Resistance 3 returns to the roots created by the first game for co-op, adding back a cooperative campaign. Player two will play his story as John and save for a few spots in the intro sequence, his presence isn’t acknowledged through the story. That doesn’t take away from the experience though - as with any good shooter - co-op creates plenty of "had to be there moments."
What’s great about the co-op in Resistance 3 is it’s flexibility, you can invite a friend at anytime through the menu for online co-op, or you can start up a split screen game and pick from one of your saves or restart from a certain level you’ve already completed. Like any good co-op game, progress is saved for BOTH players, so if you decide to finish the campaign on your own after joining a friend’s game, you can select the latest level completed and off you go. We tried to determine if there was any scaling going on in terms of number of enemies or difficulty, it seemed to be more difficult - I found we died more often in co-op, but numbers was I could never tell for certain. Luckily if you go down in co-op you can be revived, and even crawl towards your partner while you are down.
One thing to be aware of with Resistance 3 and its online co-op is - you’ll need to have an "online pass" to play it. This is included with new copies of the game, but if you rent the game or buy it pre-owned, you’ll need to fork over an additional $10 to have access to this online co-op mode. You can still enjoy the game in split-screen co-op, but if you bought the game and want to play with a friend who isn’t as willing to pick it up and would rather rent it - you’ll be out of luck. This really is a disconcerting trend in gaming, as more and more features are getting stripped away and put into an online pass system.
Now that the politics are out of the way, let’s wrap up the Resistance against he Chimera shall we?
After your single player and co-op you can hop online for a more traditional 16 player versus modes. It’s scaled down from the previous game’s 60 player matches, but frankly, I prefer the more intimate affairs. You’ve got some standard affair type modes going on here: deathmatch, team dm, etc - but there’s also variations of domination and other similar objective based modes. Again for these modes you’ll need to have an online pass.
Resistance 3 also supports the Sharpshooter, the gun like attachment for the PlayStation Move giving it a more arcade like shooting experience. It works and feels almost exactly like Killzone 3’s implementation of it, save for different button functions. For me, I still don’t enjoy extended experiences like this, but in short doses, it’s a fun distraction. It should be noted that you can’t play split-screen co-op using this, but you can play online.
Everything about Resistance 3 simply grabbed me - the characters, the plot twists, the look and feel of the levels. It was an incredibly solid first person shooter experience that left me completely satisfied. It wasn’t too long, it wasn’t too short, the weapons were interesting and the co-op added to the fun. This is by far the best game in the series.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Players take the role of one of two soldiers through a co-op based story. Motion controls are only compatible online for co-op.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.