The PlayStation 3 may have had one of the worst rated launches of all time, but that hasn’t kept it from putting out a completely functional game. Considering that the best praise that I can muster for Resistance is that it does not over fall at any point during the presentation should say something. Well, here is some real praise: It will possibly hold you until March when some good games come out.

The moments that Resistance makes me believe it is a better game revolve directly around the weapons used. The game itself is made by Insomniac, famed for the Ratchet and Clank games, who’s influence is felt heavily with every round fired. This is the type of game that Insomniac has been waiting to make for years. (The last couple of Ratchet games have been able to have been have been entirely playable in first person perspective.) The game falls apart when I began to realize that the level of detail put into a single level of any Ratchet game (with the exclusion of Deadlocked) has been stretched to fit the entirety of this game.

Resistance never seems to rise from the ashes of being a World War Two shooter, but this time with more innovative weapons and “infected” humans taking the place of Nazis. It is a change of pace, but not far enough from the next Call of Duty game.

The game never fails, but it never won me over either. It feels empty and unpolished. Computer controlled allies barely classify as cannon fodder, never surviving more then one or two encounters with an enemy. Even on the off chance that you manage to take out all the enemy units before they slaughter your friends, they quickly spout out “I’ll hold this area,” or another very similar line before standing completely still and never moving again.

On a standard definition TV the game looks exactly like every other shooter that has come out in the last year: soulless and empty. Most levels lack polish or detail; I was never wowed by anything the game did. The aliens look like something that crawled out of the ground during Half-Life, and the core world are something that was directly stolen from one of the many Call of Duty games. Even the inventive weapons end up looking like something that has been done before on another game.

The plot is a collection of left-over pages from Halo, Half-Life and Gears of War. An infection comes from somewhere, (the Flood from Halo) no one really knows why you aren’t infected or why you seem to keep being in the right place at the right time (Half-Life) and the entire time you keep being used as the only reliable tool (Mainly Gears, but also every other first person shooter ever).

When Resistance introduces a character that isn’t supposed to and explode meaninglessly they are taken instantly out of the action. At one point in the game you free a woman (the narrator) from being infected and a hatch magically blows off allowing her to escape by crawling through. Neither she, nor you ever really questions where the hatch goes, whether it leads to a meat grinder, or a hole that is placed in every cell that leads directly to freedom (Which more and more cells seem to be equipped with days). The awkward interactions between the main character and others conjure memories of Ratchet, but the humor comes from how poorly and forced everything is acted out.

Multiplayer maps are massive, intricate and lag free. Everything designed that way for a reason. The problem is that most games consist of close to 40 men while the map feels as if it was designed for 80. It is not uncommon to spend 30 seconds to a minute exploring a map, finding new areas, and never once run into someone else.

Most of the fighting in multiplayer takes place on or in the key locations that can be found easily. One of the most memorable places is a church that has three floors and a roof area. The bottom level is where most of the fights take place as people try to gain the higher areas. As you climb or take one of the many air vents up to the next level, it is not uncommon to see ten people fighting over higher ground with ten others. The second floor is more of the same, as people fight to gain the chance for the prime sniping location of the roof. All of this is balanced out by random spawns on every section of the church.

Lag is never an issue because there is no voice chat at any time. That frees up a ton of bandwidth that the 360 was clearly wasting allowing you to bark orders at other people on your team. It might also help that I was never once able to get into a ranked game before writing this review, but I have gathered that is not an uncommon experience.

It’s a strong possibility Resistance was rushed at the last minute to meet launch. It would’ve easily have been outstanding if it had been given another six months. Cut-scenes are done in black and white stills, almost crying out “placeholder” which is exactly what the game ends up telling everyone who rushed out to buy a PS3 this month

Score: 7/10