Resistance: Retribution
SonyPlayStation Portable
Review by Hayden Meikle
Who said handheld gaming was dead?
Oh, that might have been me.
Turns out the small-screen consoles were just biding their time, letting the big boys get all the attention while they waited for a window to have their time to shine.
Last month, it was the drug-dealing, car-stealing, wheeler-dealing Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, a surprisingly ingenious caper that has forever changed the image of the Nintendo DS.
Now the PlayStation Portable is jostling to join the fun with its own port of a major console title.
Resistance: Retribution is the third in a rapidly growing series, and the first on a handheld.
Resistance: Fall of Man launched at the same time as the PS3 and the imaginatively titled Resistance 2 came out late last year.
The theme of the series is based on an alternative post-World War 2 world, where an alien race called the Chimera has invaded and is trying to succeed where the Nazis failed.
A first-person shooter on the PSP? Gulp.
Happily, the developers have pushed out to a third-person perspective, and any doubts about the shrinkage factor are soon dissipated.
In Retribution, you do not assume the character of Sgt Nathan Hale, the hero of the first two games.
You are instead a bloke called James Grayson, a British marine.
Grayson's life takes an unfortunate turn when he finds his brother at a Chimeran "conversion centre".
Think dark, dank hallways and a patient writhing on a gurney as he starts to mutate.
Grayson puts his brother out of his misery, goes a little nuts, goes absent without leave from his troop in search of other foul bases, gets caught, is thrown in jail and then gets a lifeline from a French resistance group called the Maquis.
Phew.
Some story, and that's all set up in minutes.
Then it's into the action, and plenty of it.
The big question mark ahead of the game was how the PSP could handle the traditional dual-stick controls of the Resistance series (and virtually every first- and third-person shooter) when it's only got one.
The solution is simple and ALMOST perfect.
You use the little PSP control nub - which I still believe is set too low, but that's another story - to move and the face buttons (X, O, Triangle, Square) to aim.
The shoulder buttons, as normal, fire weapons.
It sounds a bit strange, because the face buttons are usually associated with things like jumping, crouching and reloading, not locomotion.
But it actually works quite neatly.
Aiming is still an inexact science in the game but an aim-assist feature helps.
The action is as fast-paced as it is in the PS3 games, with a lot of running and scouting mixed with ducking behind cover and blasting the smithereens out of the alien scum.
Grayson is a great central character, full of smart one-liners, obscenities and quips about the French, which never get boring.
Detailed but not too lengthy cutscenes add to the story, and a powerful arsenal of weapons matched with interesting levels combine for a rewarding game.
