Resogun is the best example of Remote Play at the PS4’s launch as the simplistic controls suit the PS Vita’s less than complete feature set. It’s great fun blasting away on the PS Vita and the game’s simple yet gorgeous visuals translate to the handheld perfectly. Resogun may very well be the best exclusive launch game on PS4.

Resogun may be the secret star of the PS4 launch line-up - a shooter built with energy, precision and voxels.

If Super Stardust HD was Housemarque's twist on Robotron, then Resogun must be its Defender, right? It makes for a pleasing narrative: the hardware's moving forwards, but the Finnish arcade masters are clearly headed in the opposite direction, working their way ever deeper into Eugene Jarvis' cherished past.

The truth is a little more complex. Defender's handful of mechanics were shaken into vivid life by regular jolts of chaos as the flockers and the baiters wove mysterious paths through the scrolling levels. Resogun's 2D levels definitely scroll, you can shoot backwards and forwards, and you can even protect dinky, neon-green humans from abduction in between all the explosions, but Housemarque's enemies exist in a world of hectic predictability. They're zipping around in polite formations; they're warping in from Namco's galaxies rather than Williams'.

Just look at the finer detailing: Defender could offer you a nutty mechanic like a random hyperspace jump because it was fighting anarchy with anarchy. Resogun opts for a chainable boost instead - a calculated, educated risk for a game packed full of calculated, educated threats.

This balancing of risks powers almost all of Resogun's central thrills, in fact. Although you can race through the game on the rookie setting, firing blindly as you go, to work your way across harder difficulties or to get a proper foothold on the high-score table you're going to need to pay attention to the near-ceaseless stream of information lobbed back at you - much of it coming via a calm computer voice that updates you through the speaker in the DualShock 4.

Situational awareness is the key to mastery here. The side-scrolling levels are wrapped drum-like around a central hub, not because it's a cool effect (although it is), but so that you can always see what's going on elsewhere in the map - so that you can see what you're missing out on, and so that the frantic design can tempt you away from your safety zone.

Often what you're missing is your humans getting killed by aliens. Resogun keeps its flesh-and-blood collectables in cages like they're working shifts at some infernal sci-fi nightclub. It only frees them when you blast specific sets of enemies, highlighted in green, who warp onto the map at regular intervals. Let these greenies live and your humans die in prison; hunt them down before they disappear and they'll unleash a trail of light that zips across the map, pinpointing a little escapee freshly in need of a lift.

Picking up humans and returning them to a hub - you can even throw them to safety, like you're scoring a basket - will grant you a power-up: shields, perhaps, or a weapon upgrade. Miss them and they'll quickly be abducted. Crash bandicoot level passwords. It's all so treacherous! Fight the odds and navigate the hordes and you could get something really useful. Play it safe, on the other hand, and you'll never know just how useful that specific something could have been.

Humans are far from the only element in Resogun that's eager to lead you to ruin. On easy settings, you'd be just about forgiven for missing the game's simple multiplier system entirely. Work your way up through the ranks, though, and you'll start to realise that it's where the whole thing comes alive. As you zip around, you're trying to keep that combo fed by chaining kills together, and real defeat comes not with the loss of a ship, but with the withering of a x10 booster in an empty sector of space.

The multiplier ensures you stay close to the centre of the action, and it encourages you to use smart bombs and your super-powered overdrive weapon only when you really need to, although you may wish you could use the former more frequently - they look amazing as they ripple all the way around the curved edges of the drum.

Price and Availability

• Platform: PS4
• Price: $9.99
• Free to PlayStation Plus subscribers

It also tempts you back to that deadly, thrilling boost, which allows you to chug through foes with impunity as long as it lasts - and can itself be chained for surprisingly long periods of time if your aim is true. Boosting makes for a shooter with an extremely strong racing line and reveals the ingenious choreography of Housemarque's wave design. (The price, though, is that the predictability of Resogun's baddies means that high-level play often rewards memorisation as much as instinct.)

Adding a little next-gen spectacle to this smart throwback shooter is another brilliant idea from the old days. Absolutely every single thing in Resogun, from the gothic, Hugh Ferriss scenery to the bright clusters of enemies (ranked, ranged, seeking; caterpillars, rockets, squid) is made from voxels. Voxels! Little cubes that scatter and drop when blasted apart, that see levels shredded over time, and that allow the giant wheels or thick tendrils of Resogun's bosses to slowly build themselves in front of you before falling to pieces under your onslaught. So many moving pieces, and yet the frame-rate never falters and the landscape - thanks to some neat colour-coding - never sacrifices its readability.

