Resistance: Fall of Man; or, White Guy Gets All The Credit

Husband and I have been playing a first-person shooter RPG called “Resistance: Fall of Man.” We’re both loving the game. It’s a traditional split-screen cooperative mission-based game featuring soldiers trying to fight off an alien invasion (in a nutshell).

However, it’s a game with one main character. Husband took Player 1 and I took Player 2 and, as I said, it’s a first-person POV, so we’re looking out through our character’s eyes. Fairly early in the game, we saw that Husband’s character is a white male soldier and mine is a black male soldier.

At the end of various stages, the narrative – sometimes another character in dialogue, sometimes an explicit narrator – explains how there was only one survivor, or only one soldier accomplished something, or the protagonist was the only man who … meaning Player 1, of course. The white guy.

I’m making a real stink about this.

Narrator: “He was the only surviving soldier from that unit …”
Me: “Hel – LO!! What am I?? Oh, I get it, I’M not important!! Sure, acknowledge Whitey! Typical! Etc.”

Heh.

It was especially hurtful after a couple of levels during which I had some great marksmanship and was, like, shooting the robot drone bombers while husband was turned around or not yet at the battle scene or just a bit slower on the draw that particular time or whatever.

Our playing styles are pretty complimentary, but there are times when our personalities really show through. We’ll be doing the same mission at the same time (of course), but there’ll come a point where we’ve looked carefully through a room and husband is still methodically looking around the perimeter while I’m standing impatiently at the door ready for the next room.

Husband tends to find all the clues that are just sitting there waiting to be picked up.

I tend to trigger most of the ambushes.

Works for us.