Resistance: Retribution | a Review
originally published on 21/04/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the 1000 war veteran, G.E.M.Simov, a soldier, so powerful, I can win any war by myself. Today, I will be telling you about Resistance: Retribution, a game for the PSP.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
This is a cover based third person over the shoulder shooter on the PSP. As such, it suffers TREMENDOUSLY from the fact that the player needs to aim by using buttons, rather than an analog stick. That makes the game far harder than it needs to be, although Resistance Retribution does one very clever thing.
It creates a rectangle on the screen, which is yellow-ish transparent, and any enemies in that rectangle are automatically targeted. The player can pick which one to shoot at via the camera commands, but, most of what the player needs to do in those cases is to just hold down the R trigger/bumper and shoot. It’s ingenious, frankly, and it really helps the game feel a bit better… Though there is a very large number of situations, and even some weapons, that do not have this aim assist function.
Fortunately, that’s not such a big deal, except, of course, if the player is going ham at the Difficulty - because this game HAS 3 difficulties, and, naturally, playing on the highest is the best way to go about it… Though maybe not on this one, due to the fact that the player needs half a magazine to kill an enemy, while the enemies need to hit the player around 4, maybe 5 times in total, to kill them.
Another problem that arises - if ever there is a task that involves making sure something does not take X amount of damage, while said something is being swarmed by enemies, that’s insanely difficult, due to that same fact, and, also, the fact that some weapons need to be manually aimed with the equivalent of the arrow keys on a keyboard. It’s painfully unpleasant.
Though, in these situations, another issue comes up - the AI is, selectively, very stupid. Sometimes, it is smart - and uses cover - other times, when the AI’s life is the important part of the mission, it does not use cover.
Anyway, that’s, I figure, somewhat forgivable. What isn’t forgivable are the bugs that plague this game - and there’s a number of them. Most egregious one would be the interactions one gun has with another. Resistance Retribution has a large quantity of guns, each quite unique when compared to the others, and they all have a pair of firing modes. One gun creates a shield that blocks enemy projectiles and allows some of the player’s projectiles to pass through…The rest?
Well, there’s a rocket launcher among the weapons. And that rocket launcher… Well, not a single thing fired by it goes through the shield, so using those two in conjunction means that the player just ends up committing suicide. It’s… It’s fun. Not.
Now, last touches on what’s not good here - the means for cycling through enemies while having them aimed at by the rectangle in the middle of the screen is faulty. Sometimes, the player will press the button that is supposed to change target, once, twice, thrice, and still the target will not get changed, even though there is another eligible enemy right next to the current target. That’s a big annoyance, rather than a detriment, but annoyances in a game that’s already flawed add up and make a detriment.
And, finally, movement - this game does it in a very unpleasant manner, due to the fact that the main character is SLOW. Fortunately, that slowness isn’t too great, and he can still avoid some shots, but when explosive or AoE weapons come into the action, it suddenly becomes impossible to avoid them, and the player NEEDs to hide behind cover. That’s really unpleasant and feels incredibly bad to play, because there’s no means to suddenly dashing from place to place or switching cover.
It is well known to all the readers, I hope, that Gears of War was a big deal when it came out and it ‘revolutionized’ the 3rd person shooter. It also made the xBox sell, so Playstation said: “We want that, too!” and then they made the ‘Resistance’ franchise. Why am I saying that? BECAUSE, unlike Resistance Retribution’s slow crawl and no other means of movement, Gears Of War offered sprinting and rolling to spice things up, and the player could dash from one bit of cover to another.
In Resistance Retribution, changing the player’s cover means that the player will have to slowly walk from place to place, while being fired at by a relentless amount of enemies, and, with 5 projectiles being enough to kill them outright, it’s a suicide mission.
A thing Resistance Retribution does well? Collectibles. The Collectibles themselves are messages or letters, hidden away in secret areas, which aren’t really all that secret, but the player does need to look around and put in some effort to find them. What do those things do? They expand on the setting and the lore. It’s absolutely amazing how much motivation the player gets to find them when it’s tied to their opportunity to learn more about the world. More on this in Story, but, remember - the Collectibles in this game are DOPE.
How dope? Very fucking dope. Not only does the player have incentive in the form of LORE, but, if they get ALL the messages, they unlock a new gun - a sweet revolver that’s just a joy to use. But that’s not all there is to it - every Chapter of the Campaign has “skill points”, which are essentially hidden challenges that the player needs to complete. If they get all the “skill points” for a Chapter, they unlock a nice bit of goodness associated with that chapter. Collectibles done RIGHT!
Lastly, though, the final boss-fight is ABOMINABLY bad. It’s set in an arena which has dents in it, which dents really only serve to mess up the player’s ability to navigate and avoid getting hit. There is nothing behind which the player can take cover, and the only thing that can be done is to slowly walk in a circle around the enemy. But, the issue here is that the visibility is so bad that the player, while trying to walk in a circle, will bump into the dent, come to a full stop and get instantly killed.
