodies produce and they'll quickly overheat. Doing so immediately begins dwindling their health, so hybrids need to be extremely careful about how often and long they use their Rage ability.


The two-class system really is the main thing that makes Resistance's multiplayer so fun, but it's also the tactics and play mechanics that you'll use in each of the game's modes that make it shine. Top this off with a ton of server options, ranked and non-ranked games, a massive and easy to use community system and more and you have the makings of an extremely promising online game.

Resistance: Fall of Man is set to ship alongside the PlayStation 3 on November 17, and if you plan on picking up the system at launch, be prepared to stick this in your bag as well.


Here are some videos too.
IGN: Resistance: Fall of Man Trailer, Videos and Movies

And here are a few pics...

[RickTheRipper]

This article just makes me want this game even more. And just to let you know how much that is.

I would take a shot in the mouth (catch my drift?) to get my PS3 and this game. So if any of you want a horrible noob sucky sucky, just hook me up with this and a PS3.

I betcha someone's gonna put this in there sig........

[mjrage]

This game looks bad! We'll see if the graphics really look that good and how it performs with some many online players at once!

[zero2000]

Some of those pics are old. There are new pics with even better graphics.

Resistance fall of man is closing in on 25 gigs. That is almost triple of what those dvds on xbox 360 can hold.

[RickTheRipper]

I got a question about the FPS (frames per second, that's it right?). Anyway, will the FPS on R:FOM be a good set or is it low/high. I'm not familiar with FPS at all, so just give me an example of the FPS on a game that plays online (Socom, Battlefield, 25 To Life, etc.). I just want to know whether or not this game will be laggy online (based on the FPS) or if it will run smoothly.

[PipeBombGK1]

I'm pretty sure they said that the FPS would be locked at 30 so they would have more room to put in bigger maps and interactive enviorments.

[RickTheRipper]

So is 30 FPS a good number or is it a bad one?

[mjrage]

Originally Posted by Loud ASassIn

I'm pretty sure they said that the FPS would be locked at 30 so they would have more room to put in bigger maps and interactive enviorments.

Yup, the IGN interview said they originally made it at 60FPS but to improve the number of online players and make everything run properly, they took it down to 30FPS. Should still look ok, I think.

[PipeBombGK1]

Originally Posted by RickTheRipper

So is 30 FPS a good number or is it a bad one?

30 FPS is like Halo: CE speed, which is pretty good, or about the same speed as NFS Hot Pursuit 2.