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| Joe Capelli fighting some Grims while travelling on a boat down the Mississippi River. |
Earth has been devastated by the Chimeran virus, which has turned most of the human race into monstrous Chimeran soldiers. The remnants of humanity live in small hidden settlements, trying to survive and fight the Chimeran army. One survivor, Joseph Capelli, is hiding out in Oklahoma with his wife and son, when an old associate, Fyodor Malikov, finds him. Malikov tells Capelli that the Chimera have built a giant tower in New York City that is freezing the planet, and they have to stop the Chimera from killing everyone. Capelli reluctantly agrees to go to New York to stop the Chimera.
Resistance 3 is a standard first-person shooter. Joe fights different Chimeran enemies with weapons and ammo he finds in levels. No objectives exist besides getting to the end of the level. Joe has a health bar that is restored with health items found or dropped by enemies.
Weapon design is really creative. Half of the guns are a standard design, but have a fun or really deadly secondary feature, like the revolver that shoots bullets you can detonate, or the shotgun that also shoot concussion grenades. The other half are weird but cool guns, like the gun that shoots diseased blobs, or the gun that shoots electricity and drops electric mines.
Weapons get experience points when used and can level up two times, adding new features like incendiary ammo. It is a neat gimmick and got me to use more weapons, but I did not need this feature, and a lot of the upgraded weapons did not feel any more useful than before.
The first four levels are fun, but go by too quickly; they might as well have been a single level. The Chimera in these levels are soldier types with occasional giant bosses to take down. These Chimera duck for cover and dodge, which makes it really enjoyable to fight a squad of them. The way they actually use some strategy and force the player to switch to the more unusual weapons to fight them adds more variety to the fights.
The fifth level is where the problems with the game begin. Insomniac did not realize what was fun about their game; instead of nonstop firefights in different locations, they filled the game with gimmick levels. I wanted to fight waves of Chimeran soldiers, not carry a bomb through a battlefield, or hide from a bunch of snipers, or walk through a train yard where nothing happens.
What is worse are the areas that only have fast zombies, or Grims as they are called in-game, and bugs to fight. Sometimes they arjust e in parts of a level, other times they are the only enemy for an entire level, but after a while they start to take up more game time than the soldiers. Grims are not fun at all; all they do is charge Joe, and all the player has to do is shoot them as they run into Joe’s line-of-sight. There is no strategy when fighting Grims, they are just a chore to get through.
The worst levels though, are levels thirteen through sixteen. In these Joe actually fights human enemies. If you are going to make a series about fighting alien soldiers, and then make the player fight humans, then what is the point?
The last three levels go back to fighting Chimeran soldiers, and like the beginning are really fun and end way too quickly.
The story is not impressive; it is just Joe travelling halfway across the U.S. Slightly more interesting are the hints about the Chimera’s origin and physiology, and the state of the world, that are dropped in the journals Joe finds, and in conversations Joe has. Unfortunately the game never answers these questions, and the ending to the game is unfulfilling given how much is hinted.
Level design is fun at first. The game takes place in the 1950s, and it is interesting to see the image of fifties America destroyed and covered in creepy alien plant life. Either I got used to it, or the level designers stopped adding 1950s designs, because later levels did not appear as interesting. It did not help that Joe actually manages to go to two coal mining towns, which were boring. It gets better at the end when Joe reaches New York, but only because New York is covered in tons of snow in addition to being ruined.
Resistance 3 has multiplayer, standard stuff from the two matches I played, like deathmatch and capture the flag. Killing other players gives you experience points, which levels you up and unlocks new skins and other things.
Resistance 3 is half-assed. While the initial and end levels, weapons, and enemies had some thought put into them, the middle levels and the story feel like Insomniac lost interest and just tried to finish the game as soon as they could.
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