Insomniac Acknowledges Fans Disappointment
Back when it released in 2008, Resistance 2, the sequel to the PS3 launch title, Resistance : Fall of Man, received a slew of positive and negative comments. The title did quite well, surpassing it’s predecessor on Metacritic, receiving an 87. However, a core group of fans have been repeatedly complaining about the title, calling it a downgrade from the first one.
James Stevenson of Insomniac recently talked about this issue, and the fans ultimate disappointment.
“Resistance 2 got better reviews than Resistance 1,” said Stevenson. “But the long term fan feedback from that game weighed on me.
“The hardcore fans of Resistance 1 were maybe a little bit disappointed. Those folks consistently expressing that – especially GAF [NeoGaf]- it was like your dog turned on you.
“That’s the feeling of it. You had this dog that loved you. You loved the dog, too, but they expressed all this affection for you. And then suddenly the dog bites your hand and it’s that feeling of, ooh, ow, that really hurts.”
Stevenson then went on to talk about the critics reaction to the game, and how that varied from the fans.
“The critics loved Resistance 2. Some people didn’t like it, but for the most part… And the Metacritic’s higher than Resistance 1. So we got better reviews than Resistance 1, but the overall opinion of it is that it was a failure by fans, that Resistance 2 was a failure, because maybe the expectations were so high for it.
“But that weights on you more. We talk to journalists a lot but we deal with our fans every day – and when they are disappointed… Reviewers are playing lots of games. They’re supposed to be critical.
“But the people who put their money down on our game, want to see our game be good and want to invest months of their time into our game, spend months of their time leading up to our game watching videos, reading about it, sending us questions, listening to our podcasts, investing hours and hours and being excited for our game, if they’re disappointed then it hurts more than some reviewer being pissy about a game and giving it a seven, well, okay, whatever. I can move on from that. I can ignore that. But fans that are genuinely disappointed are a lot harder to cope with.”
PSLS gave Resistance 2 a 4/5, with Joseph Peterson praising the co-op mode of the game, however noticing the lack of campaign split-screen.
[Source]
26 Responses to “Insomniac Acknowledges Fans Disappointment”
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October 24th, 2009 at 8:08 AM
resistance 2 was a good game, i liked the story n co-op just the multiplayer sucked and was worse than rfom imo
October 24th, 2009 at 8:29 AM
Lack of offline campaign was a downgrade.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:30 AM
It let me down because there were scenes that started like the picture above, and your thinking, wow
this is going to be great, crossing that bridge, then entering the city etc.
And instead you just transport ahead to some genereic location and start shooting.
It had it’s moments, but overall it could have been better. Agree the online multi was pretty bad too.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:35 AM
I felt a little let down as well but I never bought R2 just played in the beta. But I was expecting more personally.
October 24th, 2009 at 11:25 AM
I agree R2 was a downgrade of R1 in terms of multiplaye… I say that because, as a R1 vet, I noticed that u didn’t skill to own in R2..every seems to use the wraith on a daily basis… In R1 I spent hours mastering the art of the carbine headshot and d sniper…
l it’s also hard to see that most of the players that I grew up and owned with, playing R1 like hermanson, Captincapemall, brigada91 etc didn’t migrate into R2 cuz they called it NOOBY..I dominated in R1 during my time there alongside many players(plus the ones named above) and I’m still dominating in R2 cuz it’s super less challenging..R1 is individual-skill based, where many players like me tried to improve carbine accuracy by mastering the 12bullet headshot and not to mention the countless Gb’s and GWL’s that me and many other ownage players participated in.. while R2 is just “let’s pick the wraith and and kill” based game..R2 doesn’t take skill and R1 does…I still love R2 though….. HOPE R3 surpassed everything
October 24th, 2009 at 11:35 AM
I’m actually the opposite on this.
I thought R1 was a somewhat mediocre game and wasn’t even excited about R2 until I got in the beta. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I had much more fun playing R2 than R1. It’s still one of my favorite FPS’s. I never tried the multiplayer on R1 though, so this is strictly about single player.
(P.S… fanboy moment. It makes me sick that Halo games score better and are more popular, because they really aren’t as good. I only bring it up because they seem similar.)
