I never did play through much of Resistance: Fall of Man, I must be honest. An hour on the story, an hour of multiplayer and the game was relegated to my shelf to gather dust. Sure I mightn’t sound the most qualified to be reviewing the sequel to Sony’s ‘Halo-killer’, but what I have played through is just about every other big name shooter to hit the market. From Call of Duty 4 to Half-Life 2, there is no genre I like more than a bit of the ol’ FPS. So with Resistance 2 hitting shelves, I thought I’d take a look at what I’ve been missing out on.

First impressions started well enough. The year is 1951 and in this alternative history, World War 2 never occurred and Earth is instead fending off attacks from the extra terrestrial Chimera. Continuing where the last instalment left off, you crash land on Iceland to fend off the invasion as giant alien walkers crush the landscape. It all looks very impressive as you jet set around the world tackling the likes of Kraken, towering 80 ft behemoths and swarms of newly hatched Chimera before tackling the invasion head on from inside the mother ship. In writing it sounds like a sight to behold, but it doesn’t take long to realise that these terrific-looking backdrops and set pieces serve little more than a matte painting to create the illusion of spectacle. You never feel as if you’re truly interacting with them. Boss creatures can typically only be attacked when the game allows and in a particular fashion. Even if an enemy is susceptible to rockets, your attacks will only count when the game allows, which can leave you stuck if you waste all your ammo prematurely.

It’s not just the large set pieces that feel scripted, Resistance 2 would have to be the very definition of an on-rails shooter. There is no alternate path to deviate to. No chance to backtrack. You proceed down alleys and corridors, walking through event triggers and finding yourself rushed by the enemy. Sense danger up ahead? Hard luck, deal with it.

With the world so dependent on trigger points it never feels as if you’re fighting in a war. The world feels empty, devoid of life. The world is worse for wear, but it never feels as if anyone lived there to begin with. Houses feel generic and impersonal.

In fact for a period piece, Resistance 2 fails to capture any distinction that the title is set in a by-gone era. Having immersed myself as of late in cult ‘50s television shows and movies, Resistance 2 felt comparatively modern by comparison. Sure you’ll stumble across the odd Buick or Chevy, but the architecture itself is of a timeless style and dialogue is delivered with typical modern macho flavour. Compared to the likes of Bioshock, Resistance 2 feels like little more than a themed amusement ride. It does nothing to add life to the world or make the game feel anymore than generic.

True to form, Resistance 2 gains flavour from its unique weapon set and alternate fire modes, with all the returning favourites and a couple new inclusions for good measure. My experience with Fall of Man might have been limited, but one change can’t be overlooked. Where previously you could carry every weapon through the game, you are now restricted to holding just two at any one time. Why Insomniac implemented this change is beyond me. Perhaps it was to strive for that ‘realism’ of every other modern shooter? It’s anyone’s guess why they didn’t swap the colour palette for a sole mix of browns and greys while they were at it.

The point in a limited arsenal is to force you to judge the situation ahead and proceed with the optimum weaponry, at least that’s the way I’ve always seen and appreciated it. In Resistance 2 often you are forced to decide what weapons you think would be best, without knowing what lies ahead. You’ll be forced to decide before jumping down a ledge into the next event trigger and consequent checkpoint, unable to change your mind. Pick the wrong set and you will find frustrated beyond belief. Even still enemies take a lot of bullets before they go down and with only two weapons on hand I found myself simply running out of ammo time and again. It wouldn’t be so hard, but empty weapons litter the ground, making it an absolute bitch at times to find a weapon with ammo left or switch between three on the fly. In the middle of a firefight it gets to be straight up infuriating. You will find yourself dying. A lot.

It’s not that the enemies are hard, more often than not it is just because Resistance 2 favours difficulty in numbers. Be it countless wave upon wave of enemy repeating the same pattern or forcing you to repeat the same task three times simply to be a pain the ass, it removes all care. It wouldn’t be so hard, except that your own A.I. are more often hopeless and completely oblivious. Not only are they rarely attacked themselves, most notably when swarmed by the running based hatchling Chimera, but they rarely help you out even when you’re being mauled to death right behind them.

Not even the plot can save this puppy. Its loosely tied together, largely unexplained and serves only to string the campaign along. You jet set around the world from location to location without any sense of real connection between locations. My congratulations must go out to Insomniac on the final cut-scene though, glad to see a developer willing to end a game so suitably. The single player campaign is bland, repetitive and a chore to get through.

I’d be beating around the bush if I weren’t to acknowledge that for many players, multiplayer is really the meat of the package. In one of Resistance 2’s better moves, it provides a co-operative experience that is removed from the single player campaign, allowing up to eight players to fight side by side through an all new team-based campaign that runs parallel to the single player campaign. Players are assigned the different roles of Medic, Soldier or Special ops, banding together to tackle the Chimera and complete randomised objectives. It’s unique to see a co-operative mode that hasn’t simply been tacked on, but with eight players it just makes the game feel all the more like a shooting gallery, charging through wave after wave of enemy, backed up by constant respawns.

That just leaves competitive multiplayer to round out the package. Sporting traditional favourites like team deathmatch and capture the flag, competive play is solid but level design and overall gameplay still pales compared to such console kings as Gears 2, Halo 3 or CoD: WaW.

Resistance 2 feels as if it has tried to combine elements from every great shooter of this generation, but has merely supplied a façade and failed to capture the real essence of the games it borrows from, be it the rich nostalgic atmosphere of Bioshock, the realism of Call of Duty 4 or the boss battles from Gears of War. Resistance 2 sports all the tellings of big budget first party release. It sounds great, it looks great and controls just fine. The size of the budget is never a guarantee for the scale of a game's enjoyment though and Resistance 2 left me underwhelmed and expecting more. It looks impressive on the surface, but linear corridors and countless trigger points leave the single player campaign feeling cheap and dated. Multiplayer support is robust for both competitive and co-operative players alike and should still tide over returning fans that are just looking for a bit more action online. Resistance 2 is far from a horrible game, it’s just rather forgettable in a genre already overflowing with greatness.