Kotaku has received some scans of a Dublin newspaper’s advertisement for Sony’s recently released Resistance 2. This isn’t particularly amazing. What is amazing is that the adverts pose as full front-page stories with the headline “America Under Attack” and an image of the giant Chimera attacking Chicago. The campaign includes an address from the “President” of the US and an analysis of the alien threat.

One of the best things about this is that it only advertises the game itself on one of the four pages; the headline page includes nothing but what seems like genuine news. For anyone not knowing the game and being very gullible, that could indeed be a scary headline. The Metro newspaper is free, so expect plenty of people to look at this ad thinking it’s real. This wins at guerrilla marketing.

Many gamers only give games two hours at the most to impress them.  If a game can’t hook a gamer in those first two hours, they’ve lost the majority of gamers.  In that sense, the first two hours are the only ones that matter.

In The First Two Hours we play two similar games for only two hours each and score each game with either a “Ten” if the game thrilled us, or a “RIP” if the game killed us. Then we declare a winner based on which game used its first two hours to captivate us the most.

Today’s fight is the battle of the holiday season.  PS3 vs. Xbox 360.  Resistance 2 vs. Gears of War 2.  Which single player campaign comes out faster, harder and stronger?  And more importantly, which one used its first two hours to hook us the most?

Story: It’s the 1950’s. An alien invasion has swept through Europe annihilating everything. Now the Invasion has hit America.  As the sole survivor of your unit, it’s time to show them why Freedom and Apple Pie deserve capital letters.

Always a New Enemy To Put Holes In
One of the criticisms of the first Resistance was the lack of enemy variety, and Insomniac corrects that right out of the gate in Resistance 2.   Within the first two hours you see enemies that inspire awe like the massive walker in the first level and some that are legitimately creepy like the seemingly invulnerable, swimming chimera as it glides past your feet.  You’re always fighting something new and always getting new weapons to kill it with.

Halo 3 meets Call of Duty 4…
Resistance 2 may have the best pistol in gaming and you get it right away.  It’s a Magnum that has remotely detonated, highly explosive bullets.  You can embed a round into a Chimera’s skull and hit R2 to take out his buddy with the explosion.

You always feel the tension of battle, like you’re in a huge firefight being shot at by 20 enemies, returning fire with human weapons that have a very satisfying Call of Duty 4-like pop to them.  In many ways, Resistance 2 feels like you’re fighting slightly uglier Halo 3 aliens with the slightly modified weapons of COD4.

Scripted Moments That Come To Hurt You
The computer will take over the first person view for certain key moments, guiding you through scripted sequences, usually when all hell’s about to break loose.  If you’re a cutscene skipper, listen up: Resistance 2 uses it as a way to draw your attention to something colossal, which produces those “oh snap!” moments that really make games.

1. How Dead Am I?!
It’s a bit difficult to read Resistance 2’s damage indicator.  You know how Gears’ red skull will get redder and redder, letting you know how close you are to death? Resistance’s damage indicator is more subtle, leading to comments like, “I am a little bit dead, or a lot bit dead?”

2.  Don’t Hate the Aliens
Resistance could have done more right out of the gate to get players emotionally involved in the battle against the Chimera.  Sure, they’re ugly but they’re not hate inspiring like they could have been if some early story elements were implemented.  How about the chimera take out the statue of liberty or Mt. Rushmore?  I would have settled for one flicking off the Liberty Bell.

3.  It Doesn’t Feel Like 1951
Many of the human weapons and the equipment doesn’t look like its from the 1950’s, it looks modern.  There’s just nothing but an occasional radio broadcast that indicates that you’re in the middle of the 20th century.  Insomniac could have deepened the experience with a little more nostalgia in the first two hours.

Resistance’s first two hours have great pacing, big bosses, surprising cinematics and satisfying combat, which all make it an edge of your seat experience, but I wish I was more attached to the story and emotionally involved with the central conflict in the game.

Story: Marcus Fenix and his bunch o’ badasses take the fight to the locusts with new weapons, characters, a new story writer and a new unreal engine.  As the Last Day ad says, “you already know how this will end,” but that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun getting there.  Especially in the first two hours.

