YMMV / Resistance

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: A fairly minor one mostly within the backstory: was the Czarist Russian regime a heroic if tyrannical group that sacrificed itself to give the rest of the world a time to prepare, a bunch of idiots who unnecessarily destroyed Russia because of their inability to even request aid from the West against a far greater threat, or some combination of the two?
• Anticlimax Boss: All three mainline games are guilty of this; FOM sees Hale going up against an inanimate nuclear reactor - once the four cooling rods are destroyed, it's over. Resistance 2 does have a proper final boss in the form of Daedalus, but you don't actually fight him - instead you destroy the machinery in the room. Both bosses are very easy and don't really live up to the tension set by the Nintendo Hard stages that precede them. Resistance 3 repeats the pattern; just like the first game, the final boss is an inanimate reactor... also, unlike the first game which at least had a massive firefight between British and U.S. soldiers and Chimera elite troops and sub-bosses, the reactor fight in Resistance 3 is just you vs. a few squads of Chimera and one non-unique Giant Mook.
  • The Leviathan also counts - after being hyped up in every single trailer and preview, and catching glimpses of it throughout the preceding level, the inevitable boss fight turns out to be a largely-automated interactive cutscene.
  • The battle against Mick Cutler is just a short Button Mashing cutscene.
• Broken Base: The ending to R2, in which Nathan Hale is converted and then executed by Capelli. The fact that this is where the game comes to an abrupt end didn't do much for its sizable number of detractors.
• Complete Monster: Mick Cutler of the third game is a former member of SRPA who was imprisoned for murder. Taking advantage of the collapse of the US government, Cutler took over Graterford Prison and turned it into a base for his followers. He disposed of any potential threats and led raids to capture other human survivors, using them for gladiator games to entertain himself and his followers or possibly cannibalizing them. Mick is first seen brutally murdering a doctor, and placing another The Hero Capelli into a gladiator arena. Even when the Chimera discovered the location and attacked, Mick tried to stop Capelli from actions that may have saved them just to keep his own power.
• Contested Sequel: Resistance 2, in spades. It is either the absolute best title in the series, or the weakest entry in the trilogy. It has a sizable number of detractors due to changing or removing several loved features and mechanics from Fall of Man and for taking a lot of cues from Call of Duty, most notably removing the first game's weapon wheel in favor of a Limited Loadout, as well as its abrupt ending. On the other hand, it has a decent amount of fans for its more versatile number of enemies, its squad-based combat in the single-player, and the massive scale of the game in general. Critics generally found it to be an overall stronger title, with a score of 87/100 on Meta Critic, making it one of Insomniac Games' highest rated titles during the seventh console generation. The polarized reception of Resistance 2 deeply affected Insomniac Games, with CEO Ted Price stating that the issues pointed out on the game had a huge impact on Resistance 3.
• Critical Dissonance: Resistance 3 scored a respectable and fairly good average score of 83/100 on Metacritic, though it makes the game the lowest-rated main entry in the series, with Fall of Man and Resistance 2 sitting on 86/100 and 87/100 respectively. To many fans, however, Resistance 3 represents the apex of the series, thanks to its grim atmosphere and post-apocalyptic aesthetics that make the game feel more like a Survival Horror than a shooter.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Widowmakers in the first game, who earn bonus points for actually looking like demonic spiders.
  • Chameleons in the second due to their very annoying One-Hit Kill attack.
  • In Resistance 2, the A.I. of many Chimera Hybrid soldiers is set to banzai charge you regardless of how far away they are from you, even running right past your allies to shoot you in the face at point blank range. In a game that relies on regenerating health and the use of cover, this can be disastrous for you.
  • The Leapers, especially if you're playing on the hardest difficulty. Not only are they annoying and sometimes hard to hit, but they always attack in swarms, so if you don't kill them quickly, you'll be dead in a matter of seconds.
  • In Resistance 3, say hello to the Long Legs Sniper. Regular Long Legs are annoying as piss, but at least their short-range weapons make them easy to see when they land nearby. Long Legs Snipers are essentially able to shoot you from huge distances with accurate weapons you can only counter with a sniper rifle of your own, and to change their location extremely rapidly.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Mind you, there isn't much of an ensemble, but Colonel Rachel Parker is perhaps the most popular character in the series, enough to merit a downloadable multiplayer skin of her in the second game, even though she's not in it. Possibly due to her gentle British accent and the fact that Hale is almost entirely lacking in backstory and personality.
