With the new console releases come a new wave of games. Surprisingly enough, one of the best games coming out from the Sony camp seems to be an indie game from the guys who made Super Stardust HD. Being hailed as one of the new console generation’s best games from the start, I just have to tell you more about Housemarque’s latest entry to their addictive shoot-em-up line-up of games: Resogun.
Resogun is a 2D-cylindrical shooter with lots of bangs, pops, explosions, and flair. Enemies show off a bunch of vibrant colors. Buildings explode in sweet 3D voxel blocks like a pile of LEGO bricks. The guns and ships show off a crazy, surreal, yet vibrant style that is simple and sleek while looking absolutely gorgeous on the Playstation 4.
Resogun’s gameplay is quick and fast-paced. It’s a basic shoot-em-up in controls. You can shoot in two directions while being equipped with a screen-clearer and booster to get out of tricky situations. It’s an ever-revolving cylinder that’s fast-paced and tense. There are a wide variety of enemy types, ranging from enemies that will chase you upon sight to grounded enemies with heat-seekers. The variety keeps you on your toes while the insane enemy counts will keep your fingers moving. Because of the cylindrical nature of the levels, you don’t have a lot of escape routes. This tension keeps the game fun and addictive.
Like all shoot-em-up’s, Resogun is hard. As I’ve already mentioned, the cylinder is constraining but also allows a lot of freedom for both you and your enemies. Enemies don’t spawn in the same way enemies from Ikaruga or Touhou spawn enemies. No, enemies spawn almost directly on top of the player. Sometimes, they spawn in close proximity to you. This isn’t a bullet-hell shooter so it isn’t unplayable, but the way waves come in to deal damage makes the game more challenging and hectic.
The game’s 3 ships and 4 difficulties can drastically change the way you can play the game. Phobos is hard to use but from my playthroughs, served as the most fun out of the three playable ships. Every difficulty past rookie is lively. You can’t be bored playing Resogun as enemies are everywhere and there is a lot more than shooting enemies.
What truly makes Resogun so good is the variety of gameplay it puts you through. The first four words the player reads is “Save all the humans”. Each level is littered with multiple green dudes that need rescuing. You release these guys from their cages by carefully aiming into a group of green-highlighted enemies called keepers. Keepers are only on the level for a short time. By taking out keepers successfully, you unlock a cage in a section of the map. Then, you have to try to grab the green dude before he gets taken out by the chaos on screen and get him to a safety pod. The balance of trying to survive from enemies trying to shoot you and enemies trying to ram into you plus carefully aiming at clumps of green enemies while saving ten small green dudes is why Resogun is so great. It combines multiple kinds of ideas and puts them together in such a way that it was destiny for all of these ideas to combine together.
If you own a Playstation 4 but don’t pick up Resogun, I will laugh at you. You most likely have Playstation Plus, and Resogun is the free game on Playstation Plus this month. It has amazing gameplay that molds a bunch of ideas together while being fast and frenetic enough that it isn’t too hard, though challenging enough while always having something out to destroy you. Being a game made by a small team of guys from Finland, this game’s title as the Dark Horse of the Playstation 4 is one Resogun and Housemarque deserve, as this was definitely one game I’ll come back to, even though I don’t have a Playstation 4.
by Matthew Maravilla
