Resistance: Fall of Man Review

Launch games are usually compromised and this one wears its compromises openly. The Chimera invasion of postwar Britain is a strong premise that the campaign renders as a long series of brown and grey corridors, and the mission structure is a march through Manchester, Nottingham and London with little sense of place beyond the signage. The writing is a documentary voiceover doing the work the levels do not. What redeems it is Insomniac doing what Insomniac does, which is weapons.

The Bullseye tags a target and lets you fire around cover at it, the Auger shoots through walls and raises a shield, and the Hedgehog fires a mine that detonates outward in spikes. Half the roster has a genuine idea in it, which was rare in a genre then converging on rifle and shotgun. The multiplayer supported forty players online at a time when consoles were arguing about sixteen, and it ran. The campaign is competent rather than memorable, and the guns are why anyone still talks about it.