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Review: Resistance: Burning Skies For a long time, Sony has wanted to bring the console experience to handheld devices, and the PlayStation Vita represents its most successful attempt to date, armed as it is with impressive visual capabilities and a wealth of control options. Ironically, the Vita's early games ignored the Vita's strength in this regard, instead focusing on tech demos for touch controls in an industry where touch control has very much been demonstrated to death. Resistance: Burning Skies was the potential jewel in the crown, though, an online-capable first-person shooter to show the world just how close a gamer can come to playing their favorite titles on the go. As the world's first portable twin-stick FPS, Burning Skies had a golden opportunity to set a benchmark for handheld gaming. Instead, it settled on being the new worst Vita game to date.
Resistance: Burning Skies (PlayStation Vita) Set in 1951, Burning Skies takes us to the Chimera's initial invasion of North America, as firefighter Tom Riley finds himself caught in the vanguard of the twisted mutant menace. Armed with a sturdy axe and whatever firearms he can find, Riley's only concern is reuniting with his wife and child, who went missing during the early civilian evacuations. The game's poor story, interspersed as it is with vapid attempts at emotional depth, is indicative of what Burning Skies is -- little more than a poor reflection of the original console trilogy, a cheap copy that, had it not been officially licensed by Sony, could be mistaken for some illegal, plagiarizing, knock-off. As Riley fights through five short levels, players will find little more than dull, slow-paced shootouts against small collections of enemies through a range of pointless corridors, utilizing a bland cover system that the opposition will mostly ignore. Most of the fighting isn't exactly terrible, it's just mediocre and predictable. Every battle feels slow and restricted, as a small number of Chimera regularly show up to shoot and die with little fanfare. Thanks to a scarcity of action onscreen, things feel lackluster and uninspiring, a far cry from the atmospheric and chaotic struggles seen in the highly enjoyable Resistance 3. Much of Burning Skies' campaign simply goes through the motions, providing absolutely nothing we didn't see in the genre years ago while adding none of the thrills and excitement we're used to seeing in many modern titles. In many ways, it feels like quite an old shooter from generations past, but not one of the lasting classics.
Touch controls have been forced in wherever possible, but unlike Unit 13's smart use of the screens, Burning Skies doesn't take player comfort into account. Opening doors requires touching a small icon in the center of the screen, while the alternative fire modes for every weapon need enemies to be individually prodded or gun bodies to be slid across, even in the middle of a fight that would require hands to be on the real controls. Being able to touch the grenade and melee icons at the side of the screen is a smart move, as these virtual buttons are conveniently placed and open up the control scheme, but everything else feels contrived, and included at the expense of usability. Things get worse toward the end, where it begins to look like the developers just stopped caring. The closing sections are happy to just keep throwing the player into big rooms without cover and spawning larger numbers of Chimera in a rather embarrassing attempt to manufacture a sense of challenge. The last level in particular straddles the line between exasperating and tiresome, culminating in one of the most insipid and pointless boss encounters I've witnessed in quite some time. Game design doesn't get more basic and uninspiring than Burning Skies. The disappointing campaign could be forgiven if the multiplayer was any good, but once again, it feels like a lifeless shadow of its console brethren. The basics are in place -- three game modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch, and infection), with up to three customizable loadouts and a compulsory experience system -- but basics are where the game begins and ends. Once you get into a match, you're forced to fight in confined, visually unstimulating, ill designed maps, where no care was taken into setting sensible spawn points or providing anything other than a series of rooms in which bored people can shoot at each other.
The online experience is laggy, with a framerate that makes everything feel like it's in slow motion, and scoreboards don't work properly (in one match, the enemy team kept showing up as having zero points, when in fact it was winning). I once died thrice in a row, collapsing dead to the ground as soon as I spawned, with the same player shown as having killed me and no indication as to how. Another time, players were frozen in place, and there have already been problems with people getting booted out of a session. As far as presentation goes, in both the campaign and multiplayer, Resistance: Burning Skies feels unfinished. Severely unfinished. Don't believe the screenshots attached to this review -- this is an ugly game, and it doesn't look anywhere near as good as several of the Vita's launch titles (tellingly, this game blocks the Vita's screen capture software). Environment textures and features on NPCs are bland, flat, and lacking in color. The only modicum of effort seems to have been put into the guns, which look relatively nice, and there's a pleasant bit of lighting here and there, but the Chimera lack much in the way of detail and human faces are creepily devoid of texture, making them look rubbery and nightmarish. Compared to a game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, the graphics found here are despicable and embarrassing. Even worse are those moments where it's just obvious that a feature was left blatantly incomplete. From the mouths of NPCs not moving to environments displaying hideous artifacts along edges and corners, there's a lot missing in Burning Skies that you usually only see left out of obscure budget games. You can sprint, but after a while Riley will stop dead in his tracks. He won't return to a walking pace, he won't slow down before needing a breather, he will literally just stop dead in his tracks and you'll have to take your finger off the stick in order to move him again, since absolutely nothing was added to portray a loss of stamina.
