Mike Bantick
Thursday, 23 April 2009 10:09
Entertainment
Page 2 of 3
Thankfully the cover system becomes a little more intuitive, and the auto-aim options can be tweaked to an individual’s requirements. Though this does mean that game-play can boil down to finding a bit of cover, getting the auto-aim to hone in on a target, and then popping up to squeeze off some shots, simply by holding the R2 button, in between predictable incoming fire volleys.
Enemies, despite there being a fair variety, including some new “female” enemies, and the packs of Cloven soldiers, their AI is relatively simple in execution – whilst some will weave around the little screen, some may charge forward, many will stand relatively still and just take a beating.
On the positive side, there is plenty of ammo and health lying around and then there is a broad range of weapons to experiment with. From assault rifles, through sniper and heavy weapons, many have interesting secondary modes of fire or effects. For example the Auger-WS has a secondary effect that launches a temporary shield which only allows Auger rounds to pass through it.
It synthesises down to a pretty dumbed down shooter, with some variety in weapon management and a little bit of non-linear exploration and simple puzzle solving to progress.
There is some eight player multiplayer modes, with 4 on 4 being popular across the 5 supplied maps, if you can find seven mates to play against.
The real trump-card of Retribution however, is in the cross functionality between PSP and PS3 for owners of Resistance 2.
The most important result of this PSP Plus mode is the ability to play the game using the PS3’s Dual Shock 3 controller. With this mode enabled, much of the control problems experienced with the game go, apart from the logistics of playing a game on a hand-held device with both hands on a controller instead.
As John Garvin, Creative Director at Sony Bend points out, there is more to this cross over functionality though: “Another feature affects the game from a gameplay and story standpoint by infecting Grayson with the Chimeran virus thus giving him the ability to regenerate health and the ability to access Infected Intel items which provide more insight about the Resistance universe. “ Garvin said.
PS3/PSP cross over is to be applauded. If more franchises take advantage of this option, do it properly with compelling content, that doesn’t completely overshadow the individual release, this could be a selling point for both hardware platforms in the future.
There is a lot of work gone into this release, and much of it is in attempting to expand on the Resistance look and alternative history immersion. Unfortunately, in general it fails as a compelling game.
If you are a true Resistance/Sony fan, and have the full PS3/PSP set-up you will be able to squeeze more from a Retribution experience. For the rest of us, Retribution fails to elevate the shooter experience on a hand-held above the commonly held opinion that it cannot work.
6 Conversion Centres out of 10
Click on through for the Resistance twisted alternative history.
