Pankratous
Member
Until a few weeks ago I had no idea there was a Resistance game for the PS Vita. I chucked it on my Amazon wishlist and lo and behold, it was mine for my birthday. It's worth stating before I go on and that I love Resistance. It is my favorite FPS franchise of all time, by a very, very long shot.
It was developed by Nihilistic. Honestly, I have no idea who they are or what else they had done, but apparently they are now closed. That's a shame in my opinion, because I thought Burning Skies was brilliant. It took me about six hours to complete the game which admittedly is not long, but it felt appropriate for a Vita title and for the story they were trying to tell.
The story is probably the worst aspect of the title. It's not up to par with the mainline series. However, it is by no means bad. Not at all. It has plenty of information which expands the Resistance universe as a whole and the general premise of the story was interesting. I kept wanting to see what was happening next. Some cutscenes - mainly at the start of a new level - were terrible though. Horrible quality. In-game cutscenes were absolutely fine, though.
So... gameplay. Brilliant. Honestly, so good. The gunplay felt leagues ahead of Killzone Mercenary which I played last month. The number of weapons was great - what you'd expect from Resistance, with some recognizable weapons and some new, all with fun secondary fire modes. Secondary fire modes were controlled by the touch screen - I can see why some might find this annoying but it's not so bad when you get used to it. Upgrading your weapons using gray tech was a good system - being able to choose from 2 sides of 3 upgrades, 1 upgrade from each side. Change your weapons to your play style, sort of thing. The primary shooting for each gun was solid - as I expect from Resistance - and the best part is you get plenty of opportunity to use all the weapons. You aren't absolutely flooded with ammo, meaning you will have to use and experience each weapon. The "tutorial" videos for using weapons were dreadful though. They used about 70% of the screen and were worse quality than if they were filmed by potatos.
Level design was of course linear - to be expected from a Vita game, or from most FPSs in general. However, the environments were pretty gorgeous. I initially thought the graphics were poor during the first level, but they seem to get better. The environments especially later on in the game seem to have much more care and attention. The graphics were quite good throughout and yet the frame rate is solid, even when quite a lot of enemies are on screen (though their corpses disappear straight after death to help with this). I think it tanked once very early on in the game, but the rest seemed smooth sailing. Very consistent, which meant for fun FPS play.
Overall I'm pretty happy I played through the game. It has ~60 on Metacritic. I'd personally give it a 7.5. If you like Resistance 1-3 I see no reason why you wouldn't like this, unless you really despise having to touch the screen. If you don't like Resistance, it probably won't win you over.
It was developed by Nihilistic. Honestly, I have no idea who they are or what else they had done, but apparently they are now closed. That's a shame in my opinion, because I thought Burning Skies was brilliant. It took me about six hours to complete the game which admittedly is not long, but it felt appropriate for a Vita title and for the story they were trying to tell.
The story is probably the worst aspect of the title. It's not up to par with the mainline series. However, it is by no means bad. Not at all. It has plenty of information which expands the Resistance universe as a whole and the general premise of the story was interesting. I kept wanting to see what was happening next. Some cutscenes - mainly at the start of a new level - were terrible though. Horrible quality. In-game cutscenes were absolutely fine, though.
So... gameplay. Brilliant. Honestly, so good. The gunplay felt leagues ahead of Killzone Mercenary which I played last month. The number of weapons was great - what you'd expect from Resistance, with some recognizable weapons and some new, all with fun secondary fire modes. Secondary fire modes were controlled by the touch screen - I can see why some might find this annoying but it's not so bad when you get used to it. Upgrading your weapons using gray tech was a good system - being able to choose from 2 sides of 3 upgrades, 1 upgrade from each side. Change your weapons to your play style, sort of thing. The primary shooting for each gun was solid - as I expect from Resistance - and the best part is you get plenty of opportunity to use all the weapons. You aren't absolutely flooded with ammo, meaning you will have to use and experience each weapon. The "tutorial" videos for using weapons were dreadful though. They used about 70% of the screen and were worse quality than if they were filmed by potatos.
Level design was of course linear - to be expected from a Vita game, or from most FPSs in general. However, the environments were pretty gorgeous. I initially thought the graphics were poor during the first level, but they seem to get better. The environments especially later on in the game seem to have much more care and attention. The graphics were quite good throughout and yet the frame rate is solid, even when quite a lot of enemies are on screen (though their corpses disappear straight after death to help with this). I think it tanked once very early on in the game, but the rest seemed smooth sailing. Very consistent, which meant for fun FPS play.
Overall I'm pretty happy I played through the game. It has ~60 on Metacritic. I'd personally give it a 7.5. If you like Resistance 1-3 I see no reason why you wouldn't like this, unless you really despise having to touch the screen. If you don't like Resistance, it probably won't win you over.
