Resistance is an exciting action game that successfully combines many of the best qualities from other great first-person shooters with its own spectacular visuals and a few novel twists. Rock-solid design borrows the best aspects from the best first-person shooters; outstanding presentation, featuring great weapons and believable environments; replayable campaign pits you against an aggressive, fairly intelligent foe; fully featured multiplayer mode offers good variety and supports up to 40 players. Resistance is a technically impressive, well-designed, intense action game that unmistakably draws inspiration from some of the finest recent examples of similar games. Resistance doesn't attempt anything wildly different than other first-person shooters out there, but by offering a strong selection of interesting weapons, plenty of ruthless foes to shoot them at, good level design, and an excellent presentation, it accomplishes what most such games fail to do.

The story is told from the perspective of a different officer who briefly interacts with Hale during his missions against a seemingly unstoppable enemy. Her solemn narration is easy enough to follow but not particularly engaging because by her own admission, she doesn't really know what's going on in Hale's head or what's going on with the Chimera. Brief but nicely done cinematic cutscenes using the game's 3D engine at least serve to give Nathan Hale a believably concerned look between battles. Still black-and-white images and charts that are made to look as if they could have come from the early '50s also help set the mood and premise of each level in the game's more than 10 main stages. However, the story in Resistance is there mostly to justify a number of fairly conventional, though very well done, first-person shooter battles. You'll learn a bit about the Chimera as you fight, and there's some resolution once you finally finish the campaign after countless grueling shoot-outs. But Hale's character is never developed and he almost never speaks, and the plot has some noticeable gaps. Ultimately, this is a game whose personality mostly comes across when you're shooting something. The Chimera and their ugly spider-like features make them easy to hate straightaway.

The game presents the Chimera as a virtually unstoppable foe, while Nathan Hale seems uniquely capable of surviving their attacks. In reality, they're not quite as tough as they look--some concentrated gunfire will bring any of them down eventually. You'll also pick up on how heavily injured Chimera troopers tend to stagger to their knees, which is the perfect time for you to finish them off and the wrong time to move on to the next target. You'll face a variety of Chimera during the course of the game, including some very predictable spider-like things that burst forth from egg sacs and rush you mindlessly. The vast majority of the time, however, you'll be fighting squads of Chimeran hybrids. Typically armed with bullseye rifles, these soldiers are quite effective at using cover, as well as flanking and rushing tactics. They'll also flush you out of hiding with one of their hedgehog grenades, which send deadly needles flying in every direction when they explode. Fighting against the hybrids grows to feel a bit monotonous in spots because they're by far the most common type of foe you'll face. Yet it's a testament to the quality of the game's artificial intelligence and presentation that battling these forces is often quite thrilling