We saw that in Super Stardust, but Resogun takes that to the next level. Spectacle isn't handed to you on a plate - you earn it. The rollercoaster-style thrill of the modern day score attack game is defined very much by the player's skill - the better you become, the more exciting, tense and dangerous the experience feels - and as a bonus, the more insane the on-screen effects. These are games that are conceptually at odds with the modern day triple-A experience - spectacular scripted set-pieces, infinite lives and hand-holding gameplay simply aren't part of the equation. ![]() Gameplay clearly hails from the old-school "score attack" arcade tradition - a genre that has unfortunately fallen by the wayside during the current-gen era, represented by just a handful of games like Super Stardust and Geometry Wars. "But we wanted to try something different, so we added this layer of gameplay where you collect humans, take them to the escape pods and then you get rewarded with power-ups in the process." "Resogun is to Defender what Stardust is to Asteroids, so we try to keep the same qualities as Stardust: hectic gameplay, lots of explosions, simple controls," says Harry Kruger. ![]() It's a game that not only validates your next-gen console purchase with all the technological whizz-bangs you could ask for, but delivers the same style of gameplay that made you fall in love video games in the first place. Resogun works because it combines state-of-the-art tech and next-gen visuals with an extremely simple concept - the exact same core-gamer-pleasing formula that made Super Stardust HD one of the best shooting games of the current generation. Remember when Mark Cerny talked about GPU compute becoming more important a few years into the PS4 lifecycle? Resogun - a launch title - is already putting the Radeon graphics hardware through its paces with a range of effects that could only be done on a system built upon a surfeit of GPU power, a console like PlayStation 4. Resogun ticks all the boxes in what we would want from a console exclusive - it's feels great to play, it's technologically groundbreaking, visually arresting and built from the ground up with the capabilities of the host hardware specifically in mind. It's day one of Gamescom 2013 and Digital Foundry is attending Sony's indie showcase, playing Housemarque's PS4 debut and talking tech with the developer - and we're hugely impressed with the game. Essentially this version would have been a port." When you're developing for multiple platforms, the weakest platform basically becomes the lead platform. ![]() Quite simply the result wouldn't be the same. ![]() "The approach would need to have been a lot different and we'd have to have cut a lot of corners. "Resogun definitely would not be possible on this generation of hardware," says Housemarque lead programmer Harry Kruger.
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