Fun single-player and mostly well done multi-player make up the entirety of Resistance: Burning skies.

User Rating: 8 | Resistance: America Saigo no Teikou VITA
By TheAcejoel99 | Review Date:
Resistance: Burning skies does not fit into the lore of the franchise in a satisfying way. You play an under developed hero named Tom Riley, a fire-fighter living in 1951 when aliens invade earth. You have a wife and daughter, but you see them maybe twice throughout the game, and they are hardly mentioned. The story overall is not bad, but the story that should have been the main focus....YOURS is practically non-existent. You are however treated to a fairly entertaining yarn of the invasion of North America by your alien adversaries, the chimeran, how hard life is, and how sad things have really become. Short broadcast clips over the radio, documents you find laying about, and cinematic clips between levels do the bulk of the story telling, and it isn't half bad. The tale of the fire-fighter fighting for the human race, his wife and child, things that could have been gripping, simply are not. The story does go to some dark places, but ultimately isn't the reason the game should be played. The best thing to come of the story is an excuse to swing an ax and do some fun fireman-like things. You will chop down doors, save people from burning buildings, and escape some fun sequences of terror while reminding you that you are in fact a trained fireman, so that is fun.
The gameplay is really where the meat of the game is, and that is something to be thankful for. The game plays well and feels very competent as far as dual stick first person shooters go. You will often forget you are playing on a handheld, which is truly awesome. The usual trademark guns from the franchise are here, but some new ones are really a joy to play with. You will wield a shot-gun/crossbow hybrid, which is truly genius, shoot through walls, place trackers on enemies that make every bullet land right where you want, as well as melee those ugly chimera right in the face with an ax. You will do some touch screen antics as well, but most of it is pretty obvious and standard use, touch door to open, touch to shoot rocket, touch to shoot tracker, touch to shoot grenade, touch to...you get the idea. There are fun touch screen uses however, like pulling back the string on your crossbow to shoot an explosive bolt, or pulling your thumbs apart to bring up a shield, and even tapping the back touch panel to run (which is a great use). The developer had some fun with the vita's hardware. Overall the gameplay in Resistance: Burning skies is top notch.
The visuals are a mixed bag, but are mostly quite great. The visual style sits between resistance: fall of man and resistance 2, being more gritty like the former, but being a but cartoony like the latter. The visual quality definitely leans more towards early ps3 like resistance: fall of man.
The sound design isn't lacking, but it dosen't jump at you either, it is serviceable, gets the job done, in and out, very workman-like. The orchestral sections are pulled straight from earlier installments and are used sparingly, while things like gunshots and lasery doo-hickies sound very generic, but good overall, nothing to write home about.
Multi-player on a handheld that dosen't suck, hallelujah! Think resistance mixed with call of duty light. You go up ranks, get new guns and attachments, upgrades, augments, the usual first person shooter multi-player affair, but it is in your hands and that is awesome! There are all of the guns from the single player, as well as all of the upgrades, there are about 6 maps as far as I could tell (you cannot choose which map you want to play on), and there are three modes. As far as modes go, there is team deathmatch, deathmatch, and survival, which is where you play as one of either a human squad, or the single chimeran trying to kill the squad of humans, the twist is that if you are the chimeran and kill a human, they join your team in killing humans, and if you are a human, you simply need to survive the onslaught for 5 minutes. Think of the multi-player as a bit sized package as far as content go's, but console quality. The action can get intense and is very fun really. I enjoyed my 10 or so hours online so far, and plan on playing quite a bit more in the near future.
All in all, Resistance: Burning skies is a great game that could have been fantastic. If the single player had more heart, the visuals were a bit sharper, the sound design more dynamic, the multi-player more plentiful, this could have been a block-buster, but instead it is solid. You will be entertained by the single-player, than excited by the multi-player, than you will ultimately move onto brighter pastures. It is simply sad to say that you won't miss out by not playing this game, but you will also absolutely not regret it if you so choose to step into the shoes of a fire-fighter named Tom, too bad you won't come away caring about his tale, no matter how entertaining.

Single-player= 7.5
Visuals=8.0
Sound=7.0
Multi-player=8.5
Overall=8.0

Give it a try.

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