Reviews// Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)

Hollywood has more than a passing acquaintance with rewriting history. Its screenwriters have a flair for World War 2 revisionism; ensuring it's their all-American boys capturing the German U-boats, cracking the Enigma cypher, and single handedly leading the D-Day landings. With Resistance: Fall of Man, Insomniac Games takes Hollywood by the ear, pokes a finger in its eye and says to hell with messing with the odd historic event, let's take a thick black marker pen and redact world history from the end of the Second World war.

With the end of WW2, the Soviet Union closed its borders and withdrew behind the iron curtain - a perfect environment for xenophobia to flourish. In 1938 reports began to secret biological experiments, followed by tales of deserted cities and mass annihilation at the hands of a freakish creatures.

After 10 years contained within the Eastern Bloc, the horde, now known as the Chimera, broke through into Europe. It overran the continent in a matter of weeks, and Britain was just a small stretch of water away from invasion. By 1951 the invaders had burrowed under the Channel and taken most of Britain - the Chimera was days from crushing the country.

In July 1951 the US Rangers launched an assault on the east coast of England. The mission was to rendezvous in York to collect a British secret weapon, but with the British contingent ambushed in Manchester, the Rangers entered York with no backup and were all but wiped out in a matter of minutes.

It's in these final minutes that you take the role of Sergeant Nathan Hale, soon to become the last surviving US Ranger. It doesn't take long to get to grips with dispatching Chimera, as the early portions are limited to one a handful of variants; armed and unarmed Chimera, plus a the crawlers that pounce just when you least expect. Progress is pretty rapid, taking you to different parts of Britain in an attempt to drive out the Chimera.

The choice of locations is quite entertaining in itself. London, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and York are all major cities, so their selection is pretty understandable. Why a west coast US developer would choose Grimsby as the location the Chimera's processing plant is quite baffling. Later there's a run through Cheddar Gorge, another puzzling choice.

All locations are vague renditions of the real-world cities, playing host to the memorable landmarks such as York's city walls and London's Trafalgar Square. It's apparent, though, that in the interest of game play, realistic street layouts have been rejected in favour of entertaining ones. Given that Insomniac is rewriting history here, I'll let this slide.

Getting around is accomplished with the usual techniques of running, strafing, crouching and jumping. Later you get commandeer vehicles - more on that in a bit. Sadly the path is extremely linear, with barricades and wreckage ensuring you stay on the intended path. This renders jumping of little use until the path dictates a leap over a ridge or gap. There's never a time when you think "perhaps I can get onto that crate, over the bus and take a more secure vantage point". It's also disappointing to find no sprint option - in the campaign mode at least. Though the linearity of the game ensures you never really need to backtrack, there are times when it would be advantageous to move from cover to cover more rapidly, and occasionally you will need to head back to pick up health and ammo.

Once you're beyond the introductory section, health becomes a strategic element. It's broken into four sections. When a section is only partially depleted, it will automatically refill after a short pause. This is incredibly useful when you're taking heavy fire but are able to find good cover, as you can step out, attack, withdraw and wait for a recharge. You'll soon find, however, that the Chimera also share this quality, so when you take one down you'd better be sure it's down for good, as the critters have a tendency to get back up with near full health if left unchecked.