  • Stephen Cartwright. At the time of Fall of Man's release, he was easily the most popular character, which is part of the reason for his return in Retribution. Unfortunately, even though he now does have a backstory, Hale is rather bland and so he tends to be overshadowed by just about any of his co-stars.
    • Don't forget Joseph Capelli in R2, who subsequently becomes the main character in the sequel.
    • Speaking of Cartwright, it seems that Insomniac hadn't forgotten him in R3, where it's revealed that he's been promoted to Field General and leading the British resistance groups.
  • And no love for Henry Stillman, the reporter stranded in Philadelphia? Sure, you never actually meet him in person over the course of Resistance 2 but you'll hear a lot of his signature radio-voice, chronicling the Chimera invasion from the viewpoint of an everyman. Which becomes all the more painful as the plot progresses, ultimately ending with him committing suicide just as Hale takes the fight to Daedalus. Indeed, Nihilistic Software seem to have been aware of Stillman's darkhorse status, as they brought him back in Burning Skies.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending of Resistance 3 seems triumphant at first, until you remember that only 10% of Earth's pre-invasion population is left. That kind of human die-off would make it pretty much impossible to re-establish civilization. And that's not even getting into the ecological damage caused by the Chimera's attempted Hostile Terraforming.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Ever wondered why Resistance 3 didn't really explain the origins and ultimate goal of the Chimera? Simple: by that point, people are more concerned with simply surviving to the next day than anything else. Dr. Malikov is perhaps by then among the few who are still actively trying to understand the aliens. But whatever insights he would have had revealed, we'll never know. Because he gets killed by Mick and his band of convicts.
  • At first, the turnaround pulled off by the forces of humanity at the end of R3 seems like an Ass Pull, considering that they spent the first two games getting their asses handed to them. Then you remember that the Chimera are no longer able to convert humans due to the Hale vaccine. Without the ability to create more forces from their enemies, the Chimera are slowly ground down through attrition by the human forces. By the end of the game, the Chimera are simply too worn out to maintain the edge in the war, allowing humanity to regain the upper hand.
    • Add to this that Chimeran victories tend to be come at a high price. They might have several successes, but at the cost of a truly enormous body count. The number of Chimeran deaths from the player character alone in the second game can be in the range of a small city, not counting the many Chimera who are killed in the destruction of the Fleet or the deaths of enormous creatures like the Leviathan that represent thousands of infected human beings. The Chimeran battle strategy seems to be a sort of no-holds-barred blitzkrieg with the end goal of opening a portal to the Chimeran home world and inviting the Pure Chimera to take back the Earth. The Chimera are successful in achieving their goal, but when nothing comes through the portal alive the remaining Chimera just don't have the ability to fight a war of attrition in the long-term.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Sentry drones and Chameleons in the second game. You will be screaming in frustration after dealing with them.
  • The Shield Drones in R3. Can't hit anything until you deal with them and they just fly all over the place.
  • Ditto on the Sentry Drones in Retribution: They're everywhere, they're highly mobile, and they make you waste a lot of ammo on them.
• Growing the Beard: While Fall of Man is definitely a solid title, it has several significant rough edges in terms of A.I., gameplay, controls, and graphics, due to both being the developer's first FPS in two console generations as well as one of the first titles for the console. It's only with Resistance 2 that the series begins to truly be a seamless, triple-A title.
• Homegrown Hero: Russia, continental Europe, and the British Isles are attacked by a deadly mutant virus — and you play, of course, as a soldier of an American intervention force, even before it reaches North America.
• Nightmare Fuel: Lots. From the basis of the alternate reality to the Chimera jumping at you on the screen and MUNCHING AT YOUR FACE!!!!! You will hardly be able to sleep.
  • Special mention to "The Swarm", basically a swarm of creatures that tear apart anything near them, as demonstrated by a person who is ripped to shreds in front of your eyes. It then chases after you. So you turn around and run right? No, if you do that it catches you. You have to run backwards while shooting it, while bullets don't kill it, it slows it down just enough for you to outrun it. It gets incredibly close when you have to reload, and if you run into a wall (quite easy to do considering you're going backwards) you're dead.
  • Remember the Widowmaker from Fall of Man? Yeah, they're back in R3, they've gone feral if they weren't already (meaning that they CAN breed in the wild), they travel in packs, and they are larger than their Fall of Man counterparts. During one level, you see what are possibly thousands of them storming across the countryside, and when your your train has to pass by them, just one casually derails you.
  • Shortly before the train section of the third game, you have to fight a tunneling underground monster known as "Satan". If it catches you, you get a first person view of it devouring you. Also counts as That One Boss.
  • The entire premise of the Chimera is frightening in and of itself. A seemingly unstoppable, monstrous foe, creating more of himself and new creatures from the countless numbers of humans they infect, waiting for them to inevitably descend on your country to infect the population, including friends and family.
  • The Project Abraham videos, featuring Katee Sackhoff. A year before Fall of Man, SRPA and the Army Medical Corps are experimenting with ways to inoculate US soldiers against Chimeran infection. Seven volunteers (well, Capelli "volunteered" as an alternative to Fort Carson Disciplinary Barracks), including Hale and Capelli, are interviewed and injected with different experimental serums.
    • Sgt. Channing Brown was part of a US recon team sent to assist the British and Italians at Genoa, and has seen the Chimera firsthand. He can’t talk about it, and cryptically warns Dr. Aklin that, "For every one we killed, double or more took its place." His serum fails, and he dies coughing up the remnants of his organs.
    • Capt. Frank Gennaro’s condition for volunteering was a promise that the Army would move his wife and children inside the Liberty Defense Perimeter. His death is even more gruesome, as the Chimera serum begins rapidly transforming him into a hybrid, with fangs and extra eyes. He remains fully conscious throughout, and as the Chimeran metabolism begins overheating his body, panics and eviscerates himself with a broken medical flask in an attempt to cool down.
    • 1st Lt. Glenn Khaner’s test results in his body rapidly growing new internal tissues, crushing his heart, lungs, and brain.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Fall of Man gained notoriety for the controversial Manchester Cathedral level, where a shoot-out between Nathan and Leapers took place in a virtual representation of the Cathedral. Local church leaders were reportedly sickened by the portrayal and asserted their copyrights over the structure, also noting that it was distasteful for Insomniac to portray a firefight in a city already plagued with gun violence.^note The copyright issue was found to be without merit as the structure has long since fallen into public domain, making it fair game for anyone to portray the building as they see fit. Sony offered a formal apology and pledged not to include churches in subsequent games, though the controversy turned out to be a blessing in disguise for both Sony and church officials, as the Cathedral saw a spike in visitors mostly from youths wanting to know what all the fuss was about, and Fall of Man was also commercially successful as a result of the church row.
• Paranoia Fuel: Chameleons in R2. It'll be nearly impossible for you not to look in every single direction when you hear that dreaded bird call.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Wraith in the competitive mode of 2 after the last patch introduced a glitch that made it utterly game breaking.
• So Okay, It's Average: Burning Skies has gotten this reception from both critics and fans. It's not... terrible. The mechanics are competent and it controls well enough, it's just very bare-bones and doesn't have that special "Resistance feeling". It is the lowest-rated title in the entire series, with a 60/100 on Metacritic. In comparison, Resistance: Retribution, the second-lowest, sits on a very decent 81/100.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Resistance 3 to quite a few fans. Between the return of old features from Fall of Man and the more horror-themed approach of the campaign, it has been embraced as a superior title to both Fall of Man and Resistance 2. Especially to those who disliked the more militaristic and modernized design of Resistance 2.
• Vindicated by History: In a fashion quite similar to its cousin series Killzone, Resistance tended to get positive reviews and a decent fanbase, but at the time of the series' release the majority of critics and a good portion of the PS3's playerbase saw it as nothing more than a solid first-person shooter that didn't add much to the genre. Following the release of the lackluster Burning Skies and Sony's lacking output of first-person shooters on the PS4, alongside the general saturation of games like Call of Duty, people began to look more fondly at both franchises. Particular praise for Resistance nowadays goes to its generally unique premise, distinctive enemy faction in the form of the Chimera, brutal weapons and the blend of Action Horror atmosphere. Many also fondly look back at the series' trademark ambitious multiplayer, whose scale was unheard of at the time of the series' lifespan, at least on consoles.

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