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GENRE: Sci-Fi First Person Shooter
CONSOLE: PlayStation 3
DEVELOPER: Insomniac Games
PUBLISHER: Sony Computer Entertainment America
RELEASE DATE: November 17, 2006

Insomniac creates a new franchise for the PS3 in 2006!
In Resistance: Fall of Man, the U.S. and Britain band together in a last-ditch effort to save Europe and Asia from a horrific scourge. In mere decades, the Chimera – a species of unknown origin propagating a virus that converts other life forms into more Chimera – has overrun Russia and all of Europe. Humanity's hope for survival is slim, and the tide of the battle rests on the shoulders of U.S. Army Ranger, Sgt. Nathan Hale.

GENERAL INFO:

- Insomniac Games has combined its passion for creating exotic weapons and vehicles with its proprietary physics system to create a unique human and Chimeran arsenal.
- Encounter a wide variety of fluidly moving characters and creatures that exhibit sophisticated behaviors and interact believably with each other and with intricate environments.
- A powerful proprietary rendering engine allows a greater variety of highly detailed and interactive environments resulting in an immersive console FPS experience. Experience the chaos of large, crowded battlefields and tense close combat within infested military command centers and decimated urban landscapes based on real locations in Great Britain.
- Features a story-driven single player campaign with multiple difficulty levels, co-op play through the single player campaign, offline multiplayer and one of the most complete online multiplayer offerings on a console.
- Greater processing power with PlayStation 3, higher storage capacity with BluRay and Dolby 7.1 surround sound output provide a truly immersive experience with next gen sights and sounds.

LITTLE TIDBITS:

- Rachel Parker, a member of British Intelligence, is the game's narrator.
- Time of day and weather will come into play, as well, as you'll find yourself guiding Hale through darkness and snowy environments that are thick with foes.
- There are sparse but effective tracks during combat and proper orchestral-influenced music during the story sequences, which gave it a cinematic feel that worked.
- Resistance's multiplayer will support no vehicles.

CONTROLS:

The game will utilize the tilt features as the way of breaking an enemy's grip when they are holding you, as well as other uses not being disclosed at this time.

Move: Left analog stick
Aim: Right analog stick
Zoom: R3
Primary fire: R1
Secondary fire: L1
Cycle weapon: R2
Cycle grenade: O
Crouch: L2
Jump: X

CHARACTERS:


Nathan Hale


Hale was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in November 1922. Shortly after his birth, his parents succumbed to lingering complications from the influenza epidemic of 1918. Without nearby relatives, he was declared a ward of the state. After drifting through a series of odd jobs, Hale enlisted in the U.S. Army where he was elected to the Inaugural Ranger Orientation Program.

During a live-fire exercise, he led an unconventional gambit against a mock target, which resulted in the deaths of most of his candidate group as well as several Army observers. Hale himself sustained grievous injuries. The incident was attributed to faulty munitions.
Hale's rehabilitation was conducted at the Army's Higgins Trauma Center in Montana. After dozens of intensive operations and exhaustive physical therapy, he finally returned to active duty.

After-action reports consistently described Hale as fearless in combat, an inventive tactician, and an able squad leader. Commanding officers rewarded him with increasingly higher-risk missions. Despite his successes, Army psychologists expressed concern over what they perceived as Hale's growing death wish.

The U.S. Army deployed in Britain to face the Chimeran threat. No sooner had they landed than thousands of soldiers were incapecitated by the Chimeran virus. Hale was the only victim to recover.



Rachel Parker


The daughter of a three-star general, Rachel Parker was restationed too often to ever know what a home was. The lifestyle was too much for her mother to bear; she left when Parker was six.

Parker became inseperable from her father. Despite her desire to join him in the military, he steered her instead toward a university education. Her eagerness to impress him led her all the way to the theoretical physics department at Oxford.

Before Parker could graduate, her father offered her the job she always wanted with British Army Intelligence. The Chimeran threat was just becoming known in British Intelligence circles and he needed someone he could trust to be a liaison for the military.

Parker and her father worked closely together at British Central Command until the Chimera invaded England and attacked the base. Parker's father died helping her escape.

She has continued to serve on the front lines in the war against the Chimera. Her brilliance at collecting and interpreting strategic intelligence is the only weapon that hasn't failed against them.

Parker has long since become accustomed to losing everything she's ever cared for. Still, she feels it might be different with Hale. She wants to believe the war against the Chimera can still be won. She finds herself willing to support long shots, even if they are American.

ENEMIES:


Advanced Hybrid


PSM describes these as a creature that you'll hate to fight because they are more intelligent [than the normal Hybrid] and know how to use heavy artillery.


Gray Jack


Gray Jacks don't appear to have an open lifepack. They also posess, despite their lanky appearance, incredible strength. GameSpot described them as being able to tear a man in half with ease. In an underground level, you see them emerging from tubes.



