My experience with Resistance: Fall of Man only lasted about thirty minutes before I put the controller down with little desire to pick it up again. The interesting thing is I don't think there was anything particularly wrong with the game. I was more put off by the shooter controls on the PS3.
Perhaps it's because I'm too familiar with the 360 controller, but the PS3 controller just felt awkward in a shooter. I couldn't really put my finger on it, but something about the analog sticks felt off... either their position or feel. Also, for some reason PS3 developers keep wanting to put the fire buttons on L1/R1 instead of the more trigger-like L2/R2.
The lack of a useful cover system threw me for a loop as well. Console shooters aren't required to have a cover system to be good (see CoD4), but without airtight controls, the gameplay experience without cover felt rather lackluster to me. The minute to minute experience felt like wrestling the avatar into the position I wanted rather than moving through a battlefield.
I might have been able to slog through the weak tactile experience if the fiction carrot was tempting enough... but the seemingly flat retrospective into an alternate history where aliens invade in the WWII era didn't really do it for me. I know narrative is rarely a strong point for a shooter, but there have been enough that do it well (or at least better) that it's hard to get pulled in by a relatively weak delivery of fiction.
While the game certainly shows off the graphical capabilities of the PS3, it unfortunately highlights the strong foundation that the 360 has in the shooter market. And when you're making a console that appeals to the core gamer, that genre is not the one in which you want to take second place.
Labels: consoles, critique, games
