I’ve had the pleasure of spending the past few days with the Resistance 2 beta with both online multiplayer and co-op. While I played the first game briefly, I never got deep into either the single or multiplayer aspects. But after spending a good deal of time with the beta for the sequel, I can see this taking up a lot of my multiplayer gaming time this Fall.

It’s not the best experience graphically, but it’s not bad either. Character models and the environments all look good, but I’ve seen better. You can chalk this up in the “it’s a beta” category. Sounds, on the other hand, are terrific. Various weapon firing, human and Chimera screams, and environment sound effects are done very well. You’ll want to turn up your surround sound system on this one.

Hopping into the combat, I had a tough time selecting Play Now, which throws you into matchmaking. It’s iffy at best whether this feature will work. Chalk this one up to the beta testing as well, seeing as the game is having issues with stat tracking. My guess is that since it isn’t tracking stats properly, the matchmaking algorithms have invalid data to use to match you against similar ranked players. Loading my Profile in the Community section of beta shows about half of the XP I’ve earned and games played for my character. The team at Insomniac is already working on this, so I’d expect things to get resolved soon.

You have quite a few gameplay options to choose from in the beta. For Cooperative, you can play through with friends on one of the co-op levels taking on the AI Chimera who are swarming your position. In Co-op, I usually choose being a medic (since no one else ever does and it’s fairly important on the battlefield). In Competitive, you have many of the standard modes of play you can expect from FPS games. I’ve played in quite a few 60 player Team Deathmatch sessions with zero lag, which is just fantastic. In the many games I’ve played, I haven’t experienced any lag whatsoever.

As as the case in any beta, there are some problems. I’ve run into a few collision detection issues with getting stuck inside and under staircases on maps. I expect all of these issues to be fixed for the game’s final release next month. Overall, though, it’s a very fun multiplayer experience. With huge maps and tons of people playing, this should provide hours upon hours of enjoyment this Fall for PS3 gamers.