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Has anyone here tried this yet ?
i took a bunch of screens and wrote down some notes for another site, thought i should put them here too .
Hell to the Yes ! Let Us Begin !
Bend right now are easily the best developer on the PSP. Ready at Dawn are only two hit wonders, so they don't really count. And they've left the PSP so screw them anyway. So anyway, for those who are not familiar, Bend are the guys who made the first SOCOM Bravo game and the two Syphon Filter games on the PSP. All of them are brilliant.
The title screen. On the left you can see the game's protagonist, James Grayson. Surprisingly he's not a bald space marine like 99% of the other alien shooter hero's.
Typical briefing/loading screen at the start of a mission. The red bar is white at the beginning and loads up to the red as it progresses, playing off of a memory stick it takes a second, but i can imagine it taking a while on an UMD. Fortunately the game provides interesting journal entries for you to read which flesh out the story.
The cutscenes in the game include both CGI and these art-piece style images narrated over by the same narrator from Resistance 1. I couldn't take more pictures from the CGI cutscenes because the image plugin kept crashing the PSP if I tried. Sorry.
So basically the opening involves you and some of your Marqee friends trying to reach some place on a plane which gets shot down forcing you to paradrop in enemy territory. All the cut-scenes outside the CGI one's were done in-engine which is impressive.
Meet the obligatory blonde female side kick. Who will most likely end up becomming the love interest in the game. Her name is Boucard something. She has a freaky french accent and carries a mean AK 47. She sticks with you through the first act of the first level.
Let's talk about the cover mechanics. The cover mechanics are as simple as walking up to a cover point. If there are enemies in the area, Greyson will automatically take cover behind a chest high wall. You can also take cover on the edges of higher walls by double tapping the analog stick towards it. Once you're in cover you will stay there until you pull the stick back to walk backwards.
Shooting from cover is as simple as pressing the R button, Greyson will come out of cover and fire, and as soon as you leave the R button, he will promptly get back into cover shielding him from enemy gun fire.
While pressing up on the D-pad will enter you into a zoomed aiming mode. Here you can control the aiming completely manually. Good for head shots from a distance. And for admiring the PSP's technical capabilities. (and Bouchard's boobs).
As you can see, even amongst the humans, Greyson is not a liked fellow. Well, the humans in question here are French, no one likes the French, so it's not really Greyson's fault. The french squad, besides Bouchard, all act negatively towards you.
Let me also specify that so far the game seems very narrative driven, there are small 1 minute cutscenes every now and then. The game seems to be doing a great job of fleshing out the characters and story so far. I like this. Especially considering this is an action game. (I'm looking at you RE5, you could have used 20 or so more cutscenes).
Bloody Frog !. No need to add anything else.
As you can imagine, shit happens real soon and you're off killing the chimera again. You may notice the flash light's effect in this screen. The light automatically activates when you're in darker area's and gives off a radiant glowing sphere in your line of sight ala SH Origins.
Also, notice the glowing red orbs on the left. These are the health packs, they are scattered all over the area along with ammo packs, the game's kind of easy in that sense that you can find a bunch of health and ammo packs around every corner. And the enemies all drop ammo as well.
The game has no shortage of ranged weaponry. This sniper rifle comes to you really early, and you can zoom in on enemies farther away and take them out safely. The zoomed in aiming is completely manual.
Also, pressing the L trigger while holding the sniper rifle slows down time for a little while. Helps in taking off heads from a distance a whole lot.
This is the first sub boss. He takes about a million bullets to kill. But fortunately explosive grenades reduce his health bar 25% at a time. So he doesn't end up being too hard.
When he dies, he explodes in a glorious fashion and leaves a massive fountain of blood behind him. Did i mention there's no shortage of the red stuff in the game ? Every enemy you kill bleeds tons. No dismemberments (besides a specific enemy) though.
This person is the closest thing Greyson has to a friend here *. Forgot his name, but he and Greyson seem to have a history.
* This is a lie. Greyson later reveals how it was this man's confession that landed him in jail in the intro
And this marks the end of level 1.
The second level begins in the sewers with an obvious canon fodder soldier along with me. How many minutes before this guy dies ? Well, not many, unfortunately i wasn't able to take a cap of when he dies
Retribution answers the series question of "female Chimera's". These are the Biolers. Female's converted into Chimera's in the conversion centers. They have nearly indestructable armor on their bodies, but as you can see they have large bulging heads. Which is obviously the weak point.
Shooting the head a few times accurately results in their head exploding in an awesome way. A massive fountain of blood gushes out for a few seconds afterwards. Take that bitch.
A little farther i come to this open area where i have to locate water valves to give me access to higher area's. The canon fodder soldier guy gets killed here by little spider things, but i couldn't take a picture of it because it happened too suddenly.
Power of 333 mhz bitches ! Reflective water surfaces ! Something very rare on the PSP. By the way, after this the rest of the level takes place in a dull looking ware house area. I didn't like it so didn't take any pictures for it.
Level 3 begins with another artsy introduction. The massive turret you see in the background is the main objective. I have to find it and destroy it. Greyson's jacket has an awesome skull on the back side by the way.
More 333 Mhz goodness. The roof as beeming light rays and dust particles dropping from it every now and then which looks great in motion.
The level of detail on the chimeran enemies is great. Too bad you wouldn't be seeing it for most of the game, except for moments like this. Right between his six eyes lulz.
Greyson is a master of the cover mechanics. He can take cover behind anything and shoot from impossible angles at pin point accuracy. Fuck yeah !.
