Hybrid

Hybrids are the foot soldiers of the Chimera's armed forces, and are the most commonly encountered enemy throughout the Resistance series. They are several inches taller than the average human being, are highly agile, and possess remarkable strength. Overall they are a savage enemy, but are also keen and tenacious. Hybrids quickly learn the methods of their adversaries; they had already displayed expertise in British Army tactics by the time of Resistance: Fall of Man, and later they displayed such expertise in U.S. Army tactics as well. Beyond their adaptive nature, the most obvious attribute of Hybrids is their sheer numbers.

Even though the games does not mention the different kinds of Hybrid subspecies, there are five apparent classes of Hybrids.

Standard Infantry
These Hybrids are the most commonly encountered. They have no head gear and little armor protection, found on their legs and their stomachs, and wield the Bullseye as their standard weapon. They are commonly led by at least one Steelhead. On lower difficulties, standard infantry Chimera are easy to defeat, but seem to fight more aggressively when led by a Steelhead. They make up the bulk of the Chimeran military, and can be identified by four rectangular cooling towers, two on each side of their spines.

The Close Quarter Combat for a Hybrid is grabbing a soldier by the neck and slamming their body into the ground. A less common form is a rifle butt to the face, knocking their rifle out of their hand, then while on the ground the Hybrid shoots the soldier in the face. Both ways take under five seconds to complete.

Sharpshooter/Scout


This type of Chimera is a lot less common than standard infantry. Because of that fact, they wear very little to no armor whatsoever, and they also wear a visor device on their heads for the purpose of scouting. They have another role as well: they act as sharpshooters and are commonly seen in positions that give them a good angle to shoot at enemies, such as on top of a building. Since they wear even less armor than normal Hybrid soldiers, they are more often than not easier to take down. They are almost never found alone or operating within small groups of normal Hybrids; they tend to stick to larger squads of Chimeran soldiers. The reason for this is because their strategy is to pick off enemy soldiers while they're busy fighting other Chimeran soldiers. They are usually led by Steelheads, just like the standard infantry Hybrids. They can be identified by four conical cooling towers, two on each side of their spines, and their trademark visors.

Heavy/Armored Infantry Hybrids
These Hybrids are heavily armored, and are very rare. They can be identified by four cylindrical cooling towers, two on each side of their spines. These Hybrids are used mainly for defending locations important to the Chimera. They are exclusive to Resistance: Fall of Man.

Strategy

 * In terms of the best weapon to use against Hybrids, the M5A2 Folsom Carbine and Bullseye are highly recommended due to have the most ammo throughout the game. The M5A2 Carbine takes them down very quickly if they're hit in the head, and the L23 Fareye also has similar results, taking them down in one shot to the head.
 * On normal difficulty, it takes 12 M5A2 Folsom Carbine bullets or about 10 Bullseye bullets to the torso to kill a Hybrid. Headshots do more than twice as much damage as a torso shot and kill Hybrids much more quickly.

Strategy
Only the standard infantry and Advanced Hybrids appears in Resistance 2. The standard Hybrids are skinnier and have less armor on their torso, and are still armed with the Bullseye. However, this time they are much more strategic in their attacks. It's very easy to get overwhelmed by Hybrids, as they appear to use the new surroundings to their advantage.


 * As with Fall of Man, the Hybrid is susceptible to nearly all types of weaponry. However, due to their marginalized armor, they are much easier to take down, requiring about 2/3rds as much damage to kill compared to in Fall of Man (a Hybrid in Resistance 2 dies after only 8 M5A2 Folsom Carbine rounds on Normal difficulty, compared to 12 rounds in Fall of Man). A good dose of headshots from either the M5A2 Carbine or Bullseye will quickly cut them down.
 * Hybrids in Resistance 2 have two A.I. settings: "normal" and "banzai". In their normal state, Hybrids will fight intelligently, use cover, and maintain their distance from the player. Hybrids that enter a "banzai" A.I. state will ignore cover and charge at full speed straight at the player while firing their weapon on full auto, even from several hundred feet away, completing ignoring everything else including the player's allies, with the intention of overruning the player's cover and overwhelming them, killing them before their health can regenerate. In many encounters, a handful of Hybrids are scripted to go in "banzai" mode immediately as soon as they spot the player, while the remaining Hybrids fight normally. Additionally, a "normal" Hybrid may go banzai due to battle circumstances, such as if they are the last enemy remaining in the area. "Banzai" Hybrids can pose a major threat due to the game's heavily cover-based regenerating health gameplay, and should be a top priority to kill.

