When I bought the Playstation Vita earlier this year one of the titles I was most looking forward to was Resistance Burning Skies. I recently played through the game and while it wasn’t as impressive as Insomniac’s three Resistance games for PS3 it is a decent and portable addition to the Resistance franchise. Burning Skies was developed by Nihilistic Software whose work I was largely unfamiliar with aside from their PSN/XBLA title Zombie Apocalypse. I wasn’t sure what to expect from one of my favorite franchises being scaled down for a handheld by someone other than Insomniac. Uncharted Golden Abyss was a pleasant surprise so hopefully this would be  too. Unfortunately  Burning Skies is not on par with Uncharted’s  first forray into portable gaming. Perhaps Sony shouldn’t have released Golden Abyss as a launch title as now it’s going to be a tough act to follow.

The campaign was somewhat disappointing for me, it’s at best mediocre. I wasn’t expecting the epicness of Resistance 3 but felt the story could have been better. Resistance is the rare breed of FPS that really excels in storytelling and great characters, it’s hard not getting emotionally attached. Burning Skies takes place in August of 1951 between the events of Resistance and Resistance 2. However if you have not played any of the PS3 series you can easily pick up this game as a standalone title. You play as firefighter Tom Riley whose wife and daughter are taken by the Chimera and he’ll stop at nothing to get them back. Along the way you will meet various NPCs but the only one that matters is Ellie, a female member of the Minutemen whose goal is to stop the Chimeran invasion of the United States. There’s one scene between Tom and his wife that is designed to pull at the heart-strings but I felt nothing. The voice acting is stellar but I just never bonded with the main characters which I think is mostly due to the fact that often the story seemed rushed.

Not only is Resistance Burning Skies being hailed as the first proper FPS to take advantage of the Vita’s dual analog sticks it also boasts a decent multiplayer. The multiplayer started off a bit rocky as it was nearly impossible to  join games using the matchmaking feature. Shortly after release they did issue a patch which fixed the problem and I’ve since had no issues.Multiplayer consists of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Survival gameplay modes. The Deathmatch modes gives you the choice of playing in small up to 4 player games or larger games of 6 to 8 players. My favorite is Survival which puts 6 humans vs 2 Chimera, if a human is killed by a Chimera they will respawn as Chimera and the last human standing wins.

A few other issues I had with Burning Skies was the graphics- they are horrible and at times I thought I was looking at a PSOne era game. I also didn’t particularly care for the touchscreen integration for tasks like throwing grenades, melee and use of the secondary fire feature of weapons. The absolute worst is the sprint control, you must either double tap the Vita’s rear pad or hit down on the Dpad, neither options are convenient. It’s not as if I didn’t expect the game  to utilize the touchscreen as it’s one of the Vita’s main features but in Uncharted Golden Abyss I was often given the option of using touchscreen or buttons with the exception of a few menial tasks. When it comes to shooters I really just want to push buttons.

The campaign is short, you’ll only need about 6 to 7 hours to complete it. For all of you trophy hunters out there its super easy to get the platinum.  Actually all you need to do is play the single player campaign on any difficulty and complete one multiplayer match and boom, instant platinum trophy! If anything Resistance Burning Skies shows the potential the Vita has when it comes to multiplayer. I was worried about lag since the Vita is wi-fi or 3G only but I didn’t notice any. In fact I experience more lag playing MW3 on a wired console than I do playing Resistance Burning Skies on a wireless connection. Many of your favorite Resistance weapons like the Bullseye, Auger and Carbine are back as is everyone’s favorite, the weapon wheel. I’d recommend Resistance Burning Skies to hardcore fans of the series as well as those of you wanting some multiplayer FPS fun on the go. If you are strictly buying it for the campaign you may be let down as I see little to no replay value.

Related articles

• Review: Resistance: Burning Skies (Vita)(bnbgaming.com)

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• Resistance: Burning Skies Review – Setting The World On Fire(multiplayerblog.mtv.com)

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