The first thing you should know about Resogun is that screen shots and even videos don’t do it justice. The game runs at a buttery smooth 60 frames-per-second, and at a resolution of 1080p. The crazy amount of particles, lights and other chaos flying all over the screen has to be seen in person to be believed.
Resogun is a 2D shooter from Housemarque, creators of Super Stardust HD. The levels in Resogun take place in round arenas, meaning that if you fly long enough in one direction you’ll come back on yourself. This means that you can keep track of the entire level and its contents at any time. It also gives you complete freedom to move around the stage, which is useful if you want to escape a sticky situation.
Speaking of which, there were tons of sticky situations. Enemies spawn in large waves on either side of you, and it’s up to you to maneuver yourself around them, while managing your gunfire. Thankfully, Housemarque has given you a dash button to get out of trouble, and it even causes you to become a projectile yourself – during the dash you’ll destroy certain enemies, which is incredibly useful.
The controls are simple, and allowed movement and firing direction independently of each other. The left stick moves your craft around, and the right stick fires your weaponry in the direction you point it. Managing the movement of the craft along with the direction of the fire provided an enjoyably dexterous experience, reminiscent of old-school gaming.
Everything described here is actually rather difficult, and Resogun is by no means an easy game. Touching basically anything causes the loss of a life, and after three lives it’s game over, at least in the demo, anyway.
Much has been made of Resogun’s “voxel” technology, but it begs to be seen in person, running on a PS4. Looking close up, the level looks like something out of Minecraft – only on steroids. Everything in the game is made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny cubes, and when things get destroyed, you can see each and every one of the tiny little individual cubes break apart and fly everywhere, remaining where they land. The frame rate never dips below that 60 mark, despite all of this going on. It’s impressive tech, and it’s the sort of thing that makes you truly believe we’re headed into a new generation of consoles.
Resogun is a free download on PlayStation Plus this year, meaning that quite a few PS4 owners will be able to give the game a try. The game looks to be an addictive and challenging shooter, and should provide an old-school addition to the PS4 launch line-up when it releases in November.
Will you be picking up a PS4? Will you be downloading the game on PS+? Let us know what you think in the comments below.