Insomniac Games has long been known for destructive games with awesome weapons, but they’ve traditionally had a more whimsical feel than their latest Resistance: Fall of Man does.

About a decade ago, they released their first game with Disruptor on the PS1. They followed this largely overlooked game with two killer franchises – they developed the first three Spyro the Dragon games and then wowed PS2 gamers everywhere with the Ratchet and Clank series. Both Disruptor and the Ratchet and Clank games are widely renowned for their innovative and creative weapon systems, something that has carried over into Resistance, but this game has a decidedly more mature theme.

Critics and gamers alike have been salivating with anticipation over this title since it was still code-named I-8. Details were sparse at first, but it sounded better and better as more emerged. Resistance, as it turns out, takes place in an alternate timeline where World War II never happened. That’s right – this is the absolute antithesis of the WWII shooter…or is it?

When you start this game, you’ll fill the role of Nathan Hale, an American soldier fighting against the Chimera. In this alternate history timeline, the mysterious and deadly Chimera have invaded Asia and most of Europe. You’ll fight as part of mankind’s last line of defense against these nasty, snaggletoothed beasts, and you’re going to do it First Person Shooter style. While the timeline tells you that there was no second World War in this universe, the appearance of the soldiers, weapons and environments – especially in the first few hours - pretty much scream Call of Duty. Putting these futuristic aliens into a retro setting was an interesting idea, but it fuels a serious disconnect between the player and the game. There was always a constant conflict between the screen and my brain. I spent a good deal of effort trying to convince myself of the era I was fighting in, and it consistently felt like it just didn’t mesh.

OK fine, so due to the timeline it still feels like a WWII shooter with aliens playing the Nazis. At least this is a PS3 game, so the graphics have got to be eyeball-melting, mind-blowing, shiny, sugary goodness, right? Well, no, not so much. Sure, it looks good, and it’s probably the best looking launch title on the PS3, but it feels like that’s what they were aiming for – a great looking launch title. This game’s graphics simply will not hold up six months from now. The lack of dynamic effects like lighting and destructive environments make this game feel like it’s not up to the task of being the PS3’s powerhouse. To make matters worse, if you’re stuck playing this game on a standard definition television, you may just think you’re playing a hi-res PS2 game. Everything looks remarkably worse in SD, even more so than is usually the case; and the already subdued lighting effects are nearly completely unnoticeable in 480i. The biggest disappointment with R:FoM still isn’t the graphics, however.

If you love shooters, the last few years have been awesome for you – and I love FPS games. There’s no doubt that nearly every FPS fan has played Half Life, Halo and Call of Duty by now. If you’ve played any of these games – especially Half Life 2 – you already know exactly what you’re in for with Resistance. The gameplay, aside from the weaponry, does absolutely nothing new. The head crabs (face-huggers, parasitics, whatever you want to call them) in this game were practically pulled out of…well, every shooter ever made. Little angry insect things that want to hump your face are practically more prevalent in the FPS genre than the guns are, and they may be my favorite FPS cliché, but it’s still getting old. Other enemies from this game feel similar – like they’ve pretty much taken concepts from another game and re-skinned them. It was disappointing that nothing new was done with character design, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise that nothing amazing was done with AI, either. Sure, it gets hard at times, and especially so on the higher difficulty settings, but it was pretty much plain vanilla run and gun, with minimal cover use. The enemies will follow you if you retreat, so they do have a little intelligence; but they’re not up to snuff of what the Cell processor should be doing. The guys at Insomniac have done a great job of enemy placement, however. If you’re looking for a flanking position on a mounted gun, you can pretty much count on an emplacement of enemies right where you think you’ll be safe. If there’s anything in this game that took me by surprise, it’s rounding a quiet corner only to be assaulted by an entire squadron of ugly alien dudes with big guns. At least I think those are dudes. Let’s just say that if those are the ladies, I’d hate to see the guys of this species…

Speaking of alien guns, that's the one area where this game really stands out. Anybody who’s played a Ratchet and Clank game is most certainly familiar with Insomniac’s style of weapon design, and while it may not be as cool in Resistance as it is in Ratchet, there’s still some cool variety. The first example you’ll find in-game is the Bullseye. If you hit an enemy with a “Bullseye Tag,” any further bullets fired will curve around to strike them down, like a homing device. You’ll also find guns that shoot through walls or deploy mini-turrets (just like in R&C). As cool as these weapons are, I almost always found myself using the good ol’ double barrel shotgun and standard issue machine gun more than anything else. I feel like more of an emphasis should have been placed on needing to use these weapons, but instead they come off feeling like toys put there to distract you. After you beat the game, more powerful weapons will be added to your arsenal, another R&C carryover, but you’ll need to have the patience to actually make it through the whole game first. As cool as any of these guns were, the awesomeness of the grenades seemed to eclipse the other weapons. My favorites are the Hedgehog, which releases a spray of pernicious spikes when it explodes, and the Air Fuel Grenade which first releases a cloud of fuel that then ignites to cause massive damage.

The unfortunate truth about Resistance: Fall of Man is that it’s just not all it should have been. It’s probably one of the best launch titles from any console ever, but with the extra time they had before release it should feel like a solid year-one title. It doesn’t. Sure, it’s fun to play for now, but only because there’s absolutely nothing else to play on your 599 US dollar PS3. The weaponry was distinctly Insomniac, but that’s the only area of this game that had any sort of innovation. These guys can do better, and with this much money, time and power, they should have done better. It’s generally accepted that R:FoM will be the start of a series of games, and I don’t know if that’s a great idea. I’ll certainly give any Insomniac game a chance, but you’re going to have to do a lot better to impress us here at the Alliance. Even though this game may be very solid next to its launch-time PS3 companions, it doesn’t hold it’s own in open water. If you want to find out what this game is all about, we highly recommend that you just play Half Life 2 instead, since Resistance ends up feeling like a cheapened version of some of our favorite games.