Resistance: Burning Skies Review [PS Vita]

rating:3

The promise of Resistance: Burning Skies was huge - the first real FPS title to arrive on the Vita, offering to take full advantage of the handheld's new features as well as a core gameplay experience to rival all current gen console titles. It was to be one of the truly essential Vita games to come after launch, extending a much-loved, mega-selling franchise and based on the same strong foundations, and the pre-release signs were all impressive. But the reality of the game is unfortunately some distance away from that early promise. Yes it shows exactly what could be possible on the Vita, and there aren't any technical problems to report that would have got in the way of the gameplay experience, but it's just a shame that the game itself isn't better. For a title which had the opportunity to own the market for a short time at least to miss the target is rather unfortunate, and not just a little frustrating. Against the established context of Greatest Handheld FPS ever, Burning Skies actually feels like a step backwards for the Resistance series, and indeed for the FPS genre. In comparison with the greatest console FPS titles, the single player campaign noticeably lacks slickness, and even more crucially, depth in atmosphere (not helped remotely by the lack of score for the most part). The visuals too are a fairly significant drop in quality, despite what we now know the Vita is capable of, and there plainly isn't enough innovation to ensure the game meets those lofty aspirations. But that isn't to say Burning Skies is flat-out terrible: that would be unfair and untrue, because the gameplay experience is actually very engaging. For all of its lack of new dimensions and innovative tricks to match the new hybrid controls, it still packs a punch in the shoot-em-up stakes, and the controls do add some novelty that is helped by the multiplayer mode. Sadly, though the single player problems go beyond presentation and graphics: the story, which follows our hero Tom Riley, a 1950s fireman caught in the middle of the Chimera invasion and struggling to find his family as well as to, well, resist. It's nothing new, and there are a lot of very obvious reference points from other, more successfully executed FPS titles. And even broken down to those familiar constituent parts, Burning Skies fails to offer anything as good as its points of inspiration. It's a huge shame that the development team couldn't meet expectations, because this game could have been a lot better were it not for an apparently relaxed attitude to creativity, especially considering some of the impressive additions to the gameplay experience that the new control set-up allowed. More control sets, including touch-screen activated secondary weaponry and grenades makes for a busier experience in the heat of battle, but crucially it also adds a new tactical element that forces the player to choose their moment to take a thumb off one stick and activate touch-screen weaponry. Typically of a Resistance game, the armory is one of the most impressive aspects of the game, but there isn't the same sense of balance to the armory. There's also a lack of ammo for some of the more interesting weaponry, which is understandable but can be frustrating, and requires use of the Bullseye, but it's something that can be overlooked thanks to the unadulterated pleasure that can come from relying as much as possible on Tom's trusty fire-axe to dispatch enemies, whose AI makes them all too willing target practice. The story is fine, but rather uninspiring, and it's hard to really empathize with Tom's quest for his family too much because the level set-up is very repetitive without variation and there isn't much in the way of atmospheric development. But it's all brainlessly engaging enough to just about hide the major problems, and the excellent, entertaining multiplayer modes - Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Survival, for up to eight players - which represent the major replay draw for the game. As you square off against other players across network, you can't help but revel in the novelty of the experience: this is exactly what we have been waiting for for some time now. It is an experience overall that makes you lament the comparative poorness of the campaign portion of the game, amid suspicions that like the Uncharted team, Sony decided to allow a lesser development team to handle a flagship property and that is has cost them some ratings points. At the end of the day, Burning Skies is a flawed and almost failing flagship, and we will have to wait for the first great handheld FPS, because despite the strength of the franchise, and some good core elements, this is not quite it. Resistance: Burning Skies is available to buy now on PS Vita.