1.  “Wow I actually care about these people…”
From the first couple lines spoken, It’s obvious that the script is stronger and more character driven than the previous Gears game.  Dom and Marcus seem to have real friendship and respect for each other as they grunt their lines through a really important, character driven tutorial that i would not recommend skipping.  Marcus and Dom seem different from each other this time, Marcus being the war hardened leader, Dom the more human and identifiable one.

New characters, like the spiritual Tai, are unique and instantly likable.  It’s easy to get invested and care about what happens to them and early cutscenes make you feel like you are part of something epic, that you can’t lose or humanity will die with you.

2.  Bigger, Better, More Brumaked
Epic’s mission statement for Gears 2 was “bigger, better and more badassed.”  In the first Gears of War you ran away from Brumacks.  In the first two hours of Gears of War 2, I destroyed 3.

The new Locust semi-auto rifle is fun, kind of like a split between the Lancer and the Sniper rifle, and the grenades are way more relevant this time around, more powerful, more situations where they seem like the right choice and more satisfying when you see those locust chunks fly.

3.  Polish
Polish shows you how much a developer cares about their project, and Gears 2 is polished up like a classic muscle car.  It’s just little things like the fact that Marcus turns his head in the direction of the person he’s addressing and the notifications you get as you progress towards an achievement.  It’s like 15 mini achievements on your way to the big one.  Slick, Cliffy B, Slick.

Unreally Slow
The new Unreal engine still loads textures slowly.  Moving Marcus around felt somewhat slow and clunky sometimes compared to my time in Resistance 2.

Are you Scrapbooking, Marcus?
I like the emphasis on collecting cogs and documents to put into your war journal, but I felt like the searching for these items messed with the pace and intensity of the game.  I wish they could have been implemented a little more with the game rather than feeling tangential from it.

A Glitch as Ugly as Locusts
I found a glitch right before the two hour mark.  I was tasked with killing a group of mortar wielding locusts, which did, but the game did not register it.  Therefore the horde kept coming and I wasn’t let out of the loop until my welcomed death came.  Uncharacteristic of Gears, i know, but it happened.

Gears of War 2’s first two hours are better than Gears of War 1’s.  More engrossing, more streamlined, more intense.

Gears of War 2

If this was a UFC fight, Gears of War 2 would win The First Two Hour fight by split decision. They’re both wonderful games, and I think that Resistance’s gameplay may be tighter and overall more visceral, but  Gears of War 2’s engrossing story, captivating characters and its ability to make you feel vital, that you can’t lose to the locusts, is what makes its first two hours more successful and gives it the win by a narrow margin.

If you’re anything like me, you like to multitask, so here are a bunch of new Resistance 2 screens to browse through while you celebrate (or curse) the newly elected 44th President of the United States.

Resistance 2 Image Gallery – Click Here To View

When will it end? Shortly after we talked to Metacritic founder Marc Doyle about LittleBigPlanet’s low user score, the wrath of Sony fanboys was unleashed upon Gears of War 2’s user score as a revenge hit. It now appears that the 360 fanboys just wouldn’t stand for that, even though they seem to have started this in the first place, and have retaliated by butchering Resistance 2.

I really don’t understand the point of all of this. It seems that the whole idea of abusing user ratings really took off when people slammed that dumb bitch who misrepresented Mass Effect on Fox News, busting the rating of her book on Amazon down to under one star. These fanboys misusing Metacritic, however, don’t seem to understand that while Metacritic offers them the ability to voice their opinions, the reality is that the user reviews don’t really matter.

This is very much the opposite of Amazon’s system where the user reviews are the only reviews on the site. Low user ratings on Amazon make much more of a negative impact on buying decisions than low user ratings on Metacritic simply because Metacritic features the Metascore, aggregating reviews from actual industry professionals.

If you look at this logically, which I’m sure is beyond the abilities of the common fanboy mentality, you will see that trying to wreck a game through the Metacritic user score is not going to work. The average user is smart enough to know that these scores are bullshit. While Metacritic itself is an excellent source for consumers to get the general consensus about a game, the user scores are no different than user scores anywhere else on the net, which unfortunately means they are susceptible to this kind of pettiness.

