Resistance 3 – Why It Will Suck

Because it won’t be anywhere near as good as the idea I came up with while eating Japanese beef curry – in Japan.

Japan has a way of making synapses fire on the neurons less travelled by. Maybe it’s the fact the Japanese all line up on the left side of escalators to let people in a rush blaze past them, or the fact that their pizza of choice involves corn and mayonnaise. Whatever it was, I found myself experiencing a strange phenomenon: my Ameri-centrism began to wear off like video game body armor, and I began to think of things I’d never thought of before.

Like, for instance, what the hell happened to Japan when the Chimera invaded?

For those of you stuck in a cave since 2006: In this alternate 1950s reality, World War II never happened, much to the chagrin of Americans who were hoping a conflict would come along that they could obsess over for the next century by completely exaggerating the moral high ground they accidentally found themselves occupying. Luckily, the Chimera showed up and turned out to be literal monsters with a literal desire to turn everything that is good and beautiful in this world into ash, thereby eliminating the moral relativity of human wars and making the whole issue pretty cut and dry.

In the first three games (yes, I can count; I’m including the PSP game), the Chimera were a not-terribly-subtle metaphor for the Nazi invasion that terrorized Europe from the late 30s to mid-40s and the possibility of a dreaded Soviet world conquest that kept capitalists wetting their pants from the 50s to the 80s. However, the two other world powers that had been involved in the European Theater of WWII retained their world power status in this universe, and as such became the two major concentrations of well-equipped, well-trained, and well-organized human resistance. Hooray for the English speakers.

But there was another power that was much more of a bother than the Nazis ever were, militarily speaking – a power that was only brought down after two freakin’ atomic bombs were dropped on its children. And Insomniac has not said diddly squat about what these badasses were doing during all this time, and shame on them, because this is the greatest opportunity for an amazing sequel I have ever seen. But I know that even if Insomniac hears what I have to say and by some miracle decides to implement it, it still won’t be as good as it should be because Resistance 2 was a letdown, from a campaign perspective. But I don’t care, I’ll pitch this idea anyway, because you never know.

So. Imagine this: while Germany and Italy were busy not preparing for WWII, Japan said, “To hell with this alternate history bullcrap, we’re still taking Asia!” And they did, pretty much the same way they did IRL, except this time they didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor because the reasonable minds won that argument. And then the Chimera poured out of Russia and into China, surprising the bejesus (bebuddha, maybe?) out of the Empire of the Rising Sun.

Resistance 3 starts as the Chimera launch an aerial invasion similar to the one at the beginning of Resistance 2, from the Chinese mainland to the Japanese islands. You play a young officer, perhaps a Lieutenant, in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, and your first task is to lead one of hundreds of airplane fighter squadrons in an attempt to stop the invasion.

Everyone gets butchered and you miraculously survive by bailing out and landing on dry land, and then it becomes more or less Resistance bread and butter: small infantry street fighting, with a character that sticks out like a sore thumb but whose presence is welcome anyway. There should be a few new gameplay tricks here, but the only one that absolutely has to happen is the inclusion of the Japanese shin gunto, or new army sword. As an officer, its your privilege to carry this incredibly badass modern samurai sword into battle, and it would make a wet dream of a retro melee weapon against aliens. The other thing that should happen is the placement of the giant Godzilla-esque Chimera introduced in Resistance 2 in a place where such a reference is appropriate, like, I dunno, Tokyo. Make them actually march out of the sea to invade Japan!

Anyway, Part One of the campaign ends with you in some sort of cliffhanger suspense after an ill-advised but ultimately fruitful act of brazen derring-do, and then Part Two takes us all the way back to America. Specifically, Hawaii, as Capelli gears up to take part in a counter-offensive across the Pacific. Most of this part of the campaign will involve intense beachhead landings, brutal jungle-fighting, and aircraft-based missions as Capelli island-hops his way to liberate Japan. However, you don’t play as Capelli, you play as a female member of the Australian Army who gets separated from her unit and, in a prerequisite for Resistance plots, gets infected. This prompts Capelli to take her under his wing, thus allowing you as a player to be right in the middle of all the most interesting action.

Part Three takes place as the Americans finally land in Japan, where in an amazing feat of Deus Ex Machina, the Australian and the Japanese officer meet, have a humorous inability to communicate, and then proceed to team up and kick Chimeran ass. The point of this part of the campaign will be somewhat different than the past games, objective-wise. Instead of destroying Chimeran strong points, the goal here will be to defend some experimental weapons Japan was developing prior to the invasion, and that now are of paramount importance. These weapons, of course, are BFRs: Big Fucking Robots.

But Great Pimp Daddy Grandmaster of Game Design, which protagonist are we to play here? Well, I’m glad you asked, because this is the best part of this whole thing that’s never going to happen. This is where Resistance 3 borrows from Army of Two and the series actually makes good on its promise of a co-op campaign, instead of that joke of a pointless relay race that was Resistance 2’s co-op. You and a friend, either online or off (or if you’re a friendless loser, a bot can fill in I guess), combine to finish the game in a series of missions that test your teamwork to the limit.

And the final twist? Well, that would be the boss fight between Capelli (who naturally turns evil because of his infection) and the two protagonists. Catching the two of you by surprise, Capelli momentarily overpowers you, disarming you both and leaving the Australian with only her pistol and the Japanese with only his sword. Capelli then dual-wields the weapons he took from you while you try to outmaneuver him, one of you drawing his attention with potshots from the pistol while the other tries to rush in and cut him with the sword. Game ends with a hook for Resistance 4, where the world’s remaining forces launch a global invasion of Russia to exterminate the Chimera once and for all.

Alas, this is too awesome to actually exist. And even if they did go through with it, until they figure out that being unable to cause damage to an amphibious Chimera to keep you from straying off the chosen path when you can kill the same creature in the Retribution is objectively retarded, or that forgetting to include vehicle sections when the previous game had six is the literal opposite of progress, then the game will still manage to disappoint.

But dammit, I can still dream.