Or you can create your own ship and balance its stats however you see fit.Īnd that's about it. The game provides three different ships to choose from, with one being balanced and each of the others focusing more on strengthening one of those other attacks. On the other hand, your boost attack gives your ship super-speed and allows it to destroy foes via collision for a few moments. Charge up your overdrive and you'll be able to temporarily slow down time greatly, allowing you to carve through now-helpless enemies with impunity. To give your ship a bit of diversity, you'll get a limited number of bombs, as well as two special attacks that can be used semi-regularly. You have one form of gun attack that can slowly be powered up by collecting icons as you progress through the game. Each phase takes place in front of some sort of futuristic city or fortress, with there only being minor aesthetic differences. There are five levels, each divided into three phases of enemy attacks, with the final phase culminating in a boss fight. This is not a particularly long or varied game. Really, when thinking of my issues with Resogun, first on the agenda is the whole "wanting more" thing. Created by Finnish company Housemarque and released by Sony, this game provides some fun arcade action that will leave a person wanting more. Resogun, released for the PlayStation 4 in 2013, could easily be described as a modern re-imagining of Defender. Most shooters throughout history haven't exactly been huge on making players multi-task, putting the focus on destroying stuff while trying to avoid that same fate, so it's kind of cool that one of the oldest games in the genre put such an emphasis on protecting others.
It was a neat concept, even if my system didn't exactly have the best port of the game. Occasionally, alien ships would try to pick one up and take the unlucky chap to the top of the screen, forcing you to gun the ship down, pick up the now-falling person and return him or her safely to the bottom of the screen. You flew over a city during an alien invasion and shot the hell out of anything that moved while trying to keep the handful of people still remaining safe from abduction. While that arcade port wasn't one of my favorites, I did play it enough to still remember the basics. When I started my lifetime of gaming with the Atari 2600, one of the many cartridges I owned was Defender.