In multiplayer, there is no animation or sound effect for melee kills. If you're killed by a melee attack, you'll abruptly die in silence, and it actually took me a few deaths to work out why I kept falling over for no reason. When enemies die, their frozen corpses will slowly glide along the floor before suddenly and sharply disappearing. Cutscenes play at the start of every level and cannot be skipped, even if you're replaying a stage or loading from a checkpoint halfway through, and they're compressed to a disgusting degree. In short, the whole thing feels like some sort of pre-alpha build mistakenly released as a real game. Resistance: Burning Skies may hope that its flaws are overlooked due to the novelty of being the Vita's first FPS, but even with nothing on the system to directly compare it to, any fool could see just how pathetic this game is. The best that can be said is that the shooting itself is fairly competent. It works. However, it works in a pedestrian and insignificant little game that seems as if it was desperately rushed in order to meet a deadline. If, like me, you've been waiting to see how a first-person shooter feels on the Vita, then I can say that this game proves the potential of the genre. However, if you'd like your first Vita FPS to actually be good, then wait for something else, because Resistance: Burning Skies is far from acceptable. It is visually atrocious, interactively vapid and incomplete to a degree that a full retail price is an insult. It's tempting to buy this just to have something new on the system, but good things come to those that wait, and it's hard to imagine anything not being good compared to this mess. THE VERDICTLegacy Comments (will be imported soon)Godammnit Sony. The only games I'd buy on Vita currently are all remakes/releases of games I've already played. Don't you want this console to succeed?
Step yo game up! That's a shame, I wasn't planning on picking it up anyway. But I felt that the world DOES need a handheld FPS with real dual analog controls.
Hopefully the often rumored Call of Duty Vita will be a step in the right direction. Fuck this on my 2nd Vita as hoping Sony would stop fucking about and get some good games out but oh no they've fucked up again Vita I love you but really....trade in time again..Sony fuck off. Starting to feel that early adopting a Vita was a waste, E3 better turn things around quick. Consoles releasing with a draught of games shouldn't be a proper tactic. Still getting it... seen other reviews that are 9/10..
Thanks, Jim, but I think it'll be serviceable till we get something else. "If, like me, you've been waiting to see how a first-person shooter feels on the Vita, then I can say that this game proves the potential of the genre. However, if you'd like your first Vita FPS to actually be good, then wait for something else, because Resistance: Burning Skies is far from acceptable."
well this line is the main problem of Vita(and was a problem on PSP for some time): there's not many good games so now if anything is released on Vita and works it praised just because there's something new to play on a system without games, not because it's good. same problem existed on PSP - i looked last year at the list of best reviewed PSP games, 3/4 of those games waw REALLY bad. i'm still baffled how some of these games could be considered good just because overall lack of many releases(Resistance, MGS: Portable Ops, both God of War games, KH: Birth by Sleep, all NFS games etc.). Meh... the entire Resistance series has gone downhill since the original game (with the minor exception of Resistance 2's co-op mode which was awesome... and then they didn't bother with it in R3!). The previous PSP game was also rather "meh" and not overly fun.
I'm not surprised, and it's rather a good thing that Insomniac wasn't the dev on this one and has moved on from the Resistance series in general. Such a shame because a dual stick shooter would be awesome on a handheld. I still have very fond memories of playing SOCOM FTB online on the PSP... many happy hours chatting with people while getting "corpse humped" when I died. It was my first experience being corpse humped... and also where I learned to mock men's lack of "equipment" on prox chat! Yeah, good times. :) I don't play handhelds, but the Vita looks like an awesome piece of hardware. It deserves better software support than this. Resistance 3 was goddamn excellent, Elsa. Easily the most underrated and undersold game of last year. @myosan8bit:
Looks like you love hemorrhaging money, since every time things don't go you way you trade in yours system just to buy it again later on. Not smart man. I was also hoping that this was a good one, and the name Resistance was like a guarantee they would take the proper care with the title. Seems I was mistaken. I am also looking forward to be able to play the PSOne titles that I have bought on the PSN, I just hope they add compatibility to them instead of slow trickle of releases like they did on the Xperia play. I said before, call the guys who make the emulators, they know your shit better than you, it seems. Maybe tomorrow we get Zen Pinball 2.. *grumbles* Well...that money can safely put todwards Gravity Rush now. I was worried this would happen, every video I came across just looked incredibly bland and boring.
Shame...as a big FPS person I had high hopes for this. Sony Defense Force activate! Form of: N4G page listing! You'll rue the day you ever dared defy Lord Hirai, Jim Sterling!
But no seriously, Resistance hasn't been a particularly blockbustery title since the first game. Resistance 3 flopped by its budget's standards. Even if this title was great, it was/is hardly a system seller. hahahahaha, wow a 2?
