With all of the big retail releases, both multi-console and exclusive,
sometimes it's easy to forget that there were some interesting digital
releases at launch on the PS4 and Xbox One. Microsoft got the bigger
roster of exclusive digital titles overall, with Killer Instinct,
Crimson Dragon and Lococycle among others, but Sony might well have
gotten the best game of the lot in RESOGUN. Part of the reason for this
is because, along with Contrast, it was (and still is as of this
writing) completely free to PS Plus users at launch, giving PS4 owners
two free games at launch if they signed up for the service. The other
part, however, comes from the fact that RESOGUN is an engaging,
beautiful, and surprisingly accessible shooter that manages to do quite a
lot that's unique to it while still being a familiar and enjoyable
experience. Granted, the game certainly has its issues here and there,
and it's probably not going to be the first game you latch onto for your
shiny new PS4 whether it's free or not, but that's part of the charm of
the game, as it manages to be one of the best games for the PS4 at
launch, if not the best, by sheer personality and force of will, if
nothing else.
From a presentation perspective, RESOGUN is
essentially a modernized take on the classic shooters we've come to
love. The plot is very minimalistic, amounting to “SAVE THE LAST
HUMANS,” to the extent that the game tells you this every stage, but you
don't really need for there to be an extensive storyline when there's
so much shooting so that's forgivable. Visually, the game is intense,
and has an outstanding visual flair to it that takes good advantage of
the PS4's capabilities. The environments themselves are largely similar
to one another if you pay attention to them a bit, but the different
color palettes make it less noticeable than you'd expect and the game is
frantic enough that you likely won't unless you're doing it on purpose.
The visual contrast between the well designed backgrounds and the
voxel-esque ship designs is interesting, especially when things are
exploding everywhere, and the game makes very good use of bright colors
and visual effects between the enemy explosions and the special weapons
you can unleash to level the playing field when needed. The game also
makes good use of its audio effects, starting with the fact that it uses
the speaker in the controller to shout out instructions and power-ups,
which gives the game a surprisingly arcade-style feel that helps it out a
lot. The music is also outstanding, which isn't much of a surprise for a
shooter given that this is almost a requirement in the genre, but it
fits the tone of the game well and really compliments the action. The
audio effects are also well designed and assembled, featuring lots of
futuristic effects and plenty of great sounding explosions to compliment
the carnage you leave in your wake, and nothing sounds out of place or
awkward.
At its core, RESOGUN is your standard shooter in thought
and deed; the left stick moves your ship around, while you can use the
right stick to fire in the direction you want, though you can only fire
left and right. The entire game world is based on a rotating cylinder,
and as you fly around said cylinder, enemies pop in for you to blast
into oblivion. Your objective in each stage is to, as noted above, “SAVE
THE LAST HUMANS,” who are imprisoned around the stage in energy prisons
that you have to break open. As enemies spawn around the stage,
occasionally green glowing enemies, dubbed Keepers, spawn, which you
have to kill to break open a prison; doing so frees the human inside,
while failing to do so kills the human outright. Once a human is freed,
you must then fly to them, pick them up and carry them to an evacuation
station on the map, which (if successful) gives you additional points,
extra lives, more bombs and other goodies. The enemy forces will try to
stop you, mostly through the old war of attrition method, IE, by
throwing everything they have at you and hoping something kills you, but
you have plenty of tools to fight back with. Each of the three ships
you can pick from has its own regular bullets, which can be powered up
repeatedly by picking up power ups as they appear in the level, allowing
you to fire more powerful and useful shots based on the ship you've
chosen. You're also given three extra tools for shredding enemies into
pieces and saving of the aforementioned last humans, in Bombs, Boost and
Overdrive. Bombs are as you'd expect; you press a button, they wipe
everything off the map in record time. Boost allows you to rocket around
the level quickly as you deplete the automatically recharging meter,
allowing you to get out of harm's way, get to Keepers and humans
quickly, or otherwise move somewhere else in a hurry, and you can even
destroy enemies if you boost through them, though this drops your speed
in a hurry. Overdrive is your all-powerful beam weapon, which is powered
up by green energy you collect as you kill enemies, and when deployed,
also obliterates everything on the screen, just less effectively than
Bombs.
For those who might be wondering, “Well why would you
even use Overdrive if Bombs kill everything in one shot?” that plays
into the scoring system, which is surprisingly involved and interesting.
Basically, as you kill enemies, you get points toward a score
multiplier, and the more you kill enemies, the higher it can go. The
catch is, when you stop killing enemies or otherwise doing productive
things (saving humans, breaking power up containers, and so on), the
multiplier begins to atrophy, and if you go too long without paying into
it, it drops back to the default. As such, those who want to get the
most impressive scores will want to keep killing enemies as quickly as
possible, which puts a different spin on the game entirely. In a normal
shooter, your objective would be to simply kill everything and move on,
but in RESOGUN your objective is to kill everything in the most
productive way possible for the most points, which actually makes the
experience a lot more thought provoking than it might seem. Should you
use a Bomb to clear out the enemies on the map to get some breathing
room and risk losing your multiplier if enemies don't spawn fast enough?
