Sunday 5 August 2012

Resistance: Retribution on my PSP

Resistance: Retribution box art
As you may have read around or experienced, Resistance: Retribution is awesome, incredibly fucking awesome.

Resistance: Retribution is a third person shooter released in 2009 for the PSP. Set between Resistance: Fall of man and Resistance 2, the story revolves around the British Royal Marine Lieutenant James Grayson in a one man army battle against the Chimera looking for vengueance over his brothers fate; During battle, Grayson discovers a Chimera conversion center and there he finds his brother Jhonny who has been partially transformed into the Chimera; as protocol demands, he is forced to kill his brother but this sets him on a Chimera killing frenzy, as he abandons his troops and goes on a solo mission destroying every Chimera conversion facility he finds. He destroys plenty of this places and becomes a war hero, but the British don't take desertion so lightly, as Grayson is placed on trial and condemned to death. While awaiting the gallows, Grayson is offered a reprive by Lieutenant Raine Bouchard from the "Maquis" European resistance movement in exchange for his help on delivering a serum that will counteract the Chimera virus; Grayson agrees and the game is on.

Grayson's character is one of the best game characters I've ever played, his role in the game is so well stablished since the beginning of the game and many of his comments as the game progresses make the gaming more intense or interesting; the overall history is great too, beautifuly paced by Parker's voice on the chapter transitions, the ingame secuences and the cinematics, tell the story well enough to keep you interested; the game graphics don't stay behind either, a Modified Logans Shadow engine -From Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow- makes R:R's world a great sight, with pretty characters and astonishing enemies.
Resistance: Retribution gameplay
The game is a third person shooter, one of the most amazing things of this game is the combat; it's great, it's fluid, it's fast and it's satisfactory. While facing an enemy, Graysons crosshair will automatically choose an enemy and direct the bullets to it; the aiming is helped by 4 yellow markers, if you center you enemy on the yellow markers, the crosshair will automatically go to it; this is a great help when fighting, because R:R will throw at you hundreds of enemies at once, all of them shooting crap at you from all directions, allowing you to keep the shooting fluid and accurate on your side while dodging and looking for cover without having to tilt you crosshair awkardly on your enemies with the face buttons -this option can be cancelled on the menu if it's not hardcore enough for you- ah! the cover system, the cover system kicks hairy ass all the way to Chimera invaded Paris; While facing enemies, Grayson will automatically lock onto a nearby object that can be used for cover and... cover there; and while taking cover, you can make him attack by just pressing the fire button, and as you release the button, he will automatically go back to cover safety, swift and smooth. And the music score, it's just great, from beginning to end.

The weapons are great too, what is a shooter without amazing guns? You have your standard bullets rifle, a Chimera rifle resembling the Bullseye, sniper rifle, chaingun, grenades, rocket launcher, the Auger, and some other unlockable guns. I have not to much to say on multiplayer because I'm not so into online multiplayer, and I have no friends to play with on ad hoc -my fiends just play FIFA games and shit-. R:R has an amazing characteristic too, if you connect it to a PS3 while Resistance 2 is loaded, it unlocks some amazing stuff on your R:R like new outfit, guns, gameplay characteristics, new intel and the main story changes -tho I've heard that no so much, I haven't played it myself- making the replay value climb the fuck up. In my country, the UMD is about 40 US dollars, so, all this characteristics make the 40 bucks worth it a lot.

But that's enought of ass licking, the game has it's flaws -no game is perfect- and I don't mean to be rude on it, but there's just some things that fucked my gaming at times.
Grayson with Specter uniform and yellow eyes
First of all: the dificulty. This was one of the things that brought my piss to a boil more than one time; the hardest game is not the best and an easy game is just shit as well, but there were times that R:R was just being an asshole about it; having swarms and legions of Chimera coming at you with rifles and augers and chainguns and flying craps, and barely killing all those shits just to find out that giving two steps ahead spawned another legion of Chimera while having no health and no ammunition close was fucking frustrating as shit, those where times when I would just turn the PSP off and do some other shit. Sometimes the difficulty was not the hundreds of enemies, but enemies coming right in front of your face giving you a quarter of a fucking second to react and avoid getting hit -there's no regenerative health- or killing a lot of enemies just to get three flying turrets with machinguns right in your face. Whenever you die, you backtrack to the last checkpoint, and while some checkpoints are conveniently placed, some are placed fucking far one from another, and sometimes theres like a fucking thousand swarms of Chimera and big enemies between one checkpoint and the next; and that was fucking frustrating as well. Yes, choosing the right gun will help you go through with ease, but sometimes it just takes a lot of trial and error.

Another problem, well, for me, was that it was repetitive, yes, I know, it may sound stupid being this game a shooter, but considering the length of the game -I'm not sure how many hours my first playthough took me... a lot- the gameplay wears out on you by the last part of the game; it's like: walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, press button, Chimera swarm... it just grows weary on you by the end. sure, it has some parts where you drive a Hammer and are fucking awesome, but the game can be brought down to shoot, walk, shoot, walk -and considering that you will die a lot in some parts, and you'll backtrack a lot, it's just makes you get tired of gaming and leave it for another day-

Well, this was a short opinion, not a book, so, to wrap things up, despite a couple of things that personally bothered me, Resistance: Restibution is an amazing game and I really enjoyed playing it, of course, this already you knew, but there are some people out there who haven't played it -well, I know some "gamer" friends who haven't played or don't know about some great games like BioShock or Fallout or games like that, they only play FIFA and Call of duty-. In my opinion, it was a great game, sometimes hard and unfair and frustrating, but amazing overall. If you haven't played it, play it, it's definitively worth your money and time.

If I had to put a number... 8.5 out of 10. Thanks for reading, see you next time.