Insomniac
PlayStation 3
Four stars (out of five)
It has been (nearly) two years since the PlayStation 3 launched in New Zealand but only now is the console starting to deliver the games to challenge the Xbox 360 for next-generation supremacy.
In the latter months of 2008, two titles - both PS3 exclusives - were launched to steal all the attention and rave reviews.
The first was LittleBigPlanet, the unique platformer that has stolen the hearts of millions of gamers.
The second is, on the surface, nothing to get too excited about. It's a first-person shooter, and there are plenty of those on the market.
It's a sequel, and the market is dripping with those.
What Resistance 2 does is expand and improve on its original to the extent it completely overshadows Resistance: Fall of Man, one of the console's launch titles.
It's actually (whisper it quietly) a better game in many respects than Gears of War 2, the fabulous but slightly predictable alien-fighting slay-athon on the Xbox 360.
Resistance 2 again follows military man Nathan Hale and company as the human race launches back into war against the Chimera, a race of alarmingly intelligent and brutal aliens.
But where the original was set in a grim Great Britain, the sequel brightens up a bit with a move to the United States.
In keeping with the ethos of the big country, everything is bigger in the sequel: bigger environments, bigger battles, bigger aliens.
Oh, and bigger weapons, of course.
There is an epic selection of firepower, both human and alien, from the basic carbine and shotgun to the wonderful "bullseye" - it shoots around corners - and the "auger", which shoots through obstacles in your path.
There's the "splicer", which fires blades, and the "wraith", an insanely powerful mini-gun. Brilliant.
Unlike Gears of War, which tries to pull on your heartstrings with lengthy cut-scenes and a developed story, Resistance is more about out-and-out action.
The single-player campaign is an intense journey across the nation, with every stop bringing more hordes of creepy aliens to dispatch.
The keys to a good first-person shooter include variety of weapons (check), accessible controls (check), impressively bloody graphics (check) and avoidance of repetition where possible (check).
Resistance 2 is the best shooter available on the PS3 and seriously challenges anything on other consoles.
For those with half-decent internet connections, it also offers deep co-operative gameplay modes.
