Oh yeah, I got Resistance 2 from Gamefly on Monday. I stopped at the beginning of the second Iceland level (#6 of 7 levels?). Insomniac, what the hell happened to you? R2 was one of the reasons I re-purchased a PS3, since R:FOM was, in my opinion, rad. I thought the hate was overblown since the first two levels were pretty good, then it hit the ocean of mediocrity.
I mean, what absolutely blew me away was that they had the setting of America to work with, and they completely blew it. In San Francisco, you're in underground tunnels 97% of the time, then you reemerge to the skyline of SF with a Chimeran armada towering above it (which is pretty cool), and then you fight a little bit and go back into the tunnels. Along with that, you're in a Chimeran battleship, a forest in California, Utah, Idaho, Iceland twice, Chicago, and apparently Louisiana and Mexico. They're all decent settings, but when you're underground most of the time in SF, in caves a lot of the time in Idaho, that leaves Chicago as a place that actually seems distinctly American. And there's no real landmarks. Doesn't help that there's a lot of really stupid moments in that level, too.
Where's Washington DC? Where's New York City and the Statue of Liberty? Where are the places, the landmarks, the setpieces that makes you think "oh shit, our America has gone to hell"? No one gives a flying fuck about Utah, or some forest in California, and Iceland. Where are the civilians? They can't be all gone, especially since there's the radio guy and his sighting of said civilians. America in R2 seems like yet another generic video game world. It shouldn't be like that.
(and did I mention you constantly go from locale to locale with little explanation? russian dude: "tower is in ____!!" Then you're in ____. A narrator isn't the answer; cohesive dialog is.)
And there's game length. I completed the first five (six if you count the battleship) levels in about four hours. And there were 2-3 levels to go. It took me 10-12 hours to complete Resistance 1. Wtf.
And there's the 2-weapon system. They stripped away one of the more defining features of the first game and replaced it with something that's in every other FPS. Their reasoning was "well, we wanted people to use more unique weapons and not the bullseye/assault rifle all the time. Thing is, you were given a bullseye/rifle all the time, and the "unique" weapons you were given – the standard shotgun, rocket launcher, and sniper rifle, and Halo 3 battle rifle the Marksman weren't really unique. The only weapons that I thought were actually unique were the Auger (which was in RFOM), the revolver with remote detonation bullets (if only because you could use it as a long-range C4), and the splicer. And the splicer's seemingly only real purpose is to remove limbs from Grims, since it's conveniently laying on the ground before every Grim encounter.
What's worse about the 2-weapon system is that sometimes you run out of ammo completely, and you're fucked. At least in RFOM if you ran out of ammo in both your Bullseye and assault rifle, you could always go batshit insane with your rocket launcher, shotgun, and several other far more unique weapons.
Oh, and Hale is suddenly a chatterbox. He's Mr Silent in the first game, yet when you pick up from the ending of RFOM, he's picked up from the snow into the helicopter and he's verbally protesting and shit. Did the injection they give him wake up his vocal chords?
There a bunch of other little problems with the single player that aren't worth the typing. I have played the multiplayer a bit, however, and it's better than the beta. It's not my bag, though. I'd rather play, well, Call of Duty 4. :/
edit: holy shit this is long. tl;dr: Resistance 2 is a huge disappointment, especially to one of the few people who liked the original Resistance's single player.
