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Resistance 2 and bad game design
Moioink
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
First of all before launching this tirade I want to say that I liked Resistance 2 a lot and Insomniac have been one of my favourite developers this generation. I enjoy their games a lot but there are some baffling game design decisions in R2 that should never have been made.
Phew, I think that's it. Anyone else find a lot to dislike in R2 despite all the good stuff?
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One hit kills are not fun, they piss the player off and break immersion. There is a ridiculous amount of ways you can go from full health to dead and all of them felt cheap and unfair. The Chameleons got me a few times but once you die to one you will never fall for it again and usually there is a checkpoint not long before, which just makes them a trial and error farce. It's too bad really because their audio and visual cues are very cool, they could have been a fun enemy to fight. I can't remember any one hit kills in FOM or Ratchet so why the sudden change of heart?
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Don't make me have to have read novels or comics of the series do be able to understand what the hell is going on. Looking on a Resistance wiki, Daedalus has quite a back story but throughout the game I was wondering to myself who is this Shepherd guy? Did I meet him in FOM and just forget about him? What is this about Nathan being injected with the virus? I thought he got infected whilst on tour in Britain. There is so much back story that somehow the player is supposed to know, this is the same bs that annoys me about Halo.
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If you're going to have boss fights make them interesting if not don't bother. Have multiple phases instead of one basic pattern to beat over and over. If when fighting the last boss in the game for the first time you feel the need to tell the player in a tutorial text box how to kill it then maybe it's time for a rethink! The Leviathan boss is so bad I actually laughed out loud after beating it, I couldn't believe that this hyped up waste of flesh was beaten by firing a rocket in its face (the rocket launcher conveniently placed in the area where it grabs you) then by launching a single rocket at a bridge when it was under it.
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Make my squad somewhat convincing as targets please. When a swarm of zombies or a Chameleon run past everyone else just to get to me it feels kind of ridiculous.
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If you have a unique theme, exploit it, don't ignore it. Resistance's theme was the cold and post WW2 setting yet somehow the Chimera don't need a cold climate any more? Why did so little of the game feel like it was set in the 50s? There should have been more stages like Chicago, more radio broadcasts (I always stopped to listen to them), more unmistakable 50s America decor, music and architecture etc. I want it obvious like Bioshock instead of being peppered by hundreds of bullets in craggy outpost X, canyon Y or field Z, and other such generic settings that could be in any game set in any era.
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Less bullets more atmosphere. This is a lot more subjective than the above but I LOVED it when I got some respite from being shot at by 10 Chimera whenever I popped my head up when instead it was just me, in a dark house, flashlight on and the sound of zombies hatching.
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Don't renegade on your company trademark just to copy COD4. Insomniac are well known for their eccentric guns and being able to carry a huge arsenal with you so why are there no new weapons (many removed from the first game) and why can I only carry two? If you're just going to conveniently place the best weapon for the job before each wave anyway how about just let me carry everything so I can decide for myself how to tackle things.
Phew, I think that's it. Anyone else find a lot to dislike in R2 despite all the good stuff?
Moioink on
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there's still a lot to love about a more traditional fps like resistance 1, when you're carrying all the weapons for a situation and throwing the ammunition about like take one of these and a few rounds of that and one of those in the face for you...
you can see that design ethic in the more generic theme you mentioned (less retrofuture, more sci-fi) and the more lethal weapons, which you mentioned. it's a bit of a shame.
Don't worry, other than the lame boss fight I described nothing there is a spoiler.
They took away my Hailstorm! ;( I blame Eurogamer.
There were no bosses outside of vehicle mini bosses, but the enemies were tough and fun to fight. There was narration explaining things outside of your actions. The 1950's theme and atmosphere were pretty much nailed. There were no (at least that I remember) one hit kill enemies. They had cool weapons, and you had them all - you were a walking arsenal. And though you had no squad members, you often had AI guys running around with you, and the Chimera targeted them as often as you.
edit - the guy who designed the Deadelus boss fight should be fired. That was atrocious. The normal Angels were harder to fight.
That said, the only things I -really- disliked about Resistance 2 were:
-Not a walking armory anymore. -No- explanation. "Well, I was an awesome supersoldier carrying 14 different guns, now I'm an awesome supersoldier (one of many) and...I can carry two different guns. Somehow a Revolver is just as encumbering as a Rocket Launcher."
-Drones. Fuck Drones. Not only did they really detract from the theme (I know, Sci-fi meets 50s, but really? A fucking swarm of flying robotic assholes just flies out from nowhere, just because?) Not to mention the goddamn Hunter Drones.
I was underwhelmed by the bosses, but not so much that I was bothered by it. (Except maybe
Really, I liked both games, but I imagine if I was forced to pick, I'd pick Fall of Man. I can only hope that for R3, they take what worked for both games, and make that it.
Also yes, drones were a horrible addition that detracted from the game.
Yes another unique thing from FOM *that worked well* abandoned for yet another invisible recharging health bar just to be more like COD4.
There are no Resistance comics or novels. There is an ARG, though I would call that fair game since, you know, they're absolutely free, and if you cared about the story you'd follow it. If you didn't, you wouldn't.
