I just finished the second level in what I think is San Francisco…remember when people thought that cityscape with the Chimeran ships was CG? Anyway, if I were to compare this to the first two levels in Resistance 1, I think the game starts off on a much better but still fairly weak foot.

Considering that the first two levels of Resistance are the ugliest, most boring, most generic levels in the entire game, Resistance 2 does improve on that. The first level is still boring but at least it isn’t all that ugly (I really like the way the grass looks), but it still is annoyingly contained. For all the talk of scope, you only see a giant open field once or twice in the entire level and your entire interaction with the goliath tank things is shooting their weak spots for massive damage. I’m surprised Insomniac couldn’t come up with something at least a little more engaging than Giant Enemy Crab. Still, the encounter with the Daedalus was cool. Hale’s voice is totally weird—it sounds like he’s being voiced by two different actors sometimes. GET OFFAAAA MEEEEEEEE okay ouch.

I really feel like the core fundamentals of the game have been significantly improved. I love the way the weapons feel (the carbine feels really powerful to me) and the models are prettier than in the multiplayer. The laser rifle thing is really sweet…I love the beeping and the lights lighting up on the side of the gun to let you know when you can fire. Enemies react especially well when you shoot them now (which is a nice visceral improvement over Resistance 1), and there is a fairly big helping of gore (I’m not a gore nut but it does help to let you know you’re actually hitting the target). The aiming is nice and tight and I feel like the ironsights work really well to improve accuracy, which is something I questioned during the beta. It varies from weapon to weapon—I didn’t use it much for the carbine, but I used it almost exclusively for the Bullseye.

 The first level was just boring, and so was the first half of the second level. I understand they are going for the “last stand” motif, but it is kind of annoying to do objective A only to have objective A not matter, and then head to objective B and then have objective B not matter. Haha, why not just not play the game! The corridor shooting of the first half of the second level is tame and boring. You never engage more than three or four enemies at a time, and they seem to just stand in place or charge you.

 I was really quite blown away when you emerge from the substructure and see the giant ships in the skyline. If nothing else, they are visual eye candy for a game that sorely needed it, but it really does help to convey just why objectives A and B failed. The game wasn’t really doing that up to that point—just of breaches. The game has more breaches in the first 20 minutes than the New Orleans levies (too soon?).

 But yeah, once you get topside I thought the level improved dramatically. Lots of big firefights, some interesting level design with branching paths, good opportunities to experiment with a number of weapons, and then the boss fight at the end of the level I thought was pretty great. The water in this game is beautiful! It seems like once you get outdoors, you really see what the game can do. Indoors looks stunningly like Resistance 1, which is extremely disappointing. The outdoor cityscapes are really nuts though. It blew my mind that the game was rendering those enormous ships (like 20 of them…) AND rendering the game at the same time.

The claim that the enemies only fire on you and not on your marine squad is untrue. I pulled back purposefully to test the AI of those big giant Boomer things (awesome encounters with two of them towards the end of level 2 I thought) and they started firing (and killed ) on my buddies. The chimera in general don’t seem all too bright, but there are a lot of them. I found a number of them just charging into a wall completely oblivious to my presence. In terms of health, I feel like you don’t have a ton of it but you regenerate it really quickly.

The game is going to be made or broken for me based on which path it takes from here on out. If we go back indoors to corridor shooting, it’s probably going to have to pull out some major stops to continue to remain entertaining. If it is more like the second half of level two, then I am going to enjoy it.

 I don’t have any problem with scripting in general as long as the scripts are interesting—Call of Duty 4 is a game I’d call boring almost uniformly (obvious exceptions remain outstanding). The scripting in level 1 was extremely boring.

So I am pleasantly surprised so far. The multiplayer strikes me as messy and unfocused. Cooperative is sorely missing in the campaign and I am very unhappy with that abortive “MMO” nonsense they came up with. MMOs are blights on gaming.