I am not laughing at the game or the review result, just the number, 2 is a hilarious number @JQM78
"I think it'll be serviceable till we get something else." Wells that's why we keep getting crap like that. @Tristix... I have R3 and am playing through the co-op game with my husband... and there are just so many damn corridors. The game seems much more linear for some reason that R1 and the boss battles just aren't very exciting. Just finished the tunnel monster and I HATED how it forced you to run from tunnel to tunnel with no option to damage the monster. A bunch of cut scenes later and you can finally actually do damage... the whole thing was lazy ass design. If you give me a critter to fight, let me damn well fight the thing!
Personal taste though... I have very fond memories of R1 and R3 just isn't cutting it. :( Lol how about you guys go read some other reviews before you make a final verdict, heres one: http://n4g.com/news/1005105/resistance-burning-skies-ps-vita-review-game-modo at this point Sony really need to announce PSX AND PS2 Vita support during E3. weekly releases of PS2 games would really help to sell Vita cause right now there's not only a total lack of games, but also every new release is worse than the one before. @Laharl
"Just Jim being Jim..."? He didn't give it a 2 just for a laugh. Some people can be entertaining AND take their job seriously at the same time. "at this point Sony really need to announce PSX AND PS2 Vita support during E3. weekly releases of PS2 games would really help to sell Vita cause right now there's not only a total lack of games, but also every new release is worse than the one before."
Holy crap, I pretty much agree with Sofik88......... Wow! OneRed jokes about a fanboy putting up an N4G page listing, and someone links to a N4G review!
*laughs hysterically* I'm surprised that a first party title was made so poorly, especially since Uncharted is apparently good. This isn't swaying me at all to get a Vita, but I'll see if my friend actually buys this. So can we now get our Resistance game devoted to 8-player coop?? Seriously, even a copy & paste of R2's as its own Vita game would be reason enough for me to drop money on the handheld. Resistance 3 was awesome claustrophobic campaign. It wasnt as fun when I played through with my best friend, it lost its feel kinda the night sections of Halo ODST (only similar case I could think of) I was hoping this game would be the first reason to pick up my Vita in a little under a month, im suddenly 80 times more cautious that it isn't. Depressing. Pikachu 3DS XL coming to Chile, US might be nextNintendo has been very selfish, hoarding all those lovely special edition 3DS models in Japan and not even giving Americans a goddamn black XL. But every once in a while, Nintendo will surprise us with an act of kindness that... more Nintendo may alter its office requirement for eShop devsAs someone who works from home, Nintendo's insistence that potential eShop game developers have dedicated office space has always rubbed me the wrong way. The quality of the individual title, not whether studios can pass anot... more Preview: Project X Zone is boob jiggling fan serviceApparently, nearly a decade ago, Namco and Capcom teamed up for the crossover, turn-based SRPG Namco x Capcom. Don’t ask me how they decided who would get first billing. A coin flip? A Japanese game show? Similarly, don... more Project X Zone getting localized, coming to North AmericaProject X Zone, the crazy crossover game featuring Namco Bandai, Capcom, and Sega characters all working together, is coming to North America! Namco will be bringing the role-playing fighting game hybrid to North American, Eu... more Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon has multiplayer?Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (formerly known as Luigi's Mansion 2) is almost here. True to the game's ghostly allure, details around the game's corporal existence remain shrouded in contiguity. Is this thing even... more Capcom responds to Monster Hunter 4 Vita rumorsMonster Hunter 4 is no doubt going to be a massive win for the 3DS. The combination of traction Nintendo's handheld already has, along with the massive install base, and the incredible success of the Monster Hunter ... more Here's some BlayzBloo: Clone Phantasma footageSome time ago, Jonathan Holmes reviewed BlayzBloo: Super Melee Brawlers Battle Royale. It was a pretty quaint release that was forgotten almost immediately. But now, it looks like a full sequel is upon us, ready to grace the... more Interview: Disney Infinity's John Blackburn on toysAn hour after taking the stage to unveil Disney Infinity, "Disney's most ambitious video game initiative ever" (a press release states), I sat down with Avalanche Studios chief creative officer John Blackburn to discuss where... more Fire Emblem: Awakening demo now available for the 3DSYes, finally! I've been waiting quite some time for the US re-release of Kirby's Star Stacker (3DS eShop), and now it's finally upon us. As for everything else, it's not a whole lot this week. There's a free demo for Fire Emb... more Nintendo's 2013 Wii U and 3DS release scheduleWant to know what's coming for your Wii U and/or 3DS? Nintendo has us covered with a list of first- and third-party releases for both systems as well as their respective eShop titles. Hell, they even threw in the kiddie DS ti... more |     Dtoid is... Dale North Editor-in-Chief Jim Sterling Reviews Editor Hamza Aziz Dir. Communications Conrad Zimmerman Managing Editor Jordan Devore PC Editor Andy Dixon Community Manager Rick Olson Dtoid.TV Producer Niero Gonzalez Publisher Editors Meet the team Our sites Flixist Japanator Tomopop Contact Us Suggest News Advertising General Info  |
2:15 PM on 05.28.2012