On top of that there’s a bug - which involves an attack the boss performs, which has them spin around, slowly, and a beam of sorts fires out of them. Touching the beam means instant death, so the player wants to avoid it. Issue is the player barely moves faster than the rate at which the boss rotates, and the only way to stop that beam is to use one of 3 intractable objects around the arena - but, if the player uses one of those objects, and the beam is relatively nearby, even though it will be stopped by the object, the beam will still kill the player after they regain control of their character.
That’s the worst boss fight, and it’s the last one - imagine how lackluster all the other boss fights are - which also have an incredible amount of weird, borderline bugged mechanics and are an exercise in seeing how annoyed the player can get before finally beating them. It’s got a good idea, good concept to it - but it’s executed quite poorly, mostly due to the fact that the gameplay itself is… Underwhelming.
Though the gameplay, overall, is very lackluster, but, if played on the Easy difficulty, it’s just mediocre. 2/3
Presentation
This game looks really cool. Frankly, the setting is what marks it so intriguing, and it’s well done. The cutscenes are very nice, though they do have some slight jank, due to them being from all the way back in 2009, and the voice acting is all over the place, when it comes to quality, but it’s passable. The feel of the game is… Something different. Something really, really pleasant, mind you.
Now, it might not have had an Instruction Manual (which was sad), but it did have good tutorials. Every weapon the player picks up comes with a lengthy explanation as to what it does, every mechanic is well explained, and, as a whole, the game teaches the player quite well. Pick-ups, which are the player’s means of getting Ammunition and Health, stick out like sore thumbs, and yet they fit in the setting quite well.
The music, in conjunction with the sound effects, is amazing. If either is taken away, I feel as though the whole experience would suffer - but damn is it good. There are also some sections in which enemies run past, and they then get despawned - that’s just building tension, and it’s pretty nice.
Overall, this game has a great presentation, with a single hiccup. 3/3
Story
The story is the CREME of the crop, when it comes to Resistance Retribution. I can’t even begin to describe just how enchanting this whole thing is. The setting is superb, events occur in 1951 Europe, but there’s an enemy that isn’t an angry man with a moustache - the enemy is the Chimera, who, frankly, have very mysterious origins. I suspect they might be Aliens, but I’m not 100% sure.
That mystery really helps. The world has been totally ravaged by these Chimera, and it’s in a state of post-apocalyptic disarray, with some countries having managed to withstand the assault of the Chimera, and are holding up reasonably, as reasonable as living in a world that’s getting totally ravaged by weird humanoid monsters, who use humans as livestock, or worse, is.
The story follows a dude, by the name of James Grayson (had to look his first name up, it’s so… Rarely used). Now, he had a brother - but not anymore. After that, Britain was liberated from the Chimera, but, unfortunately, Grayson went AWOL and deserted, to do some Chimera killing prior to that. He got court martialed and sentenced to Firing Squad, but then French people show up.
And so Grayson goes to France (supposedly) with the goal of getting rid of the French Chimera tower. Throughout his journey, he meets characters, many of whom are… Not bad. The story, itself, is quite interesting, but the most amazing thing about this game is the world, and the world building itself. What a wonder this whole thing is.
And, the fact that the player can get to learn even more through Gameplay is astonishing.
However, there are some issues. At some points, characters, who are supposedly intelligent, do some abysmally dumb shit. It’s beyond me how they even get up to that, but… Wow. Simply WOW. It really breaks the immersion of the player and exposes that this is, in fact, a relatively shitty spin-off game.
Then there’s also a forced, badly set up romance, which really doesn’t work as both characters have not had any chemistry, to be quite honest. It’s underwhelming, yet the story manages to stay together at the seams, which is commendable.
The manner in which the character progresses (the character being Grayson), is a bit… Weird, and it seems as if some of his growth comes out of left field, but it’s still passable. And some of the themes that get explored, or poked at, are quite expansive in their possibilities. It’s good, and I quite like it, but it’s got some flaws that keep it from being a bingle bounce. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? It has been a long time, LONG indeed… But this game gets the Legendary Point. It’s a YES from me, resounding, even, purely because of the immaculate world building and the unfathomably stupendous setting. Great work to the folks who worked on that, this is SUPERB!
To be more precise, the air of mystery, the uncertainty concerning the Chimera, and the opening cutscene all meld into something that I’ve really kept with me, not as a memory, but as a feeling, a concept. Great stuff. 1/1
Conclusion
8/10. Resistance Retribution, although lackluster in its Gameplay department, is a game I’d hotly recommend. If you happen to have a PSP, get this game, and play it. It’s superb - and it presents a very unique challenge, a sublime story for you to lose yourself in and a setting that’ll make you want more.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display!