Hybrid


The Hybrid are the standard fighting force for the Chimera. They have guns and they survive with the lit tubes on their backs (that might contain an unknown gas essential for Chimera life - this can be found in many descriptions of the tubes flying off and giving off a voilent hiss, and the Chimera dying). They attack either with gunfire or violent blows with the butt of their gun. In a video interview, a Sony rep said that there would also be bigger Hybrids.


Leaper


These types of Chimera are smaller, but they come in large numbers. They swarm around the player and fellow soldiers, often climbing on their backs. Apart from jumping at the player, they appear to also be able to impale one's head with their sharpened legs.


Leonine Howler


This twisted creature is big and deadly and had an annoying penchant for ramming its targets. Worse still was its equally troublesome ability to live up to its namesake and call in reinforcements.


Menial


The Menial are creatures that are push-overs and are taken advantage of by the Chimera. They do the dirty work like moving experiments around or carrying explosives. They are slow moving creatures and have a zombie-like feel to them. However, don't underestimate them because they can tear your face off if you let them get too close (they're very aggressive).


Slip-Skull


These creatures are fast, agile, and like to use their Spiderman wall-crawling to their advantage. They leap around and usually appear in dark areas. They also have what appears to be turrets that are welded into the flesh.


Widowmaker


They can instantly kill a person by squishing them with their giant legs.

WEAPONS & VEHICLES:


Arc Charger (Chimeran)


The Arc Charger is a high-powered gun used by elite Chimeran soldiers. It shoots a bolt of lightning. The alternate fire allows said lightning to arc to nearby enemies.

Primary fire: Shoots lightning
Secondary fire: Chain of lightning

[hide=Auger (Chimeran)]


This Chimeran energy weapon packs a wallop, and can power up its shots even more by firing through solid objects. Defensively, it can be used to create a floating energy shield that only its [and other] Auger blasts can pass through.

Primary fire: Rapid fire (shoots through walls).
Secondary fire: Barrier Wall (shoots a wide shield).



Bullseye (Chimeran)


By using its alternate fire to "tag" an enemy with a single shot, the player can then shoot a rapid-fire stream of bullets that will home in on him from around corners. You can even tag the ground, then fire bullets that will swarm around the marker until you decide to send this "ball of death" flying at someone.

Primary fire: Rapid fire ''red plasma'' bullets.
Secondary fire: Shoots a ''tag'' that attracts all bullets. Shoot it a second time to send all the bullets on an enemy.


Grenade (Human)


We've seen the normal grenade, but there are other grenade types that are currently under wraps.

Primary fire: Normal frag grenade.
Secondary fire: N/A


Hailstorm

The Hailstorm is Resistance's take on the minigun. Its rapid storm of fire can ricochet from walls, increasing its lethality in confined combat. Its alternate fire converts the remaining contents of the clip into a turret that auto-targets and fires at enemies.

[hide=Hedgehog (Chimeran)]


Primary fire: Throws a grenade that spreads spikes everywhere when it explodes.
Secondary fire: N/A


L11-2 Dragon


The L11-2 Dragon is a standard flamethrower, but it shoots green flames instead of red ones. Its alternate fire has been labeled as a vapor cloud. No further information exists at the moment.


L23 Fareye (Human)



The Fareye is a deadly sniper rifle that lets you enter a "focus" mode where time slows and you can line up your shot.

Primary fire: Shoots.
Secondary fire: Focus mode with the scope.




LAARK (Human)


What makes this PSM's favorite weapon (besides the big booms) is that you can guide a missile after you fire it by aiming at a laser pointer. You can even put on the brakes and freeze the missile high up in the air until a worthy target appears, and fire off dozens of mini-rockets from its smoke trail by using its alternate fire mode.

Primary fire: Shoots a missile.
Secondary fire: Missile hover.




M5A2 Carbine (Human)


This assault rifle is the standard weapon of a human soldier. It gets the job done, but without too much pizzazz. It does, however, come with a 40mm grenade launcher attachment.

Primary fire: Rapid fire bullets.
Secondary fire: Missile launcher.


Reaper
A weapon that is a new twist on an old standby: dual-wielding pistols. While most games have both pistols aimed in the same direction, the Reapers are capable of independant firing. Consider R1 the right hand and L1 the left hand. When you hold down both buttons, the reticule splits off into two individual reticules. Your hands sweep the area, and a modest auto-lock from each pistol will then latch onto whatever enemy crosses its path. This is great for taking on lots of small Chimera.


Rossmore 236 (Human)


This shotgun-style human weapon does major damage up close, but it's a weak long-range option. Its alternate fire mode triggers both barrels at once for a massive blast, but the bigger recoil takes a little longer to recover from.

Primary fire: Single shot.
Secondary fire: Double shot.