I know you fanboys may feel some sense of accomplishment or that you are helping your side win the console war, but you’re wrong. You are only hurting yourselves and your peers, and you make the existence of the user review mean less than it should. You are the belligerent, fist-fighting hockey dads of the gaming community, and quite frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Please, just stop.

Sony are the only console giant to have an official showing at this years Leipzig Games Convention and with promises of blockbuster announcements and possible new game revelations, what games do we actually know will be on show from the 20th-24th of this month?

The good news first.  Heavy Rain will be on show with no curtains to hide the presentation from public eyes, so we’ll get to see much more than the already revealed screenshots and behind the scenes footage.

It’s looking less likely that Eat Sleep Play will reveal their new PS3 game at the convention, since previous evidence looks to suggest an internal development showing.  However, there should be a healthy list of titles on show, including the following:

- MotorStorm Pacific Rift
- LittleBigPlanet
- Resistance 2
- Free Realms
- The Agency
- DC Universe Online (announced at E3)
- Infamous
- PlayStation Home
- Killzone 2 (single player and multiplayer hands-on)
- Heavy Rain

Not too shabby, but we certainly hope for more new exclusive game announcements.

Want into the Resistance 2 Beta program? Well, if you live in the US, you will be able to log into the PSN, buy episode three of Qore (Sony’s online monthly subscription based programming) for $2.99, watch some advertisements, and boom — you are cleared for Resistance 2 Beta action.

Of course, according to Insomniac’s Community Manager, James Stevenson, this is only one of the many ways you will be able to get into the beta. However, as he explains on myresistance.net, their will be a pre-order option that will allow the earliest form of access, but that has yet to be announced.

Stevenson’s clarification of the Beta announcement is available below.

Hey guys,

Lots of confusion thanks to the Qore announcement.

Here’s the deal. We are running a Public Beta, and you will have many ways to get in. The best way which will give you the earliest access to the beta will involve a pre-order program that should be announced soon, (for those of you who don’t know what pre-ordering is, you essentially reserve your copy with five dollars down, and that five dollars will go towards the price of the game when it releases).

For all of you folks outside of North America are up in arms because Qore is NA only, please don’t worry. This is one of many ways to get in, and we plan to make the beta available in all territories, as we need to test all servers and worldwide play.

Further details on how to get into the beta will be forthcoming.

I apologize for any confusion that has happened given the various offers beta codes. Rest assured, we understand how excited you all are to play Resistance 2, and we’re going to do our best to make sure the beta program runs as smoothly as possible.

If you have questions, post below. I’ll try to answer over the course of today.

JS

So there you have it. Other options are planned for access, but as for now, the only way in is going to require US residency and three bucks of your hard earned money.

Source: boardsus.playstation.com (via CVG)

Our fourth and final installment of Ripten Radio from this years E3 will run you through the high (and sometimes low) points from day 4 of the conference. We give hands-on impressions of Left 4 Dead, RE5, Socom, Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Mad World, Little Big Planet, and many more.

This particular edition features the following Ripten super studs: Andrew “Hotel DJ” Podolsky, Jon “as seen on Ripten TV” Zungre, Emily “like a banshee” Balistrieri, Rangebar “Power Ranger” Merani, and myself — Chad “balls, balls, balls, balls, balls, balls of steel” Lakkis. Enjoy it after the jump.

Over the weekend GametrailersTV premiered the first work-in-progress Resistance 2 gameplay. To watch meant filtering through the entire show and as much as we love Geoff Keighley, we wanted to get to the good stuff.  Thankfully, now we can.

First up are the Grims – a new melee enemy in the Resistance universe.  Parkour little beasts who rush to meet your shotgun in the windy streets of Chicago.

The next video shows off classic Resistance gameplay, along with fellow human fighters and the new weapons system: Resistance 2 won’t sport a weapon wheel.  Instead you’ll only have access to two weapons at a time, allowing the developers to force you into particular weapon use.