Are there enough enemies on-screen to make using Overdrive profitable,
since it pays into your score far more than anything else and the more
enemies you can kill with it the higher your score rockets? Is it worth
saving that human to aim for the Human Savior bonus, or can you ignore
it to keep yourself safe for better scoring opportunities? Make no
mistake, RESOGUN gives you a lot of potential scoring opportunities, and
for those who love being the best on the Leaderboards, this is going to
be a lot of fun, because the game knows just how to keep you coming
back.
You can basically clear an entire Arcade run inside of an
hour or two, but there's far more to the game than one Arcade run for
those who want to go for the best scores possible or just have fun. For
those who want to goof off, the game lets you go into any stage you like
for a single run, and you can take the game online with a friend for
two-player chaos, which is generally handled well, as power ups affect
both players and there's no friendly fire so you can totally go nuts.
For those aiming for the highest scores, there are four difficulty
levels to play through, with each offering a higher multiplier, and a
“Hero Challenge” once you complete Master without continuing that offers
a massive multiplier and a much harder play experience for those who
are looking for a real challenge. There are also plenty of Trophies to
unlock for doing various things, regardless of how you want to play the
game, and whether you're looking to get the best score or to just goof
off, there's a lot to keep you coming back to RESOGUN. It's paced well
to encourage you to keep going for the gold, offers a lot of tools to
help you do so, and generally offers an experience that anyone with a
passing or diehard love for shooters can appreciate.
On the
downside, casual players may find that the game doesn't have a lot to
show them if they're not at all interested in being the best around, as
three ships and five levels doesn't amount to a whole lot of content on
the whole. For serious players, on the other hand, the experience is
hobbled in a slightly different fashion, as those who are trying to get
the best possible score out there will probably find that they're
sticking to the Phobos for its large Overdrive reservoir, which is
limiting in a different fashion. A couple more stages and ships might
have made this a little easier to work with for casual and diehard
players alike. Still, when the worst thing you have to say about a game
is that there's not enough of it that's not a terrible thing, especially
since what is here is very well balanced, such that you'll likely find
that you don't mind all that much.
RESOGUN ultimately works as a
shooter that is all things to all people, offering an experience that's
tuned for both casual and serious play, in a way that anyone can really
find what they're looking for from it, no matter what their opinion of
shooters is. The game is a technical marvel visually and aurally that
takes good advantage of what the PS4 can do, and it takes the concepts
we're used to in shooters and expands on them with the Boost and
Overdrive systems, as well as the “SAVE THE LAST HUMANS” objective that
isn't required but pays dividends for doing so. As a casual shooter, it
offers fun multiplayer and a good learning curve, and as a serious
shooter for score fanatics, it offers large multipliers and multiple
ways to use the tools it gives you to earn amazing scores, and with
multiple difficulties to play around with and Trophies to earn you've
got lots of reasons to keep coming back. The game has no plot to speak
of if that's a thing that bothers you in a shooter, for some reason, and
there's a limit to the variety here depending on your genre interest,
as the lack of ships and stages (for casual fans) and high-score viable
ships (for diehard fans) is less than ideal. All told, though, RESOGUN
is one of the best launch titles to come out for the next-gen consoles,
and is arguably the best one for the PS4, and if you have a PS4 there's
absolutely no reason not to pick it up as soon as possible.
Short Attention Span Summary:RESOGUN
is an outstanding shooter in general and is arguably the best launch
title for the PS4, and if you're looking to get a PS4 it's one of the
first games you should get, period. It looks and sounds awesome and does
quite a bit with the PS4 technology, and it takes the core concepts
shooters are known for and expands them noticeably, between the score
multiplier, Boost, Overdrive and human saving systems. It's great as a
casual shooter thanks to its excellent difficulty balance and
multiplayer options, diehard fans will love the ability to jockey for
high scores with the higher difficulty multipliers and numerous tools
the game gives you to jack out your scores, and there's plenty to do
here between the multiple difficulties, Trophies and more. There's no
plot here if you care about that, and the game could've used a bit more
content for casual fans (who will find the lack of ships and stages
saddening) and serious players (who will find that there is a “best”
ship to use for scoring), but overall these are minor issues at best. If
you have a PS4 and haven't played RESOGUN yet you need to, and if you
intend to get a PS4 this is one of the first games you should play, as
it's basically outstanding no matter what your skill level is, and it's a
hell of a lot of fun, period.
