It's just bizarre how they turned on Insom. I still remember Wollan making some shit thread how Insom was best dev of next gen, and now he and others trash them.
i'm not sure it's that bizarre to be honest, the fans did what Sony did to them.
"here's R2, yeah we don't care either, look at this :<waves Killzone 2>"
They can kill their false gods now they have a pretty new thing to hold on to.
That said, i am finding R2 to be turgid. Though i hear the online is just as good as R1 so it seems weird that a game loved for its online is suddenly hated. Well, it's not really... they are a bunch of socially inadequate jizz monkeys so i shouldn't be surprised.
The Killzone 2 thing is understandable though, at least for those of us who were in the actual beta and got to cross reference that with Resistance 2 right when R2 was released. At least in terms of MP, Killzone 2 absolutely crushes R2. Even without a dedicated co-op mode, the design of the MP demolishes R2's dedicated 8 player online co-op as a co-op experience. And then there is the presentation, with one feeling like it was designed from the ground up to take advantage of the strengths while also muting the weaknesses of the system, and the other feeling like any UE3 game forcefully pushed to function on a system that really doesn't do that style very well. Maybe it's the game-a-year syndrome, but then Insomniac needs to take a break and give their next project a few years.
But taking KZ2 out of the equation, I think it makes perfect sense to be damning of Resistance 2, especially if you liked the first one. They changed everything around, to the point where they decided to ditch the focus on weapons. I can't speak for anyone else, but at least for me, a good deal of my interest in Insomniac games comes from the weapons, and they ditched that hook. What I played of the game felt like uninspired theft, nothing more. A good FPS, but really, more like any good FPS. And this time without any real hook.
I don't think it's unfair to expect greatness from Insomniac at this point. It does seem increasingly unrealistic, though.
the little I've played of Resistance 2 online wasn't as fun as Resistance 1. The entire thing feels like CoD4 mixed with Halo 3 light, and it's a bad combo. Resistance 1 multiplayer was fast and enjoyable, a bit like Quake, just slower and with less powerful weapons.
R1 felt like a fairly successful emulation of a PC kill-them-down game, complete with the weapon style and variety that should come with the classic PC game territory. R2 was just some console FPS.