As an early adopter for the new console generation I was incredibly excited that Housemarque, the development team behind the fantastic twitch-shooter series Super Stardust, would provide my first experience within this new realm of gaming.
From the moment that you take control of your selected spacecraft in Resogun you get the feeling of the utmost responsibility with regards to your actions; this game controls marvelously. This means that you the player are to be credited with your successes and blamed for your failures. This may not seem like a difficult task to achieve since your spacecraft can only move left or right while ascending or descending, the tight controls were paramount to the games success. You move constantly in Resogun. You dodge, you boost, you change direction, you scramble to save humans, and all of this while continuously shooting at the hordes of enemies trying their best to shoot you down or crash right into you.
Resogun is a beautiful game and it likes to show off this fact. Some may complain and say that Resogun “looks like giant pixels” and “why is this a next-gen game?” but those people aren’t looking hard enough at what Resogun has accomplished. The incredibly bright explosions, the sheer amount of things going on at any moment on the screen, and the slow down after the bosses explode so that you can truly appreciate the particle effects on screen are just some of the stunning visuals in Resogun.
The music and sound effects in Resogun are fantastic but slightly lacking in memorable moments. I found that I was so involved in the gameplay that I stopped noticing the music and this was unfortunate. Music has a way of adding to the experience when the player is completely immersed in a game, and that satisfaction seemed to be missing from this title. Don’t get me wrong; the music is great and the sound effects of enemy explosions are done well, the alerts about humans in danger add a sense of urgency, and I even enjoy the voices coming from my controller though that took sometime to get used to, but the soundtrack just felt forgettable.
While the campaign is rather short, simply beating Resogun once and forgetting about it defeats the true purpose of the game. You are meant to chase the high scores on the leaderboards, deciphering the many mays to raise your score while keeping that multiplier counter from ever resetting. The player can always achieve a flawless run through a level by not losing a life, save an additional human, use their overdrive at a more opportune moment, and use the boost ability to devastate a larger collection of enemies. Difficulty also changes the experience by slightly altering enemy attack and movement patterns, and allowing for a higher multiplier to be achieved.
After carving my name on the leaderboards in a respectable place I moved on to other PS4 games to test out what this new console has to offer and I am still very impressed by what Housemarque has done with Resogun. After playing those other games I would still proclaim that Resogun is one of the best that the PS4 has to offer at this current time and I am looking forward to continually defending my place on the leaderboards. Other than the short campaign and forgettable soundtrack, this game is a true success as a PS4 launch title. To make this game even more worth your time, if you ever plan on plugging your PS4 in for some online play, you can download Resogun absolutely free as one of the instant game collection bonuses that PS+ provides.
Resogun was developed by Housemarque and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. This game was downloaded for free as a subscription bonus from the Playstation Plus program.