Resistance: Burning Skies

Sony just announced that Nihilistic Software is taking the reins from Insomniac for an all-new Vita entry in the series and we got to play around with it.

Nihilistic is most recently known for its work on PlayStation Move Heroes starring a mishmash of Sony mascots. While this title wasn’t really the most faithful to the original properties, Resistance: Burning Skies looks and plays almost exactly like its PS3 big brothers.

The game begins on Ellis Island in 1951, the same year as Resistance 1 and parts of the second game. You control a fireman named Tom Riley who wakes up on the island with tubes jacked into his arm. He grabs his fireman’s axe and helmet and takes out. It turns out that this place became a Chimera research facility in Resistance’s alternate history and now the vicious creatures are taking it over as Riley tries to escape. This demo takes place somewhere around the midpoint of the game.

You hack a Chimera with the axe, grab his gun, and it’s on. Burning Skies is all first-person as opposed to the third-person shooting seen in the PSP’s Resistance: Retribution. This probably has everything to do with Vita’s dual analog sticks, which feel totally natural and tight. One thing that is returning from Retribution is a cover system, which will be the first time it will be implemented in first person in a Resistance game. This is a welcome addition since you can get a few shots off while mostly concealed without having to stand all the way up from behind a crate or some other obstacle.

I battled through hallways, rooftops, and open rooms with a variety of weapons at my disposal. The trusty Carbine works as it always has except you can tap the screen to shoot a grenade at specific targets. The CFG allows you to paint multiple targets with your finger and then blast homing shoots with the right trigger. Grenades can be tossed in the traditional manner or you can drag and drop them on enemies using your finger on the virtual button on the bottom right side of the screen. Even though there are plenty of touch screen features on display, Sony assures that almost all of them with have more of a standard control counterpart so you’re not forced to swipe and tap the screen all the time.

The most powerful weapon  I came across was the chaingun, and then it got even stronger with a Greytech upgrade that made it glow blue. Hopefully, all the upgrades in the game will be this noticeable. The final large area contained several waves of various Chimera types pouring in through a huge hole in the wall and through metal vents on the sides.

Once they’re all dead, a soldier beckons you to evacuate. In a matter of seconds he’s impaled by a giant chimera. Next he picks you up like a G.I. Joe and roars. The demo fades out here dripping with suspense.

Sony couldn’t say whether this Vita entry will have cross functionality with Resistance 3 as Retribution did with 2, but didn’t shut down the notion completely. However, those earlier games came out a lot closer to each other than these will so that could hurt the chances of something like the Infected mode in Retribution. Burning Skies’ release date is a mystery at this point, but I’d guess that it hits before the end of 2012.