Resistance: Retribution

There’s something so fundamentally disorienting and messed up about playing a first/third-person shooter with just one analog stick. It feels like playing a Spanish classical guitar with your toes - no matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t feel natural (and the toe-jam doesn’t help either). Most of the shooters I’ve played on hand-held devices make up for the lack of a second analog stick/D-pad in the most unappealing way - be it by using the shoulder buttons to strafe left and right, or by snatching control of the Y-axis from you - making the gameplay seem cumbersome to the point that you’d wanna pound your hand held gaming device into the nearest wall, till its innards line your carpet like garbage lines the streets of Mumbai. Thankfully, Retribution jumps this hurdle like a caffeine overdosed horse on steroids.

Bad analogies aside, Resistance: Retribution has undoubtedly mastered the art of giving you maximum control with minimum effort, while keeping itself challenging enough to keep you engaged till your PSP’s screen burns blind-spots on your retinas while you play it into the wee hours of the morning. The way they’ve managed this Herculean task, is by giving you complete control of movement via the analog stick (front, back, strafe left, strafe right) while the face buttons (square, triangle, circle, X) work as the up, down, left, right for your free look. While it helps you control good ol’ Lieutenant James Grayson flawlessly, it’s not the best when it comes to aiming, since there’s only that much a set of face buttons can do to replace the feather-touch sensitivity of an analog stick.

To jump that hurdle, the game has a brilliant auto-aim system that picks a target from within the four corners of your screen and sticks your cross-hair on it, until the beast in question is killed by pounding on the trigger (right shoulder button), drilling him with bullet holes, sending him to Chimeran heaven. This auto-aim system is balanced to the point that the game continues to feel challenging in spite of the aim-assist. To add to the game’s beautifully simplified complexity, there’s a cover system in place that latches you on the the nearest wall automatically, when an enemy’s in front of you.

Normally, this kind of an auto-cover system could easily become frustrating if not programmed properly, but developer Sony Bend has done an amazing job in ensuring that you go behind cover only when the cover in question is between you and your enemy. To move out of cover and plant a few good shots onto your foes, all you have to do is press the trigger button, on releasing which Grayson digs himself back behind cover effortlessly.

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So now that you know why the controls kick Chimeran ass, let me tell you about the game’s setting. As I mentioned before, you play the role of Lieutenant James Grayson, a British Royal Marine who has a bitter hatred for the Chimeran since they tried to convert his brother into one of their own, forcing him to blow his sorry brains out with his own sidearm. Feeling both disgusted and betrayed, Grayson goes on his own trip to destroy each and every Chimeran conversion center across Europe, making him sort of a hero in the eyes of many. Unfortunately, he does this against the will of his superiors, placing him in the hands of a war-time justice system that deems him guilty, ready for capitol punishment. Faith - or a French ‘broad’ named Lieutenant Raine Bouchard, a member of the European mainland resistance movement known as the “Maquis”, rather - intervenes, making him a deal to get him off death-row, provided he helps them thin the Chimeran forces. He readily agrees, so they send him on a little trigger-happy journey back into the Chimeran-infested European mainland.

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Gun in hand and blood on his mind, Grayson blasts his way through a subterranean sewer system, an underground conversion factory, dilapidated city scapes, and a ton more places. There are loads of scenic locales and a ton of great explosions that line this brilliantly optimized game, that looks better than anything we’ve seen on the PSP. The game’s visual engine doesn’t cease to amaze, with its detailed models, high resolution textures and great amount of anti-aliasing, making the PSP seem like a real graphical power-house. There are no slow downs in the game, and the gameplay is completely bug-free, making it an undoubtedly pleasurable way to spend a weekend.

In spite of the incessant change of locales, the levels get all to repetitive, thanks to the