XR-003 Sapper

Built by humans, but based on Chimeran tech, this is another weapon with tons of strategic potential. It spews out globs of goop which stick to any surface and can be piled up into almost any shape; it can even droop down from ceilings. Shooting one of the globs will set off a chain of explosions. Think of it as a trap-setting weapon; you could glob up an entire doorway to defend your position.

Primary fire: Shoots blobs of goop.
Secondary fire: Detonate.




Stalker (Vehicle)


The Stalker is a large spider-looking vehicle. Other details are unknown at this time.

ONLINE MULTIPLAYER:

- Up to 40 players can play in competitive matchtypes. The only one announced so far is Deathmatch. Resistance's multiplayer will be highly customizable and competitive with progressive rewards for hardcore gamers while remaining accessible and inviting for newbies. There will also be some sort of downloadable content.
- The game will have a full-featured online ranking system but Insomniac is keeping the details secret for now. They did stress that a big focus is being put on smart matchmaking, so that a new player who buys Resistance a year after launch will be able to play without having to get torn apart by the guys who bought the game on day one.
- There will also be the option to play unranked matches where the player will be able to configure the game however he wants by tweaking areas such as hit points, weapon sets, and much more. Popular player-created configurations may even be made into official new modes by Insomniac and offered as downloads. Conversely, ranked matches will have very limited configurations to keep the playing field level and fair for everone.
- Also, the game will run locked at 30 frames-per-second online and off, no matter how much action is going on. 60 FPS had been the plan, but the developers decided to add much more environmental destruction and special effects, so the tradeoff was made. Even in it's work-in-progress stage, we found that the game ran plenty smooth enough.

GENERAL STUFF:

- You can Play as either a human or a Chimeran Hybrid (the nasty fellow on this issue's cover), and each has its own advantages: double-tapping the L2 button will make a human sprint, or send a Hybrid into Rage mode (rage mode enhances your stats temporarily, letting you run faster, jump farther, and melee better), there is a trade-off for raging, however: you're constantantly heating up, and if you overheat, your life will start to drain. Furthermore, while a human will regain full health if he can avoid taking damage for a short time, Hybrids can't heal until their Rage meter has completely recharged.
- The weapon-spawn pods are circled by a series of lights that count down to the time a weapon will reappear. The radar in the upper-right corner of the screen shows all nearby enemies and allies unless they are slowly crouch-walking or standing still without firing. there is jumping in the game, but on a smaller, more realistic scale(it's nothing like those floating Halo-style leaps).
- Flat, circular fans are embedded in the ground in various places, and walking over one will launch you up to a higher area, one fun strategy we found was to balance ourselves at the top of the column of air, hovering there while firing down at enemies below; the up-and-down bobbing motion can make you a hard target.
- As an FPS fan would expect melee attacks are very powerful-two will drop an enemy to zero health, and just one hit will do it from behind. Also, the game will support full voice chat through the PS3's standard network chat function(no word yet if a headset will come bundled with the hardware).
- Map knowledge isn't as important in Resistance as it usually is in an FPS. This is because a lot of work has been put into designing the levels so that there isn't that typical one spot that everone rushes towards to grab the best weapon.
- Although the multiplayer in Resistance will support up to 40 players online, some of the larger maps will scale down to accommodate smaller groups.

MODES:

DEATHMATCH:

Kill as many people as you can. The person who reaches the frag limit first (or the person with the most kills when the time limit ends) wins. There will probably be Team Deathmatch.

MELTDOWN:

The goal is to take out the opposing team's base. This is, of course, easier said than done, as you'll be able to collect items that upgrade your team's base up to five times. The upgrades start off being low key, but they ramp up to extremely useful. Your first upgrade bumps up your radar to show enemies. The second spawns extra weapons. The third activates turrets in the corridors leading to your base. The fourth activates mine launchers. The final upgrade armors up the core of your base, making it invulnerable to attack and forcing would-be destroyers to take out nearby rods before they're able to focus on the core.

NODE:

This mode is an extension of Meltdown, in which two teams race to take over as many nodes as possible. Nodes are large chambers that contain several cylinders, you can re-configure the nodes for your team. Once you control a node, you can choose to re-spawn there after you die, adding strategy to the order in which your team goes after them. Meltdowns adds the twist that these nodes are actually coolants for each team's base, so by taking them over, you're overheating the enemy's headquaters. At certain heat levels a base's defenses will temporarily go down, allowing the opposing team to get inside and deal major damage.

BREACH:

Breach pits two teams against each other, with both trying to capturing the other's base, but features various nodes on the battlefield that add complexity to the fight. As a team captures a node -- by shooting out posts to make them regenerate in its team color -- part of its base becomes more secure against invaders. For players who want to try to Rambo through these added defenses, they can ignore the nodes, though it will make things much more difficult, and if the other team captures all the nodes, impossible.