Feature | Resistance 3 Multiplayer Beta
After having an E3 showing that was arguably overshadowed by other marquee titles, Insomniac treated fans and the curious alike with Resistance 3’s multiplayer beta. With the game’s release in the very near future, we sat down with Resistance 3 and separate the men from the Chimera.
Resistance 3’s multiplayer component serves as a complete design switch from the previous title – one that better resembled a first person shooter MMORPG than an objective-based shooter. Keeping in pace with stat-tracking and leveling up design philosophy of Call of Duty and Battlefield, Resistance 3’s front-end leveling system is what one would expect, more-or-less. The perks and abilities that each player is able to swap out are essentially two kinds: passive perks and active skills. The passive perks augment the player all the time – simple stuff and no surprise for the genre. The active skills are mapped to the d-pad, allowing the player to hand out ammunition or health item or decoys – again, rather standard conventions for shooters. For the most part, that is its problem. Besides the alien aesthetic and unique weapons, I find Resistance 3’s multiplayer to be too much of the same and unable to really make its unique mark on the current landscape. While the full retail game can easily sway me with a more dynamic and unique experience, the core of the design leaves me unmoved.
Graphically, Resistance 3 is shockingly inconsistent. My experience with the game at E3 was underwhelming at best. It could have very well been that I was positioned too close to the display, but the resolution on the textures looked muddy and unaliased. Coming into the beta, I was expecting the same experience, only to find the game to be run beautifully. The motion blur while sprinting was an effect that I have been fond with since E3, but Insomniac’s decision for a more dynamic colour palette allows the added effects to standout. When sprinting, there is a very natural head-bob. The problem with it is, however, is the game’s lack of sway in regular movement is static and unmoving – giving the ill effect of a floating camera with a gun as opposed to a soldier moving in a special environment.
The strength of Resistance 3’s graphics, however, is lessened by the game’s awkward in-game user interface. Ammo counts and health points are shown as meters, rather than numerical counters. There is no real reason why your ammo count should be represented as sixty individual bullets on screen. Previous games in the franchise had similar UI, and similar problems. This may initially sound as a quibble, but these kinds of small details are what matters this late into this generation of shooters. Shooters live or die on how well they communicate information and feedback to the user.
Even more so, the game’s net-code has been dramatically inconsistent. There were days in which I was completely unable to find or join a game, and if I did, the game ran like a slide-show. The performance hitches in the code would occur in and out of peak hours even. After a few patches, the game has gotten better in finding games, giving promise that the finished game would have become a better product because of the beta. Considering that I found Resistance 3 to be more impressive now than it had at E3, it bodes well for the game later next month.