I've never read a Halo novel or comic book or whatever, but what story is there is fine and sufficient. There are people way more into it than I am that read the novels and stuff, and they're getting a completely different level out of enjoyment than I am. I'm fine with this, hell, I encourage that style of story-telling.
http://resistance.wikia.com/wiki/Resistance_(comics)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Resistance-Gathering-Storm-William-Dietz/dp/0345508424/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252376671&sr=8-12
Just my imagination then. I think it's fine to flesh out a game universe through means outside of the game but when the story told via the game has so many holes and continuity confusion that can only be filled by said other means, that is poor story telling. The player is expected to know who Shepherd is and how he became Daedalus (you're told the doctor made him but how? and why can he control the Chimera?) yet this was never explained in-game in the first place.
There is actually a Resistance comic. I read the first issue, found out that it was incredibly boring and didn't bother with the rest. It is/was released under DC's Wildstorm imprint.
Anyway, while I do think Resistance 2 was an incredibly mediocre game (outside of co-op), it's pretty easy to spot problems in hindsight. I'm sure they had good intentions going in, they probably just aimed way too high when they only had a year of full production to deliver.
Personally, I actually hope Insomniac ditch Resistance entirely at this point and come up with something actually interesting. Sure, I liked Resistance 1 but come on, how many shooters do we need on the PS3? Releasing Resistance 1+2, Killzone 2, MAG, SOCOM and Warhawk is overkill, especially when you include all the third party shooters available.
Some of the changes were explained in Resistance Retribution, which I'm okay with. If the story matters that much to you, you've probably played all the games in the series. Retribution covered a lot of things. The lack of conversion centers, why drones became so prevalent, where they got their fleet of WTFhuge spaceships from, what the Cloven are, and more. However, yeah, the stuff relating directly to Hale and the SRPA team being covered only in the ARG thing annoyed me. I don't like being forced to look outside of the games for key plot information.
Yeah the backstory was given out in the recon pacages scatered around the single player and the co op campaign. Was kinda fun putting the puzzle together, but there were still some holes to be filled. Over all the single player campaign was ok but nothing amazing and not as good as FOM. The boss fights were just meh cept for the one instance already mentioned. Also while the cutsceens were nice in 2 the map and naration method FOM used between missions realy made the story fit together in a nice coherent package.
Well I guess we can tell the impact that the comics and novel had then. :P
Still, if you really want to know, find out. They're available to you, if you care to find out.
Looks like I have some PSP gaming to do, those plot explanations sound neat (especially the Cloven) and yeah like you say it's the gaps relating to Hale that were frustrating and confusing. The game seemingly picks off from the end of FOM so it was not unreasonable of me to assume that I knew everything I needed to going into the game.
Yeah the backstory was given out in the recon pacages scatered around the single player and the co op campaign. Was kinda fun putting the puzzle together, but there were still some holes to be filled.[/QUOTE]
This is a case of Insomniac learning the wrong lessons from 2007's shooters. They should have gone with the Bioshock audio diary method. We could have got things like Shepherd murdering his neighbour, his enlisting to the army and his incarceration as he slowly became Daedalus as well as the obvious things like news bulletins.
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There's also the fact that it sold more simply because there were more people with PS3's, since the first was a launch title for the most expensive console this generation.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
I was always pretty excited about R2 when they were announcing things, and I would tell some of my friends about how they had to get it if they were into shooters since it would have all this cool junk like 8 player co-op and 60 layer multiplayer. On paper the game should have been awesome, but it ended up kind of missing a soul. It seems like they spent all this time working on all these different things and different setpieces and areas and just threw them together at the end when they realized they were near deadline. It feels like no one played the game afterwards to realize just how oddly disjointed it felt.
I still kind of liked it and didn't mind playing it. I had a bit of fun, but some of the frustrations mentioned in the OP like the chameleons kind of ruined things. Again, on paper they were cool, but in execution not so much.
Exactly how I feel.
R2 is better than R1, except they took out local story co-op. That seriously pissed me off.
This is so exactly how I felt. I rented this game and tried to get into it for months (yes, months) - I'm a huge Insomniac fan and was really stubborn, trying so hard to like it. I finally gave up and returned it. It just wasn't fun to play for me. The controls, the enemy placement, the lack of oomph in the weapons. Everything felt cartoony and weightless. It was so inexplicably different than the first game. Just add more levels and weapons - is that so hard? Not having campaign coop was the last straw.
I don't think I ever got past about the first 2 hours so if there was great stuff after that I missed it. Maybe it grows on you. I didn't like Tools of Destruction that much the first time I played it but the second time (just recently gearing up for the sequel) I enjoyed the hell out of it. Knowing myself, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I buy this from the pawn shop in a couple years and suddenly love it.
Also, I don't really think Insomniac has any clue what Resistance's identity is. Is it a Half-Life/Quake shooter (like Resistance 1) or a Call of Duty shooter (like Resistance 2)? Is there any point continuing the series if they don't know? Especially considering how many other shooters are on the PS3 (including first party games like MAG, Killzone, SOCOM, etc)?
Well, Insomniac did open that second studio, so they could probably work on 2 IP's with alternate yearly launches but still with a full 2 year development cycle on each.
They could always let Sony Bend continue working on it.