Resistance 3 is a PS3-only first person shooter that really delivers the goods in both its single player campaign as well as cooperative and multiplayer. I’ve played the two previous games in this series and actually liked this one the best, when usually it’s the other way around. You don’t need to have played the other two in order to enjoy this one.

The story here is about an alien invasion by a group called Chimerans, and it takes place in the 1950’s. The guns you have are a combination of Chimeran technology and weapons from the time period, so you have a revolver that shoots exploding rounds, a shotgun that shoots fireballs, machine guns with homing devices that follow targets, and so on. The setting is a decimated version of the United States where you play part of a resistance movement that is trying to put a stop to the invasion.

I completed the single player campaign in nine hours and five minutes, which is very good for an FPS. By comparison, I previously finished Modern Warfare 3 in just under six hours, so I got more for my money with this game. Add on cooperative gameplay (when I can talk my wife into playing) and online multiplayer action, and you get a lot of content for your money.

The single player campaign takes you all across the U.S. and ends in New York City, so you’ll see a wide variety of locations. You’ll go through farms and rickety old barns, burned out apartment buildings, ride along on trains and boats, and more. The game has ten different weapons that you’ll pick up along the way, and while some weapons are better suited for certain situations, you are pretty much free to choose whatever works best for you.

In the past several months, I’ve played and finished Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, F.E.A.R. 3, Crysis 2, and Killzone 3. Yeah, I like first person shooters. Of all those, I found this game to be one of the most challenging, second only to BF3. The single player campaign is also longer than any of those games.

If you are a PS3 trophy hunter, there are a bunch of trophies based around your skill with each weapon. After you beat the game, you can go back to each section of the levels and replay some parts to make picking up those trophies easier. I finished the game then spent about an hour going back to the parts where I had to fight a bunch of enemies at once, and I racked up a bunch of trophies in doing so.

Online multiplayer gameplay is fun and well designed, but it’s just like every other multiplayer FPS game you’ve played. You have deathmatch rounds, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and so on. I liked that the maps are fairly large and you have plenty of places to run around and hide. Each map is based on locations you visited in the single player campaign. Unfortunately, I ran into several places where opposing team members would camp spawn points and dominate the game. That can be very frustrating.

I was really impressed by the graphics in this one. Maybe because it is exclusive to the PS3, this allowed the developers to focus on maximizing what they can push the console hardware to do without having to worry about Xbox 360 compatibility. There are some really neat lighting effects used in this, especially when you get inside Chimeran spaceships, and the overall setting is very realistically rendered. I liked that it gave you plenty of options to shoot through small openings and be more tactical rather than just run and gun your way through the levels. I also thought the face rendering of the in-game characters was done quite well.

The voice acting was also good, but there aren’t any big Hollywood stars in this. I looked up the game’s listing on IMDb.com and didn’t recognize anyone, though they all have plenty of game credits to their name. The music was forgettable but I never much pay attention to music in games like this. It only plays during the intermissions, anyway. I did really like the sound effects and was glad that it didn’t have a constant stream of profanity like you hear in military-based shooters.

Overall, I was very impressed with Resistance 3. I think it offers an excellent single player campaign and enough content for multiplayer and cooperative play to keep you interested. Although players tend to abandon the online gameplay pretty quickly when it comes to the average FPS, I had no problem finding matches to join.

Note: This game uses that stupid “online pass” system where you can’t even play the multiplayer part unless you register a serial number. If you buy the game new, you’ll get the number to use. Otherwise, you have to buy it for $9.99 in the PlayStation Store. Keep that in mind when comparing prices between new and used copies of this game.

Recommended: Yes