Editor’s note: This review was written by Derek Barsaleau, a student at Full Sail University. Derek has been playing games since he was 3 years old, starting on the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. Eventually, he graduated to the NES in 1986 and never looked back. Being in the game industry is what Derek has wanted to do since he first saw that 8-bit plumber taking out Goombas, and writing stories for and about games is something he’s done since the sixth grade. Since the NES, Derek has owned every console to date and has loved every one of them for their own contributions to the industry. Today, he mainly concentrates on the Nintendo Wii, DS and PlayStation 3 due to their underappreciated power and innovation.

Each year, thousands of games are released across the world. However, only a handful of these games are able to capture a loyal fan base through the use of a compelling story, engaging gameplay, smooth graphics and ear-popping sound — a complete package that keeps gamers coming back for more, hour after hour. Resistance 2, released in 2008 for the PlayStation 3, is one of those games. Resistance 2 picks up where its predecessor left off. Set in the 1950s, you play as Sgt. Nathan Hale, infected with the Chimeran virus fighting to save humanity from a Soviet genetics program gone awry. The Chimera have taken Asia and Europe by storm and now seek to destroy the remnants of humanity, which resides in the isolated country of the United States. Fighting alongside the remaining U.S. military forces, you lead platoons of soldiers across frozen terrain, bombed out cities and vast forests just teeming with a ferocious alien army waiting to rip your limbs off.

Since Resistance: Fall of Man, the Chimera have greatly evolved growing stronger, faster, smarter and much bigger. Epic battles with fire-breathing Leviathans and Angel Chimera become regular fixtures throughout, while bosses make cities like Chicago look like a child’s playset. It’s an eerie feeling to see San Francisco completely destroyed and covered with snow in the middle of July. There is such an improvement with AI in Resistance 2 that I found it hard to find any discernable patterns no matter how many times I played through the campaign. Enemies take cover, aim true and attack you in troves, proving to be an immense challenge that will keep any hardcore gamer truly engaged.

Although Resistance: Fall of Man was one of the first games for the PS3, Resistance 2 is one of the first games to show off the PS3’s true power. The graphics for Resistance 2 are downright amazing. The animations are smooth, the textures are beautiful and the lighting is spot on. Insomniac not only pulled off taking us back to 1950s Chicago, but they were able to show us what 1950s Chicago would look like had an alien race bombed it back to 1750.

Moving through the campaign is rather linear, giving the player as little choice as possible while moving through narrow alleyways and underground bunkers. The only thing you have to worry about is blowing the heads off of disgruntled aliens trying to eat you. As Sgt. Hale, you start where the first game left off. You’re picked up by a mysterious military force and thrown into a plane for immediate transport. On the way to your destination, a radio transmission comes through stating your destination is under heavy enemy attack, and everything goes downhill from there. You find out you’re actually part of a larger secret military experiment, injected with the Chimeran virus against your will. Now the virus is growing out of control, and you’re sent on a hunt to not only destroy the Chimeran forces, but find a cure for the virus. It’s actually quite appealing to see the Sgt. Hale avatar on the title screen grow more grotesque as you progress through the game.

The biggest decision left to the player throughout the game is actually what weapons you should carry. The one downfall of Resistance 2 is how Insomniac decided to do away with a multiple weapon inventory, meaning I can only have what I can carry with my two hands. With the amount of weapons found in the game, this does tend to be quite a drag. However, much like the first game, I found I usually stuck to the same weapons through most of the gameplay anyway, and everything else was just filler for when I would run out of ammo.

Where Resistance 2 really shines is in the multiplayer. Sixty online players are able to send the bullets flying in an all-out team death match. With this many people running around at once, Insomniac seems to have come up with a formula for all the people who love to build tents and roast marshmallows in the middle of a firefight. These skirmishes are absolute chaos, and you will find nowhere to hide. If there’s anything you can predict in these matches, it’s that you will die.

The game also offers an online co-op feature that is surprisingly challenging and fun. This feature uses an adaptive AI, getting harder as more players join the fight. If you want to get through the missions just to get through them, doing so alone is actually easier than with a team of eight. As you progress through each mission, you unlock pieces of Intel that give you tidbits of information about the backstory of the Chimeran takeover. Minus the fact the game often falls victim to PlayStation’s unreliable network — which has caused the game’s server to crash on multiple occasions — once you get into a match, you’ll find it hard to put it down.

Although there are a few mishaps with Resistance 2, from the lack of inventory to the unreliable network connectivity, the other elements of the game really start to show why I spent $400 on a PS3. The game provides hours of fun between campaign and multiplayer modes for that hardcore audience, while the controls are easy enough to understand for even the novice players. The graphics play hand-in-hand with the story in delivering a horrific alternate reality, and fans of the first game can finally realize the fate of the seemingly indestructible Nathan Hale. For fans of Resistance: Fall of Man this is a must-buy; for everyone else, it’s still a must-buy if you want to see why Blu-Ray beat out HD-DVD.