I’m a tad reticent about this, since having a large selection of weapons at your disposal has always been an attractive proposal in Insomniac’s previous games.  Nevertheless, as long as a raft of inventive weapons remain, in their hands we shall trust.

You can watch HD footage over at Gametrailers.com, as well as peak at the new 60 player multiplayer.

GameTrailers has been given exclusive dibs on the first Resistance 2 trailer. It is, however, a teaser and doesn’t hold much in the way of concrete information about what R2 itself will hold. It should get us amped for the first nibble of actual in-game footage, on June 13 – but surely, you’ll be busy playing Metal Gear Solid 4, right?

I don’t feel comfortable commenting about anything involving the Resistance franchise, as my experience with the franchise has been virtually non-existent. But I must admit — if I do end up purchasing a PS3, as I plan to, for MGS4, this teaser has definitely piqued my interest as something that’s definitely worth looking into if it’s within my means.

Without further ado, we’ve got a link to the SD encoding of the trailer here and a link to the HD (i.e. the version you should watch if your computer can handle it) right here.

Source: GameTrailers

Last week several media outlets received a leak from an unexpected source claiming to be a tentative schedule for downloadable content on the PlayStation Network. Initially, the leak was treated with cynicism, but, as many are beginning to discover, cold hard evidence is painting a much brighter picture.

What is this hard evidence then, you might ask? The best way to find out is by looking at what lies inside the schedule.

You have your HOME; your Resistance 2 trailer, Wipeout HD, and WarHawk: Operation Broken Mirror. If you take a closer look, though, you may find a small little title known as Ratchet: Quest for Booty. This title just popped out of nowhere. At least, so it would seem. Not so for the forum members who frequent MyResistance, Insomniac Game’s official forum for their latest franchise, Resistance.

For the better part of the last month, these members were busy cracking codes. Codes? What for? Well, that was for them to discover. The codes were released as Easter Eggs in the music video Insomniac put together for the Game Developers Conference weekend.

Within the video they had hidden four codes in the form of magnets. One of those codes was the infamous QBLDC4. This was the code that needed to be broken.

Thanks to several hints offered up by Insomniac’s Community Manager, James Stevenson, and fellow comrade Rolf Mohr, the members of MyResistance narrowed down their options to a few select guesses.

The first correct part was DLC being Downloadable Content, but the rest of the letters were illusive: Beta? Quarter? These didn’t appear to fit with Downloadable Content.

On top of this, Rolf tipped the fledgling interpreters that they were very close to the answer without even knowing it. Still, the code crackers went from hot to cold, boiling to freezing.

After weeks of discussion and intense debates, the board members started getting disillusioned and fell into a rut. Hoping to rescue them, JS tried to set them on the right track. They were told to think outside of the box. Many ideas came up and only divided the unit more.

Eventually, one of the members asked that even if they had guessed the correct answer would JS confirm it. Regardless, the team continued to work, but demanded more hints. In response, he decided to reply with a cryptic message:

Hmm… *glances around the network drives*

I see lots of hints…but will I post them on the message board?…not so much.

“You know, it’d be sort of inconvenient if you guys figured it out, [be]cause it could probably be a magazine exclusive or something[.]

Shocked by the response and overcome with confusion, the small band continued to persevere. They attempted several more guesses, but were then informed that they had missed a clue entirely. As a result, the team doubled back and looked through a long list of hints given throughout. Gradually, they began to weed out most of the guesses that did not abide by what was given. Finally they arrived at an approximation of two values. The answer either had to do with quests or characters/races.

Their final guess before the leak broke out was Quest for B_ Downloadable Content, with no word for B.

(Click to enlarge)

When the image made its first wave on the net, the forum members caught it and noticed that within the list was a title known as Ratchet: Quest for Booty. With that, they had their final word. As of now, Insomniac has made no comment on the title’s existence, but many believe that this is due to other developer projects.

By confirming the identity of one game on the list, the theory is that the rest of the items on the list are also correct. Since then, an uncomfortable silence has followed in its wake. Should we be expecting these titles to be released, or not?

