Resistance 2

There's no doubting the scale of this sequel, but does Insomniac's opus get everything right?

	Version PlayStation 3	Developer Insomniac	Publisher SCE	Genre FPS

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If the ambience is a little undecided, the mission and objective structure can be a little conventional. At its worst it has recourse to all the old sudden-death, trial and error shenanigans we're hoping developers will dispense with on some hallowed future occasion, along with global poverty and Peaches Geldoff. The chief offenders are two of the game's new enemies: the aquatic Furies, who kill you stone-dead if you venture into deep water, and the Chameleons, who sidle up Predator-style and rend you to gorey lumps if you fail to detect the shimmer of their camouflage. The level script tends to signal its intentions by way of timely weapon drops, handing you a shotgun or the crowd-churning Splicer rifle just before you walk into an ambush from hundreds of screeching Grim hatchlings. Boss encounters are even more formulaic, despite their scale, hinging on the use of one-shot wonders such as the LAARK rocket launcher or the Pulse Cannon against tell-tale vulnerable bits.

It's hard to nail down the point at which all this stops being merely diverting and, despite the above criticisms, becomes rather brilliant. Perhaps it's Insomniac's aptitude for epic, evolving cinematic backdrops, which rival God of War at their best: megalithic alien weapons of war blotting the skies above flaming skyscrapers. Perhaps it was the time I was hurling rockets at a giant biomechanical squid from the precarious safety of a floating platform, and noticed that the platform bucked and heaved realistically on the water as I moved around it.

I suspect your appreciation will depend on how long it takes you to unearth the genius of the weapons, each with its own tricksy combination of primary and secondary fire. Like all the best design decisions, many of Resistance 2's master strokes are also its least obvious: the Magnum pistol feels like a minor gimmick till you learn to time the detonation of its explosive rounds, which transform any felled opponent into a remotely triggered mine.

At first glance the Wraith chaingun is just a one-size-fits-all room-clearer, made all the more unstoppable by a fancy mobile shield, but with great power comes great sluggishness - there's a brief but crucial interval before you fire as the barrel spins to an appropriate velocity, and you won't be able to hop around like your Magnum-wielding mates. The Marksman is a potent long-range semi-automatic best suited to the "peep out, pick off" style of gunplay; its alternative fire launches a short-lived ball of static electricity which zaps anything near its flight path, useful indeed when the Chimera mount a determined group assault. The Splicer rattles out homing shuriken for dismemberment en masse; in a nod to Gears of War's Lancer, it can be revved up to launch projectiles which lodge in enemy bodies, chewing away at their health bars in a deliciously icky fashion.

The counterintuitive Bullseye and Auger rifles make a welcome return alongside a new grenade launcher and tweaked versions of the Carbine, Rossmore shotgun and Fareye sniper rifle (complete with handy time-stopping power-up). Bullseyes scatter rounds ineffectively at mid-range unless you tag your target with secondary fire, whereupon your projectiles will home in with lethal accuracy; you can also fire a tag into the scenery and pour shots at it to create an impromptu grenade. The Auger's primary fire tunnels through all materials, letting you pull off many an underhand kill from behind cover, but it can also dump static force barriers for frontline support.

And just as you're getting to grips with these options, the level design steps up to the plate, rolling out scenarios which are not just visually spectacular (Chicago in particular is stunning) but cater to the flexibility of your arsenal. Later on Hale has to invade a two-floored Louisiana farmhouse ringed with reeds and ferns, slow-mo sniping the Chimerans as they charge out wildly in search of the aggressor, before switching to the Magnum for room to room combat. The tables are immediately turned, as you requisition a Bullseye and Auger from the wreckage to defend your capture against a fearsome counterattack. Shortly afterwards a Marauder (imagine the offspring of a Bullfrog and a T-Rex) comes thundering out of the treeline to vomit acidic self-propagating matter through windows and doorways, and you must clamber to the roof to put a rocket or two up its hooter. At times like this the predictable yet punctual scripting, level design and flexible arsenal unite to fantastic effect - and the fact that your enemies are as able with each peculiar weapon as you are keeps you on your toes.

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