Instead of a sphere, you’ll be working your way around a transparent cylinder.
Players familiar with that setup will find something easily recognizable in Resogun, but this time, the rules are a bit different. Instead of a sphere, you’ll be working your way around a transparent cylinder. You still move your ship around with the left analog stick and shoot with the right, but unlike Stardust, Resogun doesn’t let you fire in any direction you choose. You have to defend yourself by shooting only to the right or the left while scaling the cylinder vertically, changing directions while dodging ever-present hazards. This very fact makes Resogun inherently more difficult than the series that so clearly inspired it, and that quickly became part of its charm the more I played.“
The familiarity of Resogun drew me in, but I was surprised by how much more tactical it was than Stardust right off the bat. Stardust’s sphere gave you escape routes galore if you got in trouble; Resogun gives you no such security. There’s no eluding danger by moving over the top or under the bottom; left or right are your only options. Resogun also seems to move much quicker than Stardust, and it certainly crescendos in difficulty at a more rapid rate. Because of the transparency of the cylinder and the busyness all around you, it’s also easy to become distracted as your eyes inevitably get drawn towards the clutter.
Resogun may not push PS4 to its graphical limits, but… this isn’t a game that could run on PS3 or Vita...
Interestingly, Resogun’s control scheme shares much more with Stardust than mere twin-stick mechanics. You can use bombs if you’re surrounded by swarms of foes, and you can boost, too, if you need to get out of dodge in a hurry. The game seems to hinge on using that familiarity and seguing it into something different (even if it has a separate, devastating special attack that can clear large swaths of the cylinder at will). Even the game’s reliance on score-building – a hallmark of Super Stardust – works a bit differently. Resogun cleverly shows your combo building to a hundredth of a percent (instead of frustratingly waiting for whole numbers to roll over), and combos can be obliterated by the use of bombs, giving you every reason to approach situations tactically as opposed to with brute force.“
Resogun is also undeniably pretty. The screen gets completely hectic as enemy ships chase you, firing at rapid clips, with stationary guns shooting from below. Resogun may not push PS4 to its graphical limits, but, as Housemarque confirmed for me, this isn’t a game that could run on PS3 or Vita, at least not without dumbing it down a bit. It’s certainly pushing the PS4 under the hood. As such, the developer has no definitive plans to bring it to Sony’s previous console, nor its handheld, but as with anything, that can change.Instead, they’re focused on making the “definitive shooter for PS4,” just as they did with PS3. And they’ll be supporting it for a long time, too. “We are confident players will come back to this game,” a Housemarque representative told me. As such, the game that will launch alongside PlayStation 4 this November will not be the same game it will be a year from now. Co-op is coming, along with new game modes, and “maybe some other cool stuff we can’t talk about yet,” a Housemarque employee told me with a smile.
Look for Resogun exclusively on PlayStation 4 (via PlayStation Network) on November 15th in North America and November 29th in other regions around the world. Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.