Resistance 3 review

The design principle of Resistance 2, seemingly, was escalation rather than careful iteration. Escalation of scale and difficulty without refinement or balance, descending into set-piece gazing, its monstrous bosses dislocating you from the spectacle when you should be centre stage. Resistance 3 presses the reset button on the previous game’s excesses and the delete button on Nathan Hale’s two-game narrative. With him out of the picture, you’re now in the shoes of a much more average Joe. New protagonist Joseph Capelli (Hale’s executioner) is a family man first and a fighter second, reluctantly on a trans-American mission to end the Chimeran assault at the heart of New York. We first find our hero hiding out in the wilds of Oklahoma with a ragtag bunch of survivors who frequent the halls of a crumbling underground abode, quipping as you pass and getting on with the daily grind. It’s an atmospheric piece of scene setting that’s more nuanced and delicate than the series has ever previously demonstrated. It’s also the most quietude the game offers: soon after, you’re plunged into an adrenaline-charged showdown across some picture-perfect wind-swept autumnal streets before setting off on your travels.

Resistance 3 doesn’t pause for breath; it takes in all of the traditional FPS scenarios – counter-sniping in the dead of night, escort missions and a spot of on-rails warfare – and throws as many weapon-based variables at them as it can summon up. Not all of Insomniac’s ideas bear fruit, but there’s enough verve to the set-pieces and fire in the game’s belly to excuse some of the missteps along the way. Boss battles are few and far between, the game focused more on quickfire engagements that demand constant consideration for the holy trinity of health, ammo and environment. It’s not Bungie-level strategy, but there’s a much more precise art to survival in Resistance 3 than the point-and-shoot procedures that defined its predecessor. You’ll die many times approaching a fight with the wrong attitude, so finding cover and exploiting flanking are essential considerations, the multi-tiered environments offering plenty of opportunity for seizing a tactical advantage, and the transition from detailed interiors to vast open expanses showing off Insomniac’s proprietary engine at its zenith. There’s little visual repetition in the game’s eight- to ten-hour campaign.

New guns come as thick and fast as the Chimera, and are the true stars of the show. While always inventive, Insomniac had previously struggled to find the perfect pacing to match its armoury. Here, there’s a fine art to picking out the weapons you take into the thick of it (all selected by a pause menu rather than managed on the fly, providing a welcome break for air). No sooner have you got to grips with the Auger’s X-ray shooting than you’re rattling off rounds with the Marksman, a whopper of a rifle, popping Chimera mid-flight like clay pigeons. While the gimmickry of the Chimera tech – from jetpacks to shield drones that need offing before their fleshy companions can be killed – makes the action kinetic, it can’t compensate for the AI’s incompetence. Enemies charge you down like bulls or choose open spaces from which to attack, the Chimera’s war philosophy favouring brawn over brain. But the few boss battles that are dotted through the campaign are much breezier and more animated affairs than before, a number involving some inspired destructible scenery, which goes some way to countering the shoot-the-red-bit grindwork.

For all its ideas, Resistance 3 remains staunchly old-fashioned, rejecting many tricks of the current FPS trade (you won’t find rechargeable health or a limit on how many weapons you can carry here, though there is a two-weapon swap system) to remain true to more well-trodden paths. There’s a distinct sense of a developer playing to its own strengths and having fun with it; aware of its own ability and keen not to overstretch itself. Secondary fire is clearly one of Insomniac’s passions, and this opportunity to vent the science-fiction lunacy that has come to define the developer’s oeuvre, whether it’s the Magnum’s detonation rounds or the Bullseye’s triple lock-on, delivers new, more elaborate way to play with fire.

Playing to the studio’s strengths also means that there’s little narrative depth to Joseph Capelli’s story. Dialogue is minimal and infrequent – reserved mostly for characters’ monologues – as Insomniac tells its story visually, with rich environments and detailed, evocative set-dressing. In the thick of a brutal showdown it’s encouraging to see a developer putting thought into the way its civilisation has been torn down around you, the memories of past tenants, old hangouts heavy in the air. If the team has learnt from other FPSes, it’s obviously the fragile, threatened worlds of Metro 2033 and Half-Life 2, games that harness their worlds to carry story and set the mood.