What gives even more credence to the DLC holding true, is the fact that there was yet another Easter Egg within the (pin)Ballz video reported earlier. An obvious one which we noted on the video’s release, were the numbers 0708.

It had always been thought to have been a date for something, but now we can confidently claim that this date, July 2008, was referring to Ratchet: Quest for Booty, since this is the date listed on the leaked schedule.

To add to the turmoil, Sony released a statement with the following remark:

Internal working documents naturally have proposed dates against titles, but these change frequently and dates are not confirmed until issued as part of a press release or formal announcement. The same applies to titles of games, which may be working titles or placeholders subject to later confirmation.

As a result, no weight should be given to titles or dates that appear in this document, other than to those which have already been formally confirmed

Naturally? Really? Besides the obvious no comment reply, notice how the press brief included “subject to later confirmation.” Ratchet would follow this rule. An exclusive magazine reveal is expected.

This Sony comment hasn’t stopped others from believing the list to be true in its entirity. On top of the typical HOME is being released around the same time as E3 theory, there has been one interesting deduction to go along with this state of affairs. Educated gamers have begun to notice that the same day the R2 trailer goes live, along with several other add-ons and expansions, the PlayStation store is reported to undergo a major revamp.

These ideas may seem highly convincing, but any hopes for a formal confirmation continue to slip rapidly away. We’ll just have to keep our eyes open. As we draw closer and closer to the timeframe the schedule details, we will discover more and more about this increasingly suspicious reveal.

Playstation Home is getting more appealing by the second and the way in which Resistance: Fall of Man, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and Warhawk will utilize it is nothing short of awesome.

The Playstation Home portal for Resistance will function like some sort of museum, allowing players to use their avatars to explore some unforeseen areas from the game and experience bonus content such as back story. This is an absolutely ingenious way to further flesh out the game’s story while keeping the experience on the console.

The folks over at Naughty Dog will be allowing you to explore Uncharted’s world with your Home avatar without any fear of being shot, in addition to providing you with a supplementary Uncharted mini-game. It’s a 2D side-scroller that’s been described as “reminiscent of both Contra and Out of This World.”

Finally, the features that Warhawk will utilize with Home are by far the most exciting. The Home lobby for the game will act as a military war room in which players can get together and discuss battle plans, to the extent of even using a 3D map of the level and little army men avatars to lay out their tactics in 3D. This brings to my mind the scene in Star Wars Episode IV in which the Rebel Alliance discuss their strategy to bring down the Death Star. My heart just skipped a beat due to all this excitement.

According to Kotaku, Sony is pitching ideas like these to developers to get more out of their games. If these three titles are any indication, we have a lot to look forward to with Home.

Releasing a quality game each year, Insomniac are at the top of their game and put most developers to shame. Letting us in on their methods of genius is a treat, and today they bring us an exploration of how they create single player levels. From paper to game in nine “easy” steps.

1. Designers create rough map.

From paper to screen, a level goes through many iterations. Often times designers start sketching out setups with paper and pencil, then transfer to a vector map for the Environmant Artists to start fleshing out. The Designer and Artist will work closely to define what these spaces are, how they should look, feel, etc.

(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)

2. Designers create scale rough of their map.

3. Changes are made to the map based on scale rough.

The Designer scale rough is a crude model built by the Designer to check out their spaces and make sure it will work for what they were thinking. Sometimes a space just doesn’t feel right when you get it in 3D from a paper map, so adjustments can be made with little effort. From here, the map is retrofitted before handing it off to the Environment Artists.

4. Map gets pitched to Environment artists, who work closely with Designers to flesh-out the spaces.

Many times, the designs change radically once Designer and Environment Artist begin problem solving.

5. Environment creates Environment rough, where the space is made to feel “real” (i.e. Where does that road go?)

6. Design and Gameplay programmers wire enemy encounters and stub in story elements (usually text on screen at this point)

7. People play the game. A lot.

8. Design and Art make changes as needed.

9. The polish work begins.

There you have it, a day in the life of Insomniac level creation. Rather them than me! To look at HD screenshots of Resistance 2 please follow this link.

