Retro Review: C-12 FINAL RESISTANCE (PS1)

Developer: SCE Studio Cambridge
Publisher: SCE
Platform: Playstation

Recently I've been tracking down and playing some of the classic games of my youth. One I remember being particularly fond of was this post-apocalyptic third person shooter which was released in 2001, shortly after the release of the PS2. As I remember it was largely overlooked, but was that because of the incredibly successful PS2? Or was C-12 just a really bad game? I certainly remember enjoying it at the time but then again I was only 14 years old and as long as a videogame was mildly entertaining I was pretty satisfied. 12 years have passed and I finally decided to give it another playthrough to see if it still holds up today.

As I mentioned already C-12 FINAL RESISTANCE is a third person shooter with a post-apocalyptic theme. Aliens have invaded Earth and have come to harvest the planet's carbon (C-12 being a reference to 12C) which is not good news at all because there is carbon in pretty much everything - including us humans.
But never fear because Lieutenant Riley Vaughan has come to save the day! You play as Lt. Vaughan, a human soldier who has been given an alien optical implant which he uses to scan enemies and his surroundings. Vaughan has been tasked with saving the human race with a little help from the military, mostly through radio communication. But as you may have guessed the story definitely isn't the game's strong point and only really acts as an excuse for you to traverse the ruined cityscape blasting aliens and cyborgs.

Combat makes up the meat of the game and it works in a way that reminds me a lot of Syphon Filter. The R1 button locks onto which ever enemy you are looking at, or at least that's how it's supposed to work. In practice the targeting system is pretty inconsistent and you'll often find yourself locking on to the wrong enemy while another bears down on you and swiftly begins tearing you apart. Vaughan starts off with a kind of energy blade, forcing you to get up close and personal for some melee combat before you finally come across a machine gun. Heavier weapons appear later on including a rocket launcher and laser and ion cannons but it's all pretty standard hardware that doesn't really do anything different or impressive.

Visually the game is decent for the PS1 but still nowhere near what the console was capable of at the best of times. The locations are all pretty grey and dreary and very same-y and the enemy character models are unimpressive and uninspired. Most of the time the controls work like they are supposed to but oh my dear god, the fucking camera. If you find yourself out in an open space it's fine, but enter a confined space and it gets that incredibly frustrating Tomb Raider shit happening where it will swing to the worst possible angle, leaving you to attack blindly at the enemies you can't see. And as for the sound there's not really a lot apart from the weapons firing and the enemies growling, some nice background tracks would have been appreciated here.

So yeah as you can imagine C-12 isn't as great as my 14 year old self remembers, but having said that it still have some fun gameplay and it's definitely not the worst third person shooter on the console. I honestly can't really recommend this unless you happen to get a copy for free or maybe have some young 'uns because it is quite an easy game.