Resistance: Retribution
Hybrids are the most common enemies in Retribution. They are similar in appearance to their incarnation in Resistance Fall of Man, meaning that they are still in their early stages of evolution. They are shown as the main Chimerian foot solders until Luxembourg. From there, they are replaced only by Advanced Hybrids.

Strategy
The best weapons to use aganist the small group of Hybrids, the .303 Storm Rifle and BM001 Razor.

Standard Infantry
Hybrids reappears with a less mutated look, stronger and wear less armor given to the Earth's environment cooling down by the Chimera, becoming more similar to their natural, original environment. Hybrids are included with more A.I. intelligence in combat, rather than having their movements being hand-scripted by developers in the previous games, as the strain and as well other Chimeran units features more traversal freedoms, such as being able to climb through a window or climbing a wall. Also, the Hybrids' heat stacks are vulnerable to damages and if caused with enough inflictions can explode, killing the wearers and damaging any enemies in their vicinity. Hybrids will sometimes engage the player in a grapple, which the player has to avoid by pressing L3. They also become the main enemy battled in this game, including the later chapters.

Sniper Hybrids
Sniper Hybrids are Hybrids armed with Deadeyes and can hide themselves with a cloaking ability while scanning the environment with laser sights.

Wildfire Hybrids
Wildfire Hybrids are the same as normal Hybrids except they have got more muscles as they have to carry the heavy Wildfire rocket launcher. They will place themselves at a distance from their enemies so they can take them out easily with their Wildfires.

Grunt Hybrid
Hybrids are one of the most common enemies in the game, and are a combination of the Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 3 incarnations, having the toughness of the first game's Hybrids coupled with the exploding powerpacks of 3. As ever, they are armed with the Bullseye; as with the first game, they will never use Bullseye tags.

Advanced Hybrid
The Advanced Hybrid, unlike other games, has a different weapon, a new gun resembling the Marksman called the Hunter. As usual, they are tougher than regular Hybrids and far less common. In Burning Skies, their powerpacks are just as vulnerable to explosion as those of regular Hybrids.

Scout Hybrid
These resemble the Sniper Hybrid of Resistance 3 and are armed with the SixEye sniper rifle.

Trivia



 * In LittleBigPlanet, you can buy an add-on costume for a Sackboy that look like a Hybrid suit.
 * In the Naughty Dog game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, players can play as a Hybrid from the "Heroes of Playstation" DLC pack, on the villains team.


 * In Resistance: The Gathering Storm, Hybrids have a limited ability to drive human vehicles, such as trucks. The Hybrids' ability to drive might pertain to the fact that they were once human beings, and that they may still be able to remember how to operate human machinery and vehicles (yet they still have minor difficulties in operating them). This is also shown in R:FOM's Beta trailers.


 * In Resistance: Fall of Man, Hybrids have three toes, whereas Hybrids in Resistance 2 have four.


 * In R:FOM, all Hybrids and similar strains had a slouched posture, with their heads bent forwards, and their entire body leaning forward. In Resistance 2, all Hybrids stand more or less upright and carry their heads upright.


 * Most human soldiers consider Hybrids to be tenacious, deadly, ruthless, intelligent, and merciless; however, James Grayson has a completely different opinion of them. He states they have no logic, are unintelligent, terrible fighters, and he himself is generally unafraid of them.


 * In Fall of Man Hybrids are noticeably taller than human soldiers, while in later games their size is comparable to regular humans.
 * Over the years, their appearence grew more human-like and less monster. As they appear in Resistance 3, they almost have an appearence as a human, only converted.

Resistance: Fall of Man

 * In R:FOM multiplayer, Hybrids carry the LAARK under their arms.


 * In R:FOM, Hybrids seemed to have some element of Human speech (though this was limited to statements such as "you're dead" and "I kill you"). However, in Resistance 2 they seemed to lack this ability.

Resistance 2

 * In Resistance 2, in San Fransisco after meeting with Doctor Malikov and clearing out the room with two levels and Furies separating two parts, look at one of the Hybrid bodies on the enemy's second floor. A normal Hybrid body will be there, but it will be colored black and instead of the normal-colored back coolers, this one's back cooler is black with the red parts turned blue.