Note, multiplayer maps get much more time in rough so they can be play-tested for balance, action funneling, exploits (like camping grounds) and player capacity.

Thanks and Credit goes to Insomniac.

In all the commotion some details were lost in a web of forum excitement. Insomniac enlighten us on some misconceptions, in addition to letting us in on some new nuggets of information.

Firstly, Insomniac’s recent Full Moon Show podcast lets us in on how much progress has been made on Resistance 2. The 8 player online co-op mode is coming on nicely, where they are making it as fun and feature full as possible before they pretty up the visuals.

Described as “freaking awesome”, with enemies on all sides in the co-op creates a sense of chaos, with cooperation the key to succeeding in this visceral, always on edge gameplay.

As for the single player, you’ll be amazed to know that so soon after thee completion of their second PS3 game (Ratchet and Clank Future), Insomniac have roughly completed all of the levels in Resistance 2’s single player campaign. That is, the campaign’s outline is finished, with the next step being tuning and moulding the levels to form the game.

It’s also divulged that the quality and success of Resistance 2 can be measured by the amount of ideas and content they’ve already cut from the game, to make sure only the very special content is left. This contrasts to a typical developer view of “we’ll make it work before the time is up”. Think of Insomniac’s method as picking out the weak plants in your cabbage patch to ensure you achieve the best crop.

Now onto dispelling some of the misconceptions that arose from the exclusive Game Informer article. A new enemy was revealed in the text – the Chameleon. Described as an enemy that stalks its prey, many presumed that it was an upgraded Stalker shown in the new screenshots. This is not the case. The screenshot was of the redesigned Stalker. The Chameleon is not a vehicle, but a living creature that stalks its prey.

Secondly, the “random level generation” mentioned is only for co-op levels, and not for the tightly designed single player campaign. Furthermore, the co-op levels will not be procedurally generated, but their diversity, variety and set-up will change.

Lastly, new soldier classes were mentioned to be part of the competitive multiplayer. This is also untrue. These different classes have only been confirmed for the 8 player online co-op, and not the online 60 player multiplayer.

With three misconceptions put to rest, we can end with a final piece of positive news. Resistance: Fall of Man was criticised as not looking that spectacular up close, especially when compared to the high-res textures of Gears of War. However, with the addition of texture streaming, advanced shaders and normal maps – Resistance 2 will look much better up close than it’s predecessor.

We’ll inform you as soon as new information comes our way.

60-player online? 8-player co-op? An expansive campaign across the United States? Insomniac wins!

As evidenced in the latest Game Informer, Insomniac Games’ is one of the few companies whose hard work is actually able to match their ambition, pulling off such feats as-yet-unheard-of in the realm of console first person shooters in a mere two-year turnaround. That’s right, Resistance 2 is currently scheduled to hit in the Fall of 2008 (cue “Fall of Fall of Man” ad campaign).

And those are just a few of the amazing details revealed exclusively in the newest issue of the magazine, which is apparently beginning to hit subscribers’ mailboxes.

Other tidbits sure to excite include the introduction of character classes include AI that scales on the fly (meaning that enemies near the player or within their field of vision will be noticeably more aggressive than those outside of it), partially randomized geometry in the levels (making each playthrough unique), and the most advanced matchmaking/community system on the planet. Clearly, Insomniac’s attempted to one-up the competition all the way around.

The single-player campaign will continue to follow Nathan Hale who, after getting shot down over Iceland, makes his way to the ‘ol U. S. of A. to join up with a group called the Sentinels.

Sadly, due to the exclusivity of the information, we don’t have any screens to show you, so unless you subscribe to Game Informer, you’ll have to wait until the issue hits newsstands.

You know that game you’ve been working on, with the WWII aliens? Well, if you were planning on calling it Resistance 2, then you’d better think again. Last week Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. filed to trademark the name Resistance 2.

Last month we reported that Resistance 2 was ready for it’s pre-Alpha testing stage. Combined with the trademark information, what does this mean exactly? Just that there is a likely chance for a sequel to Resistance. It does not verify the game exists, but does provide good evidence that Insomniac Games is working on a sequel.

To read the filing visit the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website or check out trademork.com.