Reviews// Resistance 3

This latest instalment of the Resistance series lets its gaze over an alternate history drift from the PS3 game’s former anti-hero, Nathan Hale, to his ultimate nemesis, Joseph Capelli.

Several years on from Hale’s departure and the defacto victory of the Chimera, Capelli has shacked up and gotten to making babies. Well, one baby to be precise - his son, Jack. “Shacked up” seems wholely appropriate given that the remains of humankind has gone underground, literally, to avoid detection. It’s beneath the streets of Haven, Oklahoma where the game begins Joa Capelli’s journey.

It’s a pathetic existence, cowering from the Chimera in tunnels and hideouts. Things get a good deal less appealing when Dr Malikov, who seasoned Resistance players will remember from previous games as the shady looking quack responsible for Hale’s “half-man, half-Chimera” pickle, springs the unsavoury news that the Chimera are using a giant tower in New York to mess with the Earth’s environment. The only hope for humanity is to trek to New York and destroy that tower. Naturally.

The introduction to the human refugees - Capelli and his family - is handled without too much of a heavy handedness, though the dropped mitten/“Daaaaddeeee” scene is cringeworthy and clichéd (not to mention misguided voice acting for Jack, Joe’s son), spoiling the impact the scene aimed for.

Later, as Capelli comes to accept the hopelessness of seeing his family again, the dialogue and direction is something other developers should to seek to emulate. Let’s just forget about the mitten scene though, okay?

Replaying those first sections in Haven, I was still suitably impressed by the visuals and it felt like the gameplay had been tightened up and improved slightly. These early battles reinforced my comments in the preview that this game has the distinct taste of a strategic shooter rather than the sharp tang of a run and gunner.

Working the environment to your advantage is introduced by way of these first sorties through the streets, yards and fields of this backwater nowheresville - training that comes in handy in later levels.

Since the first Resistance the series has featured level design that consisted of fairly tightly controlled boxed-in corridors channelling you through the world, interrupted by open areas providing a chance of more free-form action.

In Resistance 3 these open areas have expanded to the point where those corridors, though still used, are far less obvious. A perfect example is the boat ride up the Mississippi. Though effectively one long “on rails” corridor, the fact that you’re free to move around the a boat that is being assailed by all manner of mutant marauder neatly disguises this.

It also acts as a platform to deliver great segments of the story through narrative and visual setpieces, detailing just how deeply the Chimera have affected the planet and also demonstrating the widening divide between the feral Leaper and Grim Chimera and their military Hybrid brethren.

Capelli’s quest to reach New York takes him through a mining town over run by ferals, and into a prison where the Chimera are the least of your worries.

Through these areas the game shifts elegantly from tactical shooter to survival horror where sometimes “run and gun” is the obvious choice. Where the previous game introduced Grim’s cocoon pods scattered around just begging to burst open as you crept by, this time the place is littered with them.

At times the odds seem overwhelming, with dozens of Grims charging at you, but by this point you’ll have a wide array of weaponry to choose from thanks to the return to an inventory, limited only by the number of weapon types rather than the “pick two, any two” loadout of Resistance 2.