I’m a huge fan of the Resistance trilogy. Fall Of Man, arguably one of the best launch titles for the PlayStation 3, featured some epic weaponry and memorable levels that still stick with me today.
It’s quite surprising really that I haven’t played Burning Skies. The mediocre reviews (it sits at 60 on Metacritic) put me off the game. Here’s hoping this WeView can put my judgments aside and prove me wrong, and maybe even sway me into a purchase.
Burning Skies puts you in the shoes of Tom Riley, who isn’t a solider like Nathan Hale and Joe Capelli, but instead a fireman. That doesn’t stop him have a natural knack for firing weapons, weather they’re human or alien machinery.
Alex reviewed the game for TSA and gave it a 6/10. He wasn’t a fan of the new protagonist, Riley, as he wasn’t “a particularly likeable character”, later going on the say that “he barely has any character at all, and what there is of it is often a little crass, pointed and one directional, as linear as the game he’s found himself in.” Not a good start for the game.
Visually Burning Skies was a bit hit and miss. Alex explained that “there’s enough here to convince that the Vita’s capable of great things” as there are “moments of true beauty”, but not without a few blurry textures and simple architecture along the way.
He later went on to say that “the game’s hardly ground-breaking but nobody can deny that this is a decent enough attempt to squeeze a traditionally visually powerful brand onto something you can fit in your pocket”.
Alex finally concluded:
Hardcore Resistance fans will no doubt like what Nihilistic have managed to get the Vita to do, but for everyone else this is little more than a competent, hard working game that ticks the right boxes but never really pushes the boat out. The graphics are hit and miss, the sound generally terrible and the controls need some work. But it’s not a bad game, it’s really not – and for the premier first person shooter on Vita it’s likely to gain a decent enough following.
Now it is over to you. Write your own mini-review of Burning Skies in the comments below, making sure to give the game either a Buy It, Bargain Bin It, Rent It or Avoid It rating. Get your comments in before Sunday evening, and we’ll be able to include them into Monday’s verdict article.
Tuffcub
Before Killzone Vita I would have said it’s apretty darn good shooter. I think it still is, it just looks awful. Compared to Killzone it looks like a DS game, but it entertained me on a very long flight. Bargain Bin it.
blackredyellow
Ah. Glad this finally came up. I’ve been wanting to warn everyone how awful this game really is.
I really enjoyed the previous games, thought they were great. This however, was a complete let down. They let the Vita down, they let us down, and most importantly they let themselves down!
The story was completely lifeless, and as a result completely un-engaging. The graphics simply weren’t good enough. Having seen what the Vita is capable of (KZ: Mercs, Wipeout 2048 for example) this was a smear of disappointment across my shiny, HD screen.
Avoid it.
NOSAJ19
I hope it is alright to post this here, but I just thought I would say that I wrote a review for Resistance: Burning Skies for Vita Player and if you want to read my personal opinions of the game, then you can check it out at http://www.vitaplayer.co.uk/game-review-resistance-burning-skies-ps-vita/
coruscant
I wavered for ages on buying this but saw it cheap in Cex so picked it up several months after the Vita’s launch, and I actually really enjoyed it. Admittedly, the majority of the graphics, especially textures, were poor, and multiplayer wasn’t great. Yet the Chimera looked great and their behaviour spot on – I was especially pleasantly surprised at how spot-on Nihilistic managed to get the whole exploding-heatstack thing. Sure, the AI was rather dumb and the difficulty mainly stemmed from the amount of Chimera attacking you at once, yet I didn’t find it detracted much from the experience – I still found it a joy to play, especially as they got the guns and the controls spot-on. It’s funny how people didn’t like Riley, but I actually found him a lot better than Capelli (of R3) in the empathetic department. Having said that, Riley’s ‘I’m a fireman and want to help everyone’ did get boring and more and more unbelieveable as the story goes on. In conclusion, while its not the best shooter you’ll ever play, it’s certainly fun, and the story keeps you engaged pretty well throughout. I’d say Bargain Bin It.