Save The Last Humans?, More Like Save The PlayStation 4 Launch
Sony’s brand new PlayStation 4 has finally arrived here in Europe and brings with it a tremendous amount of hype. Oddly enough however it’s gamers who are proclaiming this system to be the a direct hand down from God himself rather than the arrogant Sony we saw with the PlayStation 3. What’s interesting is the general lack compelling exclusives to help warrant that PlayStation 4 day one purchase, you’d think that a little more attention would be put into this area but as always, it’s yet another disappointing launch.
We’ve all come to expect terribly bland console launches by now and in that regard the PlayStation 4 is no different to many systems before it. Despite this we do sometimes see a title come in and end up being “the people’s choice”. Forget Killzone, Knack or FIFA that’s available on ten other systems, forget all the games that the media has been hyping up because Resogun is far and away the best PlayStation 4 game. If you pick up a PlayStation 4 this year, Resogun NEEDS to be installed on your hard drive.
Resogun is developed by the same team that brought us Super Stardust HD and Super Stardust Delta so if you assume Resogun would be some kind of twitch shooter, you’d be right. If you’re expecting Resogun to be some kind of spiritual successor to Stardust then you’d be wrong, it actually plays more similarly to the 1980 arcade classic, Defender. It’s actually so close to Defender that I’m surprised Sony didn’t go and chase that Defender license so they could market this as an official re-imagining.
The aim of the game in Resogun is to clear waves of enemies until you’re the only one left with boss battles serving as the climax to each level. The action is viewed from the side rather than the top down view of Super Stardust so your playing field is limited to circular x-axis. Initially I was concerned that this would prove to be annoying as the main reason Geometry Wars never quiet clicked with me was due to to limited playing field, I hate getting stuck in corners. Resogun suffers from none of these “problems” due to how enemy attack patterns work but also due to the ever helpful boost.
Boosting in Resogun is nothing short of genius and single handily saves the game from becoming frustrating, it’s essentially your “get out of jail” mechanic. The reason it works is because boosting not only damages anything in it’s path when used, it also makes your ship invunrable for a second. As the waves of enemies and incoming fire eventually start to reach bullet hell territory, a quick tap of the boost button will allow you to reposition yourself to a better spot so you can continue your reign of terror.
The enemy attack patterns that I mentioned also do their part in minimising any potential frustration as the enemy is normally located behind and/or in front of your ship. The end result is a much more horizontal based shooter with verticality being downplayed which is fine, no one wants to be cheaply shot from above or below in a game like this so those are kept to a minimum.. The power ups in the game very quickly start to give your ship the ability to auto target enemies so you don’t have to line yourself up perfectly on the same height level as the enemy in order to shoot them. Resogun wants you to have fun and look awesome doing it, it’s not an arcade game designed to suck money out of you.
I’m sure by now you will have heard of the humans that need rescuing in Resogun, yes I know what you’re thinking “I just want to shoot stuff, who cares about bonus points“. Trust me I had a similar reaction but the humans in Resogun are cool and really add to the game. As you blast enemies eventually the humans will be released from their prisons and it’s up to you to pick them up and escort them to safety before the enemies have it their way. The reason why you’ll actually want to bother with this is because saving humans will get you extra lives, shields and additional screen clearing bombs. The best part however is the L2 button which allows you to throw the humans into the safe zone, the standard throw is useless but pressing L2 after boosting dramatically increases the horizontal reach of the throw. It’s utterly amusing watching humans be thrown to their safety rather than being carefully escorted back.
What Resogun ultimately does best is get rid of all the annoying rubbish normally associated with this genre, it doesn’t have a stupidly high entry point barrier at the start that will scare off most players. Resogun starts off fairly simple (and perhaps even boringly) but isn’t afraid to offer up a challenge as you crank up the difficulty. The game gives you all the tools to be awesome without coming in at the expense of skill or challenge and that’s something not many games can claim.
The more you play Resogun the more you’ll understand just how well designed it is, eventually you will reach a point in Resogun where everything just “clicks” and you’ll be saving humans, dodging incoming fire, dropping bombs, strategically boosting and it’s all a fantastic example of what twitch gaming is all about. The screen will be full of madness and yet your thumbs are instinctively doing all the work almost as if you’re watching yourself play, there’s no feeling quite like it.
In terms of graphics we all naturally expect big things from the PlayStation 4 and yet Resogun looks like a download title you’d find on the PlayStation 3, that is to the untrained eye. The truth is that whilst Resogun isn’t Killzone Shadow Fall, it is indeed giving the PlayStation 4 a fair work out. In case you didn’t know, all those crazy effects you see in Resogun are exactly the type of stuff that will fry your CPU. Add in a native 1080p resolution running a perfectly 60 FPS and you have a game that’s actually a lot more complex that it would initially appear to be. Do yourself a favour and skip the videos online, play this on a 1080p TV and turn up the difficulty. Spend a good 20 minutes playing Resogun and then pop in just about ANY other game out there, suddenly that game looks a little dull and lifeless compared to Resogun.
Equally important for Resogun is the soundtrack, if you’re going to get the player’s blood running then you’ll need bad ass soundtrack. Thankfully Resogun yet again delivers by offering up a catchy and often fast paced soundtrack that matches the on screen chaos nicely. They even have the opening “Save the last humans” voice over at the start come out from the Dual Shock 4′s speaker which is a nice touch although I normally play Resogun with the volume turned up so I never really hear it.
If I had to fault Resogun on something it would have to be lack of content, Resogun features five stages and that’s about it. Each one has four difficulties levels so replay ability is encouraged but I would of liked to have seen something closer to ten stages. Additionally all the stages look the same so some visual variety between the stages would of been nice, perhaps a day time stage? With that said Resogun does feature a neon heavy look so everything on screen can be clearly indentifiable but still, a little variety would go a long way.
As the dust clears it’s now obvious which games have succeeded and which ones have failed, Resogun may come in as a “small” digital download title but it absolutely smashes all of the PlayStation 4′s big heavy hitters. The overall lack of content is a bit of a bummer as Resogun so enjoyable but you can’t help but want more. It’s something that can be easily sorted with future DLC but then again, surely the sign of a good game is one that leaves you wanting more?
Resogun is a game aimed at the hardcore, it’s that twin-stick shooter crowd who will fall in love with it and will continue to post leaderboard score that neither you or I will ever hope to reach. With that said, Resogun is the type of game that anyone can play for 15 minutes and have a great time. It harkens back to a time when games were yet to pick up and play but hard to master, a time when game mechanics were king.
At the time of writing Resogun is actually free to all PlayStation Plus members and when you think about it, that’s fairly amusing. The BEST PlayStation 4 title is a game you don’t even have to pay for. Either the PlayStation 4 launch was horrible or Resogun has exceeded all expectations… I’m leaning towards the latter.
