Resistance: Fall of Man

It takes you under the ground, into what looks like your overrun military headquarters. Entering at the top of a giant metal staircase, which creeps around the edge of a very tall room down into the heart, you're immediately up against little prancing enemies, who leap from one point on the wall in a flash to the next, and need to be picked off very quickly. There are also bigger, tougher, brutish enemies in what look like spandex trousers (but probably aren't), firing bolts of white-hot death in your direction. It's worth pointing out at this stage that throughout the game the AI of your enemies is a sort of "basic plus". It's not exactly Halo, but it poses a challenge, although on this particular staircase the main challenge stems from your enemies' sheer weight of numbers and ordnance. So, instead of dashing back into the fray, you respawn and hold L2 to investigate your weapons load-out, using the left analogue stick to point to the gun you want to switch to. By this stage you've got the L23 Fareye, the Sapper and the Hailstorm, not to mention a couple of types of grenade.

We go for the Hailstorm, and immediately it calls to mind Tribes' Spinfusor or the Ripper in Unreal, firing volleys of white bolts that bounce back and forth across the narrow confines of the stair section - although "reflect" is a better word. Insomniac has previously said that this is one of the guns that simply couldn't be done on PS2, with each bolt's trajectory as it bounces off walls requiring quite a lot of calculation, and the effect is initially lost. It's only when you get further in, and you're camped on one side of a crate and a Chimera trooper's camped on the other, and you bounce a death-blow off the ceiling above, that it really gels. Helpfully, it can also fire a little self-sufficient turret using the L1 button, which provide backup.

Then it's onto the Fareye, which is the sniper rifle. Zooming with R3, and adjusting the same with the up and down buttons on the d-pad, you're able to zip out of cover and tackle enemies crowded around a circular conference room. But watch out, because hiding outside to regroup doesn't eliminate the risk - like you, the Chimera have access to the Auger, and its burrowing bullets appear as spinning white marks on the wall as they tunnel in your direction, forcing you to stay alert even when you're behind the cover of masonry. But the Fareye's a powerful tool, and your ability to hold L1 to engage the "concentration" part of it is wonderful. Where shooters of the past have had you hold your breath to concentrate your sights, Resistance adds an element of slow motion. Effectively what we're talking about is a powerful sniper rifle with a limited-use Bullet Time element.

Busting through you find yourself in an elevator heading down. You see the helipads and warehouses and runways outside, but the lift takes you deeper, into the heart of the staging area, where a giant transport rests on an elevated landing pad above a huge underground base, with violence erupting in every area. As the mesh doors open you're faced with a giant, rampaging enemy as tall as three men with a giant weapon to match his giant reach - something that becomes a factor as he stomps after your circle-strafing actions. Whichever weapon you choose, it's a big fight, with regular Chimera troops blocking your path as you weave and duel. Soon after, the level's over.

And then it's to the climax of our demo version, where you'll need to call on everything. Seemingly like Ratchet & Clank, there are levels where the initial burst of gameplay seems to demand everything you have, only to become much greater and more elaborate than you imagined, and call upon a broader and more efficient use of force when you inevitably die and respawn. Starting out on London Bridge, in the shadow of a skyline dominated by a giant Chimera construct - like a city landed forcefully on top of a city, complete with its own alien highways polluting the horizon - you're thrust into the rubble-strewn South Bank and faced with the twin threat of marauding Chimera and Stalkers. Stalkers are four-legged tanks in the style of Half-Life 2, but shorter - spider-like in their movement - and immediately you reach for the latest addition to your armoury, the LAARK missile launcher. It does the trick, but then there's another Stalker. Through repetition you rely on the Fareye, a mixture of the BullsEye and the Auger, and then engage the LAARK as another, greater threat comes into your path.

The greater threat being a far more spider-like enemy with longer legs and the capacity to lob expanding puss balls that explode like biological grenades. Imagine the Alien Queen as a sort of gigantic waterboatman with projectile eggs. Probably better to use the LAARK here, or to hide and use its alternative fire mode, which calls to mind Unreal Tournament's Redeemer. Instead of directing the missile in first-person, you hone it in using the cursor, more like Half-Life's rocket launcher, and with this you can push past your enemy. At which point the Chimera need dealing with, giving us a good opportunity to talk about the grenades. Not the regulars, which are what you imagine - although fun to see in action, thanks to the carefully measured physics - but the hedgehog grenades, which land and bloom like spiky flowers, before ejecting their needles-of-mushy-death at every angle. Hard to come by, but fun to use - the latter being a perfect encapsulation of the spirit of Resistance's more inventive weapons.

It's a game about them, by the looks of it, and gloriously realised in 720p at a solid frame-rate. There's an element of auto-aim, which drags your reticule closer to the enemy hide, and despite my usual reluctance to engage with console-based first-person shooters the analogue controls have an immediacy and versatility to them that works. Coupling the change-weapon function with an instant pause of the game is crucial, and like so many decisions it elevates Insomniac's PS3 debut above the ill-considered fare that typically illustrates a console launch.

In other words, it makes a compelling first impression. It's vast without sacrificing the claustrophobia of great first-person shooter combat; it's inventive without resorting to set-pieces, or simply focusing its energies in specific segments and then moving on as burnout starts to manifest itself; it's about the weapons, primarily, just as you'd expect from a company that seems to love coming up with new ways to kill things more than it enjoys finding new ways to make double-jumping fun. Ratchet & Clank was always a blast, and probably more progressive than Naughty Dog's Jak & Daxter series; first impressions of Resistance suggest it applies these principles to a different genre, and a genre that - despite many successes - could do with putting an emphasis on fun.