A game that really lets you play cooperatively!

Somewhere in the world of gaming you have the two extremes... those who are satisfied with a bouncing mushroom and those hardcore gamers who live for online tournaments and insane death matches. But between those two extremes are the people who like to play cooperatively, where two or more individuals play a game together as a team.
When X-Box first came out, Halo was just such a game. Now I happen to be an individual who has a teenage son, and as he has gotten older, his interests have diverted to other activities. But one of the things I really enjoyed about Halo is we could play the game together, through various degrees of difficulty and really enjoy spending the time together. But alas, X-Box 360 came along, as did Halo 2, and the game changed so much that we never finished it beyond ‘easy’ because the process of re-spawning had been altered. In the original Halo game, if one of you died, the other could hold back, find a protected area and in a short amount of time you’d re-spawn, rejoin your partner in the game, and proceed through the level. It would be difficult, and at times seemed to take forever, because you’d die so often, but with persistence and patience, you would succeed and eventually finish/win the game. In Halo 2 all that changed. If one of you died, you both died. Re-Spawning would occur again, but at the beginning of the level. And some of these levels were extremely challenging! So discouraging was this fact that we never went beyond the skill levels of ‘easy’ (there are 4 skill levels in the game). And we haven’t played the game, cooperatively, since.
How refreshing it was then to find that in ‘Resistance - Fall of Man’ you weren’t needlessly left to this same logic and game play quirk. It took us 1 1/2 days to finish the game on easy, and we had so much fun that we skipped ‘medium’ play and are now going through it in the hard level. Yes, it is more challenging, and yes, a blast or punch from the enemy is more devastating. But they are just as vulnerable - in a AI (artificial intelligence) sort of way.
The game itself is an odd mixture - World War II (1940’s) setting with an enemy (Chimera) that appears to alien. However, their origin is never fully settled. It is an ‘M’ - mature, rated game for the gun play and gruesome killing that goes on. And it’s sort of in a film-noir sort of presentation (dull colors, greens, black & white...). My son, who can certainly play these games has commented a great deal about the AI ability of the game to react to your movements and actions. It is highly interactive and interesting, and you find yourself pulled into the game at a level highly reminiscent of the original Halo game experience. You find that you aren’t generally ready to step back and do something else when you’ve finished a level or need to take a break, but isn’t that the the goal of any of these gaming systems... draw you into the plot, engage your senses and motivate you to play more than you thought you would? With ‘Resistance - Fall of Man’ Insomniac Games has achieved this.
This game is definitely not something a mother worrying about violence would want for her child. But as with most things like this, recognizing that the Chimera are not ‘human’ and seek the overthrow and destruction of mankind makes it easy to separate the ‘reality’ issues. It allows you to play up to 4 players cooperatively and 40 in online campaigns! The graphics are well done (less triangular details) and though not light years above X-Box/X-Box 360, it is obviously better.
There are some glitches with the game. We had a couple of incidences of falling through the skin into the wireframe level. And we couldn’t remedy this without dying in some form or another. Other than that the game play has been seamless!
So if you happen to be one of those people like me, who values the opportunity to spend time with your gaming child, then this is a game you should really consider!