'Resogun is the closest the PS4 launch line-up gets to offering a genuine next-gen thrill'

With a few basic ships to choose from and only a handful of levels to pick between, you'd be forgiven for concluding that Resogun is sweet but short. In reality, touring the sights is just the tutorial, and the true campaign unfolds as you work your way through the difficulty levels, headed from clumsy shooting to multiplier-maxing glory and from survival to show-boating mastery.

Refunct world record. Resogun really is that rare kind of arcade game that feels like an entirely different beast when played on the toughest setting. It's also the closest the PS4 launch line-up gets to offering a genuine next-gen thrill. Granted, Housemarque's not offering the shock of the new, perhaps - all of the developer's best ideas are actually reassuringly elderly - but it's working with energy, enthusiasm, precision and love. Oh, and voxels. Look at them scatter!

8 /10

Resogun is a spectacular laser light show

Game Info

PlatformPS3, PS Vita, PS4

PublisherSony Computer Entertainment

DeveloperHousemarque

Release Date

Resogun, the latest colorful shooter from Finnish indie developer Housemarque, is an extravagant, heavily detailed demonstration of the PlayStation 4's graphical horsepower. But look under the hood and you'll find an old shoot-'em-up that isn't shy of aping its inspirations.

If you remember losing quarters to the local arcade, you will recognize Resogun's Defender-like structure. As a spaceship, you protect humans from waves of enemies that encroach from both the left and right side of the screen. Resogun adds a twist: you must first 'unlock' the humans by exterminating a special set of enemies before collecting the living cargo and delivering it to one of two goals.

It's just enough complexity to make the Defender homage feel new. In frantic moments, collecting humans off the ground and tossing them into their safety zone felt like delivering a slam dunk — not the first thing I associate with the retro shooter genre, but a welcome addition nonetheless.

The other inspiration is a lesser-known sub-genre called bullet hell, niche shooters in which hundreds, sometimes thousands of projectiles that inflict instant death gradually cover the screen. To survive, the player must memorize the intricate bullet patterns and carefully thread a craft through holes sometimes only a couple pixels wide.

Resogun is more forgiving than a traditional bullet hell, it's patterns less intricate and easier to evade. And yet, the overall experience is sometimes richer and more complex. Not only must you evade waves of projectiles, but target enemies, monitor dangers from both sides of the screen and collect humans and deliver them to safety. Each component is easy on its own. The pleasure — and the difficulty — stems from doing everything at once.

At its best, Resogun demands a certain prescience. Here's an example of a thought that ran through my head midway through the game: If I dodge through this line of enemies, I can reach the human, then blast any remaining enemies from behind and deliver my person to safety, right before the next wave of bullets and baddies attack from the opposite end of the screen.

While you don't have to save the humans, it's the best way to upgrade your weapons, and a maxed out ship has the firepower of a hell-god reigning hate and fear on its cowering victims. Speaking of annihilation, increasing a combo-meter by stringing together kills raises a laser meter. The laser is a brutal beam of pain that destroys whatever stands in its path. On normal difficulty, I used it as a sort of lethal flourish. On harder difficulties, it became a vital tool.

This speaks to Resogun's pacing and balance. Like a great arcade game, it trains you, making you its master one round and a time. There always seems to be an escape hatch, so long as you have the skill and reflexes. Besides the laser, you can also collect screen clearing bombs or use a dodge move, that lances a row of enemies.

Because there are multiple ways to play the game well, the game doesn't seem nearly as repetitious or difficult as most shooters. And because it's beautiful — really, it's quite the looker, with sparks, particles and debris constantly crashing about the courses — it accomplishes that great feat of its predecessors: it attracts others.

Wrap Up:

Resogun is a spectacular laser light show.

Resogun is a collision of 1980s shooters, 1990s bullet-hells and 2010s aesthetic. It's as simple or difficult as you want it to be. Sure, it borrows great ideas quite liberally. But Resogun's best idea is smashing them all together into a singular, spectacular laser light show.

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