• Posted September 23rd, 2008 at 22:19 EDT by
• 46 Comments

(continued from previous page) ...and it serves as your best defense against the Chameleons later on. Now, you dominate the Chameleons, then Hale and his team must take out some annoying flying drones. They swarm in droves throughout the level; they're easy to destroy, but irritating nonetheless. Later in Orick, the best part of my single-player hands-on experience came when I was being hunted down by multiple Chameleons. Never before has my adrenaline been so high while playing a game. These sneaky monsters come stampeding towards you, cloaked and intimidating with their loud stomping and ground-shaking steps.

Moving onto the eight-player co-op campaign, I was able to get a few moments in playing as the special ops and soldier classes. What many at the event said about co-op was true; it surprisingly feels a lot like an instance in World of Warcraft where you and your teammates go from arena to arena taking on increasingly harder enemies. As you injure and kill enemies, you rack up experience points, leveling up your character. The experience unlocks new equipment such as armor and weapons as well as badges that give your character class new abilities. The abilities -- ranging from enhanced shields to healing -- can be mixed matched between classes.

According to Ted Price, there will be sections of the co-op campaign that pit players against over 100 enemies in a single frame simultaneously. Now I only experienced fighting about 40 or 50 at the same time, but that in and of itself was very intense. In a brief chat with Insomniac's multiplayer lead Mike Roloson, I was told that co-op will feature completely new boss battles outside of the single-player campaign, meaning that if you play both campaigns, you will be exposed to completely new enemies not available in the other modes. Also, players who put time and effort into all three modes -- single-player, co-op, and multiplayer -- rather than just sticking to one will level much more quickly. Plus, you'll unlock trophies, such as the all hailed Platinum trophy, which is earned by completing both campaigns, reaching max level, and unlocking all badges, armor, and weapons.

Finally, we come to competitive multiplayer. Looking for a lag free, 60-player online battle that supports badges, massive environments, soldier classes, and an insane amount of stats? If so, Resistance 2 is your game. Right from the start, players are immersed into a frantic mission based multiplayer that has squads playing tug-of-war over contrasting objectives. Those who don't stick to their squads and run amuck can get easily lost in the sheer size of the maps. There are four maps in total and they are sectioned off to smaller areas depending on the number of players and mode selected. One of the facets I found most amazing about the online was that despite 60-player play and the immense size of the maps, everything was still highly detailed and ran without hiccups.

Probably the most enjoyable weapon I used in multiplayer had to be the newly introduced Splicer, which can be used as both a melee weapon and long range shredder. Basically, by holding down the alternate fire, the saw blade spins red hot and anything that you run your blade into is "spliced" into pieces. Then for regular fire, simply shoot and hit your targets with as many saw blades as possible, and eventually they either explode or die. Another nifty trick is to spin the blade red hot and then fire it into an enemy, watching it work its way into their bodies and deal damage over time.

Now in terms of Trophies, Home, and downloadable content, Roloson did confirm that all will be supported. He said that he hasn't really seen anything on Home as the Resistance Room is being developed by another group inside Insomniac, but everything should be ready for when Home launches later this year. As for Trophies, you can unlock them by simply killing enemies in particular ways -- reaching 100 headshots is one -- or completing sections of the game like taking down the Leviathan. One of the Trophies that sadly wasn’t approved for the final game had to do with killing a T-bagger. According to Roloson, if you spot someone in multiplayer kneeling on a dead body and you kill them, you'd ... (continued on next page)