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.
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