The freedom afforded by Operation Flashpoint's expansive environment is present in Resistance, but to an even higher degree.  The new island of Nogovo is 100 km² in size, giving you plenty of room in which to maneuver.  When playing the campaign's missions, this will afford you a great degree of freedom in selecting your approach during assaults, looking for the best places to set ambushes, etc.  Sometimes it can be fun to replay a mission and see if you could have done better using a grove of trees as cover while maneuvering to flank the enemy than you did by coming down a ridgeline onto the other flank.

The gameplay itself remains the same from the original, with the same control scheme and hotkeys.  While this makes it easy to begin playing Resistance without a learning curve, it also means that you are stuck with a teammate command interface that is still unwieldy.  It would have been nice if it had been replaced with a more intuitive and easy to use interface.  Also, it seems that orders are not always registered properly, which unfortunately often leads to the squad member in question's demise.

Another unfortunate carryover from the original game is the inability to save your game more than once during a mission.  While retry points are automatically set by the game during the longer missions, it is very frustrating to be limited to one save.  If someone wants the challenge of completing a mission without saves, let that be their choice; don't force this unnecessary hardship onto all players.

The lack of support for multiple saves is a big issue in this game because it is far from an easy game to play.  The realistic combat environments and damage model mean a small mistake can easily cost you your life, immediately ending the mission in failure.  Add to this the fact that you are just about always outnumbered and outgunned, and you have the recipe for a challenging game.  If you were able to make your way through Operation Flashpoint and Red Hammer, you'll probably welcome this challenge.  However, if you struggled with the original game, things will probably get even worse for you in Resistance.

If you finish the campaign and are still hungry for challenge, the game includes 5 single player missions.  These missions tend to be quite challenging, so they will keep you occupied for a while.  Once you complete them, you can venture online to try out one of the nine new multiplayer combat situations.  Resistance has completely revamped the game's multiplayer component, making it a lot easier to get online and into a game than in the original game.

Resistance boasts an improvement in graphics over the original.  To notice the difference, though, you'll need to crank up the game's graphics settings and have the horsepower to do so.  Even with the settings set to their maximums, the graphics are not a large leap forward from the original.  They certainly look better, especially the vehicles and flora, but the game is still not on par graphically with today's top first person shooters.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 84%.  Resistance adds a lot of new gameplay to the original, and if you loved Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, you'll definitely enjoy this game.  However, the degree of difficulty, taken with the poor save game system and non-intuitive squad command system, might make it a frustrating play for some.

System Requirements:  Pentium III 500;  128 MB RAM;  16 MB Video RAM; 8x CD-ROM;  550 MB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse; Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis.

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