Did i mention how killing these female chimerans is so satisfying. There is a flip side to it though. If they get close to you they explode themselves which takes off a chunk of your health.
It's very much possible to take on the standard chimeran's with the manual aiming system. In-fact you can get head shots for quick kills. But it's still a lot slower compared to the auto aim so it's not recommended in open area's (like the image above lol).
Moar 333 Mhz bitches !. The massive canon seen in the background constantly fires off large rockets in the air, the entire warehouse shakes and dust falls into the opening. It looks really good in motion.
Sub Boss part 2. It's the same boss again. The same techniques apply. Cover mechanics help.....
.... but all I have to do is stare at it with anger and it blows up itself out of embaressment because it knows its no match for me *.
* obvious lies, i had to fight it
So the game decides to be a dick right here, and when you kill that one sub boss, the game throws two more at the same time. As you can imagine trying to take them head on would be suicide. The proper method is to run around, backwards, and throw grenades, and use the grenade launcher to get rid of them safely.
Fortunately, because of a stroke of pure luck I was able to kill both the goliath's in the same grenade launcher shot after weakening them individually. This was in no way intentional and just happened out of luck.
And as you can see, the results are glorious. The explosion and the fountain of blood afterward are amazingly satisfying.
This is by far the stupidest thing I've encountered in the game yet. A QTE to place a dynamite on a control panel, what the flying fuck ? and it's not even a single QTE. It's a 3 level QTE.
The ensuing blast and the destruction of the massive pipe powering up the turret is all in-engine and again, shows off more of the 333 mhz power levels !!
The canon in the background finally subsides and my mission is over. Time to head back home guys. Or not.
Joking aside 333 mhz really does bring out a lot more of the PSP as this screen shows. All the water rendering and wave splashing is done in real-time on the PSP.
i took a bunch of screens and wrote down some notes for another site, thought i should put them here too .
Hell to the Yes ! Let Us Begin !
Bend right now are easily the best developer on the PSP. Ready at Dawn are only two hit wonders, so they don't really count. And they've left the PSP so screw them anyway. So anyway, for those who are not familiar, Bend are the guys who made the first SOCOM Bravo game and the two Syphon Filter games on the PSP. All of them are brilliant.
The title screen. On the left you can see the game's protagonist, James Grayson. Surprisingly he's not a bald space marine like 99% of the other alien shooter hero's.
Typical briefing/loading screen at the start of a mission. The red bar is white at the beginning and loads up to the red as it progresses, playing off of a memory stick it takes a second, but i can imagine it taking a while on an UMD. Fortunately the game provides interesting journal entries for you to read which flesh out the story.
The cutscenes in the game include both CGI and these art-piece style images narrated over by the same narrator from Resistance 1. I couldn't take more pictures from the CGI cutscenes because the image plugin kept crashing the PSP if I tried. Sorry.
So basically the opening involves you and some of your Marqee friends trying to reach some place on a plane which gets shot down forcing you to paradrop in enemy territory. All the cut-scenes outside the CGI one's were done in-engine which is impressive.
Meet the obligatory blonde female side kick. Who will most likely end up becomming the love interest in the game. Her name is Boucard something. She has a freaky french accent and carries a mean AK 47. She sticks with you through the first act of the first level.
Let's talk about the cover mechanics. The cover mechanics are as simple as walking up to a cover point. If there are enemies in the area, Greyson will automatically take cover behind a chest high wall. You can also take cover on the edges of higher walls by double tapping the analog stick towards it. Once you're in cover you will stay there until you pull the stick back to walk backwards.
Shooting from cover is as simple as pressing the R button, Greyson will come out of cover and fire, and as soon as you leave the R button, he will promptly get back into cover shielding him from enemy gun fire.
While pressing up on the D-pad will enter you into a zoomed aiming mode. Here you can control the aiming completely manually. Good for head shots from a distance. And for admiring the PSP's technical capabilities. (and Bouchard's boobs).
As you can see, even amongst the humans, Greyson is not a liked fellow. Well, the humans in question here are French, no one likes the French, so it's not really Greyson's fault. The french squad, besides Bouchard, all act negatively towards you.
Let me also specify that so far the game seems very narrative driven, there are small 1 minute cutscenes every now and then. The game seems to be doing a great job of fleshing out the characters and story so far. I like this. Especially considering this is an action game. (I'm looking at you RE5, you could have used 20 or so more cutscenes).
Bloody Frog !. No need to add anything else.
As you can imagine, shit happens real soon and you're off killing the chimera again. You may notice the flash light's effect in this screen. The light automatically activates when you're in darker area's and gives off a radiant glowing sphere in your line of sight ala SH Origins.
Also, notice the glowing red orbs on the left. These are the health packs, they are scattered all over the area along with ammo packs, the game's kind of easy in that sense that you can find a bunch of health and ammo packs around every corner. And the enemies all drop ammo as well.
The game has no shortage of ranged weaponry. This sniper rifle comes to you really early, and you can zoom in on enemies farther away and take them out safely. The zoomed in aiming is completely manual.
Also, pressing the L trigger while holding the sniper rifle slows down time for a little while. Helps in taking off heads from a distance a whole lot.
This is the first sub boss. He takes about a million bullets to kill. But fortunately explosive grenades reduce his health bar 25% at a time. So he doesn't end up being too hard.
When he dies, he explodes in a glorious fashion and leaves a massive fountain of blood behind him. Did i mention there's no shortage of the red stuff in the game ? Every enemy you kill bleeds tons. No dismemberments (besides a