Global Resistance Review January 3, 2012

I’ve been a fan of the Resistance series for the Playstation since the day I first bought a Playstation 3. With the release of Resistance 3, I now own every single game in the series (including Resistance: Retribution for the Playstation Portable). I’m also no stranger to the game’s official statistics site, myresistance.net, which, since the release of Resistance: Fall of Man, has been a site players could visit to view their multiplayer statistics, unlock exclusive game content (like the Cloven Skin in R1), and talk with other players on their official forums.

While playing through Resistance 3, I noticed a lot of unlockable game content was tied to the myresistance.net site and remembering how it was with unlocking the cloven multiplayer skin in Resistance: Fall of Man, figured I would have to dust off my old account and get some new unlock codes from the site.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this trailer in the Resistance 3 game menu.

This was no longer a site for checking multiplayer statistics and posting on their forum, they now had their own full-fledged social game, and it was glorious. The site had been in the works for quite a while, but for some reason it had only been accessible to people with a Facebook account. Why Sony would only allow Facebook users into what was clearly a site that should be accessed by people with Playstation Network accounts was beyond my comprehension at the time, so I never looked further into its relaunch until now. Well, Playstation Network has been integrated at last, and I could now play the site’s crown jewel, the social game Global Resistance.

When you start playing, you immediately pick one side. Your objective is first to earn money, which you can do by taking on missions, deploying resources or having skirmishes. With money you can build and maintain your own base. With the base you can train soldiers and build items like bunkers or bombs. You can deploy these resources in the field in order to conquer territory from the other side. The objective is to take over the world (of course).

The game reminds me of a mix between Risk (having never played it), Rock, Paper, Scissors and Warcraft 3. It may sound like I’m simplifying it (trust me I am) but the game is actually a ton of fun to play, and quite addictive, which is exactly what you want in a social game. It’s easy enough to understand with just some minor playing of it.

Everything you do in it earns you experience, which will level you up. As you progress in level, you’ll be able to make use of new facilities, which will give you access to new resources or missions. In four days I was able to rank up to Level 17, which gave me access to build most of the important facilities for my base. I don’t know if there’s a level cap, (I was able to build the last level restricted facility at level 15) but I saw some missions that were only selectable from level 20, and that was the highest level requirement I saw in the game.

I cannot tell you what a blast it was going back and forth between playing levels in Resistance 3, and Global Resistance. I think that was probably the game’s greatest strength. Everything in Global Resistance takes time to prepare, time which is perfectly spent playing Resistance 3. I could issue some orders or start building something in Global Resistance, and then play a chapter of Resistance 3. When the chapter is completed I would notice some of my tasks completed in Global Resistance, and I could start some new ones. Because the games complemented each other perfectly and were played on two separate mediums, I felt as if I was getting a much more immersive gaming experience.

However, it would seem that the game’s greatest strength may also be its greatest weakness. This game is almost impossible to play during the day. I don’t know if it has to do with insufficient bandwidth, bad programming or reliance on the Playstation Network, but if you try to access this site during most hours of the day you will likely be greeted with an error page, because the site is usually so overloaded it can’t handle new requests. It doesn’t seem to make sense why this would be happening. The site could get wonky and drop connections while listing as few as 191 simultaneous players, which for a social game is outrageous. Imagine what would happen if the player base hit millions, like with so many other social games.

Also, the site statistics don’t sync up to the Playstation Network in real-time. I could earn an accolade in Global Resistance that would be worth a new piece of concept art, and then have to wait several hours before it could be unlockable in my game. I also noticed that Resistance 3 didn’t usually sync its stats up with myresistance.net (and vice versa) unless you access the multiplayer menu in Resistance 3 at some point. If you’re like me, and mostly play the Resistance series for the Single-Player campaign, you may not think to do this and may be surprised when your myresistance.net stats are blank, even for single-player, because you never accessed the multiplayer menu and accepted the game’s terms of use.

In short this is a great game that seems to not be able to keep up with its own greatness. There is just no excuse that a social game cannot be able to meet up with the simple demand of people wanting to play it. I recommend playing the game at late hours, as that seems to be when it is most stable and less of a chance of connection issue with the site. The game can be played with either a Facebook account or a Playstation Network account, both of which are free to obtain. You also don’t need a copy of Resistance 3 to play, and any game unlocks you earn for it can be placed on hold until such a time as you do get yourself a copy.