Resistance: Retribution

"Get Awed by Single-player, Stay for the Multi-player"

It's almost been a year since the PSP has gotten any exclusive first party game that actually meant something. I'm talking about God of War: Chains of Olympus. After first playing GoW: CoO, I felt that it was going to be a start, a start of something good coming to the PSP. Like many PSP owners, I wasn't exactly happy with the selection of good games on the system. About two weeks later, I was awarded with Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, a game that brought a true RPG to the PSP and jump started my Final Fantasy frenzy for the next month or so. Obviously, I was getting a good feeling about the PSP and its future. At the time, there weren't many good games on the release list. People were starting to question the PSP's demise. Unfortunately, it seemed like some of them were correct. That is, until this February, when flurry of new PSP titles, 1st and 3rd party alike were announced for the PSP. It seemed like a PSP rebirth, well sort of.

If you didn't bother reading all of that, good, because here's my point. Resistance Retribution is the start of the new PSP renaissance. It's a game with a great license that people care about and it delivers in almost every major aspect that gamers care about. It's certainly not perfect, but it will keep you playing your PSP for a while.

The story takes place between Resistance and Resistance 2. It centers around James Grayson, a British resistance fighter who lost it when his brother was converted into a Chimera and he himself had to kill him. Grayson then ditched the British marines and started destroying conversion centers. The British marines eventually catch him and he is put on death row for abandoning his country. However, before his execution, he is needed by the French Maquis. This is basically where the game starts.

The previous paragraph is all the information in the introduction video of the game. Amazing, huh? Resistance Retribution is a presentation beast. It hurls you into the story with the intro video and short videos after every section of a mission. In addition, the videos are very well made and the voice acting isn't too shabby either. All in all, Resistance Retribution has great production values that will have you glued to the 4.3 inch PSP screen.

Graphically, the game is very similar to Syphon Filter. In fact, I'd have to say it's a little worse. Some of the facial textures are hard to look at, especially when it's matched up against the CGI videos. In addition, some of the environmental textures look a bit grainy. It's definitely not the eye-candy Logan's Shadow was ,even though Sony Bend developed that game as well. It might just be my perception, but the graphics are somewhat sub-par compared to the Syphon Filter series. Don't get me wrong, the visuals are still good for a PSP game. But to say the least, they seem a little bit inferior to previous works of Sony Bend.

The best part about this game is probably the gameplay. Although it is extremely similar to the Syphon Filter games, there are some subtle differences. For example, you no longer have auto-aim, instead it's called aim-assist. You get this aim box and aim-assist can pick up any target within that box. In reality, it's the same damned thing, but a bit more automated. In addition, you no longer manually cling to walls like you did in Syphon Filter. Once you hide behind an object or you are close to the edge of a wall, the game auto-snaps or ducks for you. This can get somewhat frustrating because you don't get to choose some of your own actions. For example, if I want to snap to a wall and look around the corner I have to walk into the wall constantly. Sometimes, it doesn't snap you to the wall. This can create some tactical issues, especially online, because you might walk yourself right into the door or hallway you were trying to peek into. However, this isn't a substantial problem that destroys the gameplay. It's just annoying. Other than those two differences, almost everything is the same way when it comes to gameplay. If you're pessimistic, you can call this game Syphon Filter + Resistance skins and weapons. In my opinion, that's not really a bad thing since I really liked the Syphon Filter series. They're definitely one of the best series on the PSP, if not the best. Moving on, besides gameplay mechanisms, there are a lot of new things to like about this game. For example, the weapons are pretty cool. It's pretty dull in the beginning of the game, but as you get farther into it, you'll run into much cooler weapons. Some cool weapons include the Auger, Longbow, and Razor. The Auger shoots through walls and puts up a temporary shield to protect you at all times. This is probably the best and most cheapest weapon you can find online and in single-player. The Longbow is basically a Spartan Laser (for those that don't know, it's from Halo 3). However, it doesn't require a charge-up and has very limited rounds. Lastly, the Razor is a Chimera assault rifle that shoots out a razor as a secondary fire. This weapon can get really annoying because people constantly fire these razors at walls and they bounce off everywhere. You can get indirectly killed from these. Trust me, you will get frustrated... Other than that, you pretty much get your normal weapons. Assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, boring stuff. The best way to find all these weapons is to play online, which is what I'm getting to...now.

What probably makes this game standout from the other Sony Bend games is the incredible online multiplayer. It's up to 8 players, so 4 players per team for team deathmatch, which is probably the most frequent mode people tend to play. Ever since Socom FTB 2 has been hacked like hell, I've been dying to play a good online PSP game. I mean, the Socom experience was awesome, and I'm hoping this game can bring the same. So far, I think it already has. You get mic support, like the other Sony Bend games. In addition, there are 4 other modes besides team death match. These modes include deathmatch, capture the flag, containment, and assimilation. The first two modes are self-explanatory, but the last two are somewhat interesting. Containment is a mode where you have to hold the node the longest, kind of like a hostage thing. Assimilation is probably the most interesting. One person starts out as a Cloven (a Chimera creature) and the Cloven hunts down the other players. The other players become Clovens as well if they are killed. In other words, it's kind of like infection or a game of tag. Lastly, all your stats are kept nicely through Myresistance.net and there are already tons of new tournaments out there where you can have fun and win great prizes. Overall, the online multiplayer will keep you very busy and brings a ton of replay value to the game.

The last notable thing in Retribution is probably the audio. The previous Syphon Filter games had decent music, but this one is far better than those games. It's creepy and it's good. Play this game in the dark with your headphones on and it will be suspenseful as hell. Whenever you face enemies, you get this heavy heartbeat because there's this weird creepy sound that you hear in those scary movies whenever a monster is coming to kill a character. It's especially creepy because you're fighting weird looking Chimera...like those boilers for example. They look like alien zombies that have their heads blow up when they get close to you. Yeah, definitely not the best game to play by yourself at night. However, in this case, the audio does its intention, to scare the crap out of you and give you a kick in the face when the time for action comes. As I said before, the voice acting is very good due to the high production values of the game. Overall, the audio of this game certainly fits its theme.

This is probably my longest review ever, and for good reason. Resistance Retribution is a great game. With stellar presentation, gameplay, and audio. Its graphics seem a little bit outdated, but are still very good for the PSP. This game will definitely keep you busy for the next couple of months with its online multiplayer and its long single-player mode. It's a good start for the PSP this year, as a herd of good PSP games are bound to be released this year. Hopefully, this is just the start of the 2009 PSP revival.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/23/09