Resistance Burning Skies: PS Vita Review

Resistance Burning Skies: PS Vita Review

Rating: 13
Released by Sony Home Computer Entertainment

The Resistance First person shooter series makes its PS Vita debut.

It's August 1951 and without warning, an attack on the North American coast gets underway. Slap bang in the middle of that is firefighter Tommy Riley, who really just wants to save his family. But when the Chimera attack increases in ferocity, Riley steps up his resistance to take on the bad guys, save the day and his family.

Resistance Burning Skies is not perhaps the gaming experience we'd have been expecting for such an iconic franchise - but it does show some promise for the possibilities of what a portable console can do for a FPS title.

In many ways, it feels like a Doom style game as you negotiate rooms and areas with your gun in front of you, shooting and killing anything alien and badass in your path. Couch, move, kill - that's the limit of the scope of this title unfortunately.

But what the developers have managed to do is also to bring a level of sophistication and touch controls to be an organic part of the title. From pressing the front screen to use your fireman's axe to using the screen to tag Chimaera before firing into them, this is a game that promises the scope of the Vita's capabilities even if it doesn't deliver in much on the original play front.

It's not easy to ingratiate those ways of play into the game though - you have to really be a bit adept and swift at tagging the baddies, launching grenades and using the axe, as well as crossbows. But it's almost as if the enemy are aware that it takes time for you to adjust as they do little else but stand and shoot. I have to wonder whether some of the AI of the creatures has been dialled back a bit to help cope with the tech on display.

Resistance Burning Skies is playable enough and blessed with a brilliant soundtrack that's really evocative of the B Movie alien invasion films of the 1950s but if you're after something a little different from the FPS, you may be disappointed. However, what they've shown is that touchscreen can be brilliantly incorporated into the VITA and now the door is open for some developer to really revolutionise the genre.

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