Most welcome to those of us who held out on the original Resistance: Fall of Man’s downloadable content are free map packs. Yes, both map packs for the PlayStation 3 launch title have been freed from their costly bonds, now available for a suggested retail price of zero dollars and zero cents.

Additionally, you can sex up your Ex-ross Media Bar with three new R2 themes, also gratis. Thanks, Insomniac!

Free Resistance 2 Themes, R:FOM Map Packs, and More [PlayStation.blog]

Did we give in to our primal urges for Resistance 2? Or did we put up a fight?

Loved
Massive Scale, Perfectly Paced: Nathan Hale is quite the jet setter in Resistance 2, travelling to and from exotic locales like the Air Force Bases of Iceland to the small logging towns of California. The scope of R2 never fails to impress, with bigger than ever Chimera and retro sci-fi settings rarely explored in other first-person shooters. Awesome early set pieces set the hectic pace appropriately. We wish Insomniac hadn’t shown the San Francisco invasion ahead of time, as the sheer size of the invading fleet would have been even more awe-inspiring.

New Weapons, New Enemies: Now limited to just two weapons at a time, Hale’s arsenal gets upgraded with some great new gimmicks, including the shield-generating Wraith chain-gun and the ridiculous, saw blade-shooting Splicer. As a whole, weapons lack a sense of weight or punch, but that doesn’t detract from the joy of amputating hordes of Grims. That new addition to the Chimeran bestiary is the most enjoyable to dispatch, just one of many that feels shamelessly lifted from recent Hollywood sci-fi flicks.

Cooperative: Eight-player co-op is what will keep you coming back to Resistance 2. The class variety, the leveling, the unlockable goodies, the constant drip-feed of experience points — it all adds up to an addicting experience that we’ve really just begun to scratch the surface of. Hardcore Resistance fans may be disappointed to see a leaner multiplayer offering, but the cooperative mode, with its interesting unique classes will ease the pain.

Competitive: Standard stuff, with the exception of the constantly changing Skirmish mode, which switches from assassination to capture point to team death match modes on the fly. Getting in and out of multiplayer games and tracking your stats is beautifully user-friendly. Insomniac does right by its fans with a well designed community portal for tracking your, as advertised, 420 hours plus of progression.

Hated
Campaign: My slog through Resistance 2’s weakest “C” took but nine hours to complete, but it felt like an eternal sludge of predictable Chimeran assaults with all eight eyes on me and me alone. The majority of the boss fights weren’t just forgettable, they were the sort of thing I couldn’t wait to forget. Yes, they’re big and often loaded with tension, but they’re also incredibly trying and sometimes ambiguous in their objectives. Much of the single-player campaign just felt like swimming through a sea of gunfire, ambush after ambush held together by a vanilla story.

Cheap Deaths: The cloaked Chameleons aren’t the worst of Resistance 2’s sins of cheap deaths. You’ll eventually learn where they spawn after a few die and retry attempts. It’s the lame, one-hit kill Fury that live under bulletproof water and the slaps from the Leviathan that made me go berzerk. There are few things more personally loathsome than first-person platforming and gotcha, how-could-I-have-possibly-seen-that-coming kills. After blowing through the first Resistance with relative ease, dying 136 times in the sequel left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

Wonky Physics, Inconsistent Presentation: There are plenty of things, aesthetically, that Insomniac nails with Resistance 2. Bizarre physics — did that Chimeran soldier really just launch skyward after being sniped in the face? How long will that LAARK bounce around the room? — and the occasionally dull environment aren’t quite highlights.

If anything, Resistance 2 could be pitched as the holiday shooter that’s “bigger, better and more bad-ass.” Everything has been upped for the sequel, with a workable 60-person multiplayer option, a ton of fan service for the Resistance enthusiast and a co-op mode that’s not only fun as hell, but fleshes out the core story line. The intel collect-a-thons certainly aren’t my thing, nor is trying to piece together all the disparate plot points, but the hardcore Resistance fan has been very well taken care of. It may be that the novelty of a sci-fi shooter set in the mid-twentieth century has worn off a bit and that the game looks a bit underwhelming in light of the competition, but I actually recall enjoying the first a bit more.

Given the depth of Resistance 2’s multiplayer and co-op though, those first nine hours spent chugging through the single-player campaign will probably be forgotten in favour of fondly remembering the entire experience.

Resistance 2 was developed by Insomniac Games, published by Sony Computer Entertainment America and released on Nov. 4 for PlayStation 3. Retails for $US59.99. Completed single-player campaign, tested 8-player coop, and multiplayer modes.

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Spooky Demonic Narrator Guy issues the ominous warning — to, we’re assuming, either Resistance: Fall of Man protagonist Nathan Hale or Resistance 2 players — “You think you can resist, but you haven’t seen what we’re truly capable of”. Explosions, flesh eating and gargantuan space ships follow — the kind of stuff you demand from your first person shooters.

Unfortunately, the whole thing’s a low-fi affair. Here’s to hoping we see it in more glorious resolutions at E3.

Resistance 2 – 2nd Trailer. [YouTube]

Chimera Skull from Playstation 3 game TV ad [eBay - thanks, Benj!]

Sure. I think that’s possible… I think Killzone demonstrated that it doesn’t have to be a first-person shooter. I think Killzone: Liberation was a fantastic game, but a very different game from the original. Anything is possible.

You heard that? Non FPS Resistance on PSP, cats living with dogs, mass hysteria — anything is possible!
Ted Price Part 2 [MTV]

Thanks, Mike!

Please, no Wii Date Rape jokes in the comments. It’s beneath you.

Ghost Squad: neue Printanzeige [WiiGamer via UK:R]

On December 18, 2007, Sony filed a trademark for “Resistance 2″ in relation to a video game. And while it’s not uncommon for companies to go on the trademark defensive, ensuring that another company won’t steal the title, we already totally knew that Insomniac is developing Resistance 2. You know, even though we don’t at all.

Resistance 2 [trademork]

The mag points to Sony’s use of an eviscerated, beheaded goat as a centerpiece for a God of War II promotion as 61st dumbest business move of the year. Close by, at number 63, was the decision to use a bombed out Manchester Cathedral as a backdrop for the PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall of Man. Hey, they may have lost a few fans in the church, but this one seems a bit harsh, Fortune editors. It’s not like they actually bombed the cathedral for reference shots.

101 Dumbest Moments in Business [Fortune - thanks, Kenneth!]

RESISTANCE REINVENTED [threespeech]