Resistance: Fall Of Man

I admit I was excited by the prospect of a first person shooter by Naughty Dog, a company that has produced many a good platformer in their day. Inventive weapons, good level design and beautiful graphics would be par for the course…

First Impressionsby Tanx - Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

My primary expectation for this game was to enjoy a unique, alternate history setting. I’ve gone through phases where alternate history has fascinated me… seeing how everything would be different if events changed at one or another critical juncture. What if China had discovered the Americas first? How would things be different if Napoleon had conquered the entire world, or if we had not used the atomic bomb?

Unfortunately, while Naughty Dog came close to par, a birdie or eagle definitely eluded them. The touted alternate history in this game is the kind you’d find in an old abandoned High School History text… the one made by a bored student many years ago who decided to flip to the 1930’s and scrawl in marker across the page, “and then aliens invaded and killed everyone HA.” By having the aliens/virus/whatever wipe out all of Asia and Europe before the play even begins, the game conveniently erases any interesting questions you could ask, like whether the United States would be forced to ally with Nazi Germany in the face of a common world-threatening foe. In fact, the 1950s historical setting seems completely irrelevant to the game play. The least the developers could have done would be to throw in some cultural references from the real world 30’s to 50’s… the French Foreign Legion, Nuclear Weapons, something… As it stands the game may as well have occurred in modern day Great Britain.

My questions for the authors do not end there. The “story” is full of holes and largely unexplained. The monsters are referred to as mutants of some kind rather than aliens… but where is all this future tech coming from if that’s the case? Why haven’t the critters wiped out humanity with their unstoppable rockets full of scarab beetles that turn you into one of them? Why bother building tanks and airships and gigantic metal compounds and the like when bugs will do the trick? And what is it about all this alien technology that’s flitting around that makes it so inscrutable? In the twenty years that this invasion has been taking place, no one has managed to incorporate the ray guns, spaceships and other available tech into the resistance? Heck, as far as I can tell our blank-slate protagonist is the only guy in the world smart enough to pick up and use an alien rifle.

Also, if you are going to try to tell a story that involves the whole world, maybe you should try involving the whole world, and not just the United States and England. Why are only white English-speakers allowed to participate in this great Resistance? Heck, there isn’t even a Canadian to be seen amongst the ranks… this kind of simplification is boring, sloppy and mildly insulting. It is exactly the kind of insular staring-at-our-own-navel-and-ignoring-everyone-else product that the United States has become notorious for producing.

I guess I’ve been ranting, so let me summarize. The story and setting in this game are painfully dumb. Resistance makes Gears of War or Halo 3 seem like Shakespeare. Doom had a more sensible plot than this. All that we are left with here is a mostly generic FPS with a few nifty weapons, capable level design and some nice visuals. The most inventive gun was the Auger, allowing you and enemies to fire through solid objects and even walls… well balanced by a little bit of slowdown as the shots pass through solid matter. This provided a nice counterpoint to the powerful sniper rifle, making it sometimes hard to make a clean shot given unreliable cover.

I also kind of liked the vehicle guy. Ever since Halo revolutionized vehicle combat in FPS games, we’ve seen all manner of cars, hovercraft and mechanical spiders materialize in the genre. What I hadn’t seen before was a driving buddy, a major NPC who’s always ready to ride shotgun or eager to drive. Who needs cooperative multiplayer when you have an eager beaver like British Vehicle Buddy. You’d be fighting along, shooting the same damn mutant freaks over and over again, and just as you were getting completely numbed by repetition, BVB would drive on up in a jeep, tank, spider robot or whatever and invite you for a spin. This frequent behavior quickly established BVB as my favorite NPC in the game, far more fun than the obligatory generic female or the... um... okay, there really wasn’t any other competition.

On a final note, it is interesting that even a mostly unmemorable game like this can spark controversy. Readers may be aware of the scandal surrounding the realistic depiction of Manchester Cathedral in this game... do video game creators have the right to create an accurate reproduction of a real world sacred site as a backdrop for shooting and mayhem? Would you be okay with an accurate depiction of your room, with your name on it, used as a backdrop for something you are antithetically opposed to? An interesting question... too bad it is the only one that this particular game inspired.

Played For: 28 hours later...

Will I play it more: I doubt it would make more sense on a second run through.