Resistance: Retribution (PSP) - Part 3

Channel:

Louis B

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Published on September 28, 2020 11:00:06 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjSmK6k-mPI

Game:

Resistance: Retribution (2009)

Duration: 27:16

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5

The auspicious debut of Resistance: Fall of Man earned the Playstation 3 a few supporters in its formative years during seventh generation. As one of the few successful titles of the era, Sony were quick to schedule Insomniac Games with a sequel, of which they would deliver on by 2008, but likewise they made similar efforts to bring the PS3 launch title to the handheld with Resistance Retribution on Playstaton Portable.

With this spin-off, Bend Studio were tasked with making a new Resistance fit for the quality of it’s predecessor. This in of itself could never be an easy task as while the PSP was nearly as powerful as the sixth generation Playstation 2, and could feasibly handle the look and feel of Resistance’s universe, it lacked the controls to make the fidelity truly work. The PSP lacks a second analogue stick, making a hypothetical first person shooter out of the question, and the lack of secondary analogue buttons made quick and easy access to commands like even weapon swapping more awkward for the system. When given a similar task with Killzone: Liberation, Guerilla Games had resorted to producing a top-down shooter, where many of the complexities were made away with such as camera control and manual aiming, however Bend Studio, the developers of Resistance Retribution, did things in a way more befitting of a shooter…

The reason Sony no doubt trusted Bend Studio with Resistance has much to do with their history of getting Syphon Filter, a series of highly successful third person action games, to work on only a basic PSX controller. Despite the lack of tactile analogue aiming, Syphon Filter had always functioned adequately on digital controls alone. Furthermore, Bend Studio had already managed to make this work on the PSP itself with not only Syphon Filter Dark Mirror but Logan’s Shadow as well, both becoming critical darlings for the system.

Resistance Retribution is largely faithful in generating an experience similar to its console brethren, with a scale to its story and characters that would convincingly fit between both the first and second entries of the series. Scenes between levels are setup with narration from Parker, as they had been in the original, but cut-scenes are spliced between the beginning and end of levels that give Resistance Retribution production chops not often seen in a handheld exclusive release. It all looks and runs impressive on Playstation Portable hardware and goes a long way in making this feel like the same Chimeran infested world that made the original as memorable as it were.

And with not only its shooting, but it's set pieces as well, Resistance Retribution manages to capture the essence of the first game without damaging the core itself. The shooting of every gun, while certainly different to their console counterparts, feel appropriately balanced and suitable for different scenarios (e.g. BM0001 Razor, a modified bullseye that serves as a suitable run ’n’ gun in heavy firefights). Set pieces, like gun emplacements and vehicles, give depth and variety to what would otherwise be repetitive gunplay. Even the intel, such as the Cloven Lore, are alot of fun hunting down and do a brilliant job in expanding our understanding of the different facets presented in the Resistance Universe.

This is not to say Resistance Retribution is completely flawless on PSP however. As you shall see in this video playthrough, changing weapons and navigating can feel a little clumsy, a consequence of the developer’s choice of mapping camera movement to face buttons. The boss sequences featured in Retribution are also dull and perhaps too conventional for a series that always had difficult, but entertaining, boss encounters on PlayStation 3. Hit-Detection can also feel a little wonky, with weapons like the sniper Fareye FR-1 making direct headshots but just not connecting for whatever reason.

In anycase, I had alot of joy playing this one and it is finally great to get a PSP play through on the channel. While I do not use emulation, this playthrough was made so much easier to make thanks to 6.61 Adrenaline on PS TV, a piece of software that opens up the Official PSP Emulator on VITA which runs the full environment as if it was on Native Hardware. The accuracy of this emulator is absolutely incredible, and when combined with Sharpscale, it looks absolutely terrific at 1080i!

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A LEGAL NOTICE:
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Any copyrighted footage I use is covered under fair use laws, or more specifically those listed under Section 30(1) of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1989 and under section 107 of US Copyright Act 1976. This video exists purely for the purpose of research and criticism. I do not make a profit from any uploaded content, nor do I intend to. Thank you for watching.

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