Ah, jeez! Not another military shooter where we pop soldier after soldier! Wait, you mean to tell me I'm not shooting humans but rather aliens intent on destroying humanity and enslaving us all? Well then why didn't you say so? I'd gladly file into rank and sign up for some of that action! The PS3 has its first great game.

THE STORY SO FAR
At first, the threat of the Chimera seemed to be contained strictly to Russia, whether because the virus was man made in a lab or simply crashed landed there was unknown, but gradually the Chimera influence spread until soon almost all of Europe was overtaken, except England due to the channel that protected it. However, the Chimera managed to tunnel under it, and soon war was brought to the Queen's shores.

On July 11, 1951 the US military entered into the fray to save their brothers at arms, and you play as Nathan Hale, one such grunt sent in to deal with the Chimera threat. However, everything isn't coming up roses, as Nathan soon falls to the Chimera threat as well, but instead of the disease taking him over, it changes him into something different. The game follows four days in the life of Nathan Hale during this time, where to this day is clouded in secrecy and myth.

The bulk of the story unfolds through pre-mission static screens featuring a woman narrator who talks about Nathan and the resistance against the Chimera threat as a whole. Though most of the story unfolds this way, there are also a scattering of hidden documents that slowly reveal more of the world, as well as the occasional in-game cutscene that details a specific moment or either a short story point to reveal what will be coming next.

The story of Resistance plays very much like the Halo franchise, where the story is really just a way to justify the action, which like that series isn't exactly a bad thing, because though there isn't much of it, what is there is good, and you will be compelled to see what happens to our hero next.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
One of the best things about Resistance is that it has found a perfect health balancing meter, where it never makes things too easy or too hard, but rather challenging. Unlike, say, Gears of War where no matter how much damage you took, if you hid long enough you recovered fully, which ultimately meant the game was a bit easy at times, in Resistance cooling down for a minute will only help so much. The health meter acts a bit more like the Halo health, though minus the shield. In Resistance, you have a health meter made up of four yellow squares, and whenever you take damage the yellow squares start depleting. Now, say you take damage, but the yellow never leaves the first square; as long as you hide, you'll fully recover that health. However, if you take so much damage that it goes into the second square, if you hide you'll only recover up to that third square and not the fourth since you have already past by that. If you want to fill your health to that fourth square you must find a yellow canister of goo that the Chimera use in much the same way.

The movements of your character are pretty common to a FPS, with you using the left thumbstick to move, the right thumbstick to look around, you have the ability to jump, crouching, throw grenades, shoot, use secondary fire mode, etc. Unlike some FPS games where you have to change weapons during real time, meaning that if you fumble you could find yourself facing death because of weapon changing, in Resistance by holding the R2 trigger the game actually pauses while opening up its weapons menu, where you can easily cycle choices to find what you want to use for what situation, and not have to worry about an enemy capping you from the back, because you kept missing your shotgun.

The weapon set of the game is one of the big things that make it so fun. Since the game is set in an alternate timeline, some of the weapons feel close to the real thing, while others are strictly sci-fi in nature. For example, you've got your typical rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifles, but you also have new fangled grenades that send shrapnel everywhere, guns that can shoot through walls, guns that place up shields, and guns that will lock onto a target and shoot around corners.

The Chimera also are quite the challenge artificially, as they like to swarm in numbers and with heavy artillery in some cases. Though the majority of the Chimera are the more usual grunts that are essentially the equivalent of you, you will face giant walking striders, zombie like Chimera that walk, and even these skittering spider ones that swarm you in vast numbers; nothing creepier than going down a silent alley, only to have the spider ones come over a nearby house to fall right in your eyesight.

The game feels quite long (or at least average for a typical FPS game) and the environments vary off and on from the battle through the countryside to desolated cities to the factories of the Chimera themselves. The games also likes to give you these larger than usual environments, which though still linear in nature, are so wide open, giving you plenty of areas to hide or stage an attack from, that it feels like one complete living world, which can sometimes be rare for a FPS where it seems like nothing more than a passage crawling shooting gallery.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
First up, the entire single player game can be played with a buddy through split-screen co-op. Hooray! Who doesn't like co-op in a game? I'll tell you who – nobody! Other than that, you only have something like one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had waiting for you…yeah, not that big a deal.

In all seriousness, I've put way more time in the multiplayer of Resistance than I have that of the single player game, which is odd since it is always the other way around. In multiplayer you can do ranked or unranked games. I'm always curious how I'm doing, so of course I'm always hitting the ranked games. The sad thing about ranked games is that you can't determine what style of game you get or how many players in one match – it is all random. In singles you'll get deathmatch or conversion; both are the same thing only with conversion you only get two lives, once as both a human and Chimera. The games I've done have had as little as six people all the way up to about 40; the high number games are my favorite, because there is just so much death and chaos it is a blast just to rocket launcher two people fighting each other, and sweeping in for the kill.

You can also play the multiplayer as teams, with team deatmatch, capture the flag, and meltdown being the games of choice. The team games are pretty fun, but I like knowing the person running across my screen is most definitely someone I can kill, and not someone I have to judge first to see if they are on my side or not.

Depending on how well you do, you can go up in ranks, get different titles, adjust the look of your character, join clans, etc. Overall, the multiplayer is a blast and always great and easy to get on to (also I've never had any lag while playing) whenever you have some time to kill.

GRAPHICS
The environments are what really stand out, as I don't ever see any pop-in graphics from way off in the distance, smoke billows realistically, the decayed and crumbling cities are gorgeous in their destruction, and both human and Chimera characters are designed nicely. All in all, the PS3 needed a game to help show off its powerful abilities, and Resistance is a game that does that fantastically.

SOUND
There is nothing cheap or B-movie about anything audio wise when it comes to Resistance. The voice acting is solid, the music fits the situation great, and the noise of the combat on the screen is perfect from the sound of your fellow soldier getting killed, to the death cry of a Chimera, to the explosion of one of your grenades going off. If you've got the system, crank this game loud.

IN CONCLUSION
If you have a PS3 and don't have this game, then I refuse to call you a gamer (or I'll say, "Hey, you must not like FPS games!" Yeah, eat that burn! Seriously, Resistance: Fall of Men is a great game that does so many things right and yet does nothing wrong. Do you know what we call that? Perfect. It isn't my favorite game of all time or even ranks up there for that matter, but you can't deny what it is though.

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