After watching Insomniac President Ted Price almost fail to get through the demo level of Resistance 2 during the Sony Press Conference, we met up with him at the Sony room during E3 2008 last week to get a better idea of how R2’s single-player campaign will play out, how the 60-player online matches are supposed to work and hell, to give him another chance to impress us with his alien stomping abilities. You’ll have to hit the break to find out how he fared.

As a member of Destructoid had just begun a tour of Resistance 2’s multiplayer with Mr. Price, we humbly flanked the developer and listened as he showed us the additions they’re making this time around. Besides the amped up amount of folks within any one particular game (60), we also saw the new perk system that’ll affect how the other team sees you (read as: you’re the VIP), as well as the squad-based breakdown of Skirmish, the multiplayer mode on display.

Backing out to the bird’s eye map, Ted showed us the scale of the level (”Scotia”) and explained the real-time “dynamic objectives” your squad will be trying to capture (a la King of the Hill). As in CoD4, you’ll be building XP throughout your online matches, be it through kills and/or objective-based rewards), which can then be traded for gameplay bonuses (such as becoming invisible). Just as in Resistance 1’s multi, you’re able to play as Chimera and Human in Sony hosted, dedicated servers. Furthermore, if you do happen to take out a number of enemies in a row, a multiplier above your head advertises to the world you’re worth more XP to kill than everyone else — a novel idea that might need to branch out into it’s own mode.

As for the campaign, we saw Nathan Hale begin his second tour of duty exactly where the events of Resistance 1 ended, transitioning seamlessly from the original graphics of numero uno to the new, shinier version. From what we saw of the new levels, the open American landscapes helped to provide the scale Ted spoke about during Sony’s Press Conference. Aside from the basic leviathan battle everyone saw during the aforementioned conference, we also got to check out a part of California with massive Chimera ships (which we’re told will be a playable environment at some point in the single player campaign) and were informed a co-op version of the campaign will find itself separate (but equal?) and unique from the game played alone. Also, you can play the game with seven of your friends. Yep, no joke here — eight player freakin’ co-op.

Of course, a number of new weapon types have foud their way into the game and A.I. has been revamped. In terms of the PSP game (Resistance: Retribution)  and PS3 connectivity, Ted coyly noted it’s “something we’re looking into”, smiling all the way. If we were bettin’ men, we’d put a cool $50 on the answer to that being yes. Packaged with Insomniac’s new community features and the promise of future downloadable content, Resistance 2 for the Playstation 3 will be hard to ignore when it arrives on store shelves “this holiday.” (Oh, and Ted did much better showing three games journalists Resistance 2 than the entirety of the Shrine’s auditorium.)

Write a comment