Last night I ventured into the online Resistance: Fall of Man environment on my PS/3 for the first time. Before anything else, I want to say how impressed I was to discover that online play was free and extremely easy to make work. I didn't have to pay anything for it, not in subscription fees (like with my XBox) nor in having to upgrade my router (like with my XBox). I did have to download an upgrade, but that only cost me seven minutes of patient waiting. And then I was right into the game lobby and off to the races.
That is, if by "races" you mean "spawn, get the shit shot out of you in the first 10 seconds while still trying to figure out what map you're on, die, spawn, get the shit shot out of you before you can even see the three guys who are shooting at you, die, spawn..." Rinse, lather, repeat.
It totally flashed me back to my first online gaming experience, back in 2000 or so, on the PC. That time the game was Aliens Vs Predator, but otherwise it was deja vu all over again.
Except that this time I wasn't so surprised. I didn't expect to be able to waltz my way through the game with the same air of superiority that I often feel like I have when playing against AI characters. I knew that I'd suck, in a relative way, and I was at peace with my suckiness.
Or almost so. The frantic pace of the online deathmatch required a lot more running around and looking about than the offline gameplay, which brought the issue I'd occasionally butted up against previously, to the forefront. In R:FOM, you see, the way to activate the zoom on your gunsight is by pressing in the right thumbstick. Unfortunately, you also jam that same thumbstick around to spin your POV this way and that, which, if you press down on it even just a little, means you're switched into zoom mode at the worst possible moment. I'd seen it a few times while playing locally, but once I got into the online arena, the action was so much faster that it was happening every few seconds! I'd be running away, and swiveling around to hit the guy behind me, only to be zoomed in suddenly and unable to find him (but the wall behind him was large as Life!)
Anyway, it was still fun, albeit frustrating. I'm going to see if I can disable that zoom feature while playing online; if not, I'll just have to get better at working the thumbstick more carefully. We all have to have life goals!
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