October 24th, 2009 at 11:41 AM
I think the potential was all there to not dissappoint the fans, but the lack of support and fumbling of 1.5 patch is what hurt.
I still play the online weekly with some friends, but every week we deal with the same issues.
- People in your party ending up on the other team or a different squad.
- Lack of weapon balancing and headshots being deemphasized and invisi grenades
- Lack of a true story coop.
- Boss fights were not hard at all.
- Only one level pack (great levels btw) that noone bought and no co-op level packs to keep that mode from getting boring.
- Multiplayer humans and chimera too similar.
But i love the game despite its flaws and really looking forward to R3
October 24th, 2009 at 1:06 PM
I enjoyed it about the same as the first title. I never really got into the multiplayer for either one so I didn’t really care how they were executed except a split-screen campaign mode would have been awesome. I really just enjoy the single player campaigns of Resistance and so far the last two games have justified my $60 with that alone.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:07 PM
I sold Resistance 2 as soon as I finished it. It was just unpolished and lacked any compelling gameplay. It felt like it needed another 6 to 8 months of polish and rethinking. The weapon wheel was one of the best things about Resistance 1, as well as the art style. The graphics weren’t very good in certain parts of R2 either. Not sure why.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:22 PM
I dont care who you are … if you smash a product or its creators, you are NOT a fan. You are just a dope with an opinion.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:28 PM
For me, Resistance 2 lacked that SURPRISE effect. When I first played Resistance 1, there were moments when I was genuinely scared by something jumping out and scaring the shit out me. Remember at the beginning of the game when you enter that cafeteria. It’s dark and then all of a sudden you hear loud piercing screaming. You see the tables in front of you flip over violently, but you have no idea whats coming after you? That was scary. Resistance 2 didn’t have that.
But my biggest problem with the game was how you knew what you were going to be facing ahead of you by the weapons that were laid out for you. “Oh a shotgun…there will be some Grims up ahead” or “A sniper rifle…looks like I’m going to be perched on a ledge in a minute or so.”
It just got a little predictable, whereas Resistance 1 was very much unpredictable.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:49 PM
To me R1 was a avg shooter and with R2 insomniac made it a great shooter the only problem with the game is no story co-op and no narrator
October 24th, 2009 at 1:53 PM
Although I think I liked R2 better (I also played it before R1, I should mention), I have to admit that I share the same sentiments with nuclearwarfare. The whole “weapon I need is on the ground in front of me” was a little bothersome, but I liked the idea that I could only carry two weapons at a time.
I don’t play multi-player anything, so I have no opinion there, but there is no way I’d ever call R2 a “disappointment” that’s for sure. Very much looking forward to R3.
October 24th, 2009 at 2:10 PM
They got rid of the health system and the huge inventory, so I never bothered with it. Those were the two features that made me enjoy Resistance, and without it, I might as well be playing any other first person shooter.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:56 PM
the offline campain was kinda bland besides the co boss fights..story mode felt strange without a narrator.
October 24th, 2009 at 3:57 PM
It is really interesting to see on how they would execute Resistance 3. It’ll be sure the ups of both Resistance 1 & 2.
October 24th, 2009 at 4:26 PM
I think they should drop RC and focus more on this and other new IPs.
This will be the first RC game I will not be buying (well maybe when the price drops). I just hate it that their trying to focus more on Clank and taking away the dual gameplay I enjoy. Also that series just seems to be going more downhill. Maybe they’re just being spread too thin with all these titles.
So I think Resistance would turn out better if they focused more on it and less on RC…or maybe started a new IP.
October 24th, 2009 at 5:18 PM
i liked resistance 2, it was and still is way better than Killzone 2 IMO.
October 24th, 2009 at 6:22 PM
R2 is a great game and the story is excellent . The only thing l didn’t like was that there was no offline co-op for the campaign. R2 is better than the 1st one both in story and multiplayer wise
October 24th, 2009 at 6:39 PM
i am glad they figured this out, because R2 sucks, i couldnt even finish it. The game was so boring, and stupid, the graphics did not even look that great. I wish i never bought it. R1 was amazing though
October 25th, 2009 at 12:15 AM
IMO I think R2 is a great game. The story is good. The competitive online is fun(somewhat hard to get kills with the random bullets from thirty people, but whatever). and the Co-op online is awesome. Sure it was a cutscene based storyline, but it gave alot of sub-story, plus it is just plain fun. It would be nice to get some more DLC that involved new Co-op maps/missions, but I still enjoy the hell out the ones we got. The one, no two things that kinda bother me(but not disapoint) is the 10,000 kill trophy, and the lack of an actual name. “Fall of Man” made the first sound kinda epic, and this one gets a 2. But for some of the stuff that the previous have said, its not that the graphics are bad, they just used in game cutscenes. They don’t have to have pretty FF cutscenes. And yes the R1 weapon wheel was cool and fun, but I think it is nice that they tried to distance themselves from the Ratchet and Clank franchise. R2 felt more like a cool shooter then R&C in WWII.
Anyways I say great job Insomniac, keep up the good work. R&C this week and looking forward to R3 (maybe with a sub-title like ‘Rise of Man’) in the future.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:32 AM
Okay, first in this post I’m going to be calling out a few morons. Me being a hardcore resistance fan owning all 3 of the games since there launch and still playing them can do so.
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CoGeO- r2: R2 is “nooby”
How is the only way youre going to re-supply your ammo is by killing an opposing player “nooby”?
In r1 the auger can regenerate it’s shields automatically in r2 the only way possible is by ‘killing another opponent’ for ammo.
Without the weapon wheel you are stuck with 2 weapons so the choice is yours (unless you KILL for another weapon you want) this would mean you would have to master all the weapons in the game and learn how to use it properly in each situation. Because now you have to work for the guns you want.
You CAN NO LONGER laark whore!
So how is r2 “nooby”?
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DGR8Mc187: played only beta, didnt get r2
You played the God dang beta only not even the final build..
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John Draisey: unpolished. weapon wheel
Oh im sorry, if you cant kill other players and take their guns so you need all of the weapons to be handed to you at start.
Have you even played r1? that game was not polish, hell the online was glitchier than r2 the single player in r1 was filled with bugs, r2 has none of this or a very small tiny bitsy little issues.
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megs1120: health system from r1 removed
It still has HEALTH REGENERATION except its not square bars. really? that’s your argument?
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bond2e2: graphics suck, boring, stupid, gameplay
You mustve not played part 1 huh? (for graphics)
“boring”, dude if you thought r2 was boring you arent a fan.
Sorry ff the gameplay took more skill to get use to then your regular “gun and run” r1 with your “ammo packs” everywhere in the map.
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SolidCake: online being crappy on r2
Really? A massive 60 player skirmish is crappy? Skirmish is my breach/assault i so much prayed for insomnaic would add to r2.
8 player co-op that can get very intensive especially on superhuman with a very well thought of leveling system and balance of weapons and classes?
5-6 game modes with different variations of huge maps that can fit from 2-60 players?
Not as much laggers to deal with and no known glitch areas (talking about cheating player s glitching outside of maps or into areas their not suppose to be in)? is a crappy online experience?
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Seriously all you guys complaining are *wannabes*. I hope insomanic does not listen to idiots like you guys and stick to the r2 feel. i loved r1 but r2 is a much better improvement in every possible way. you guys are the very low 1% of complainers im surprised insomnaic listen to. cause frankly all the DOGS I PLAYED WITH AND OWNED WITH made the transition to r2 and loved it.
October 25th, 2009 at 10:07 AM
i don’t get what everyone’s problem is with resistance 2. From what i’ve seen of fall of man that was terriable and R2 was a drastic improvement on a broken game, all the levels were amazing and compared to the first game which had the same boring old chimera this game had tons of differant enemies and i’m sure resistance 3 will be even better (i hope they set R3 in the asia like region)
October 26th, 2009 at 1:34 PM
You go get ‘em Rynxman!
October 26th, 2009 at 5:33 PM
I can’t believe this article. It actually quite refreshing and compelling to hear feedback from…our feedback. Usually all we get is “we love the fans!” and that’s it. I honestly have no opinion about R1 or 2, i just love that they’re listening and actually making efforts to please the people that play it.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:11 PM
@joinsideke
no their not, the resistance 2 lead develpor is crying while eating ice cream and saying to himself “your the best develpor in the world don’t let those nasty gamers till you any differant!” and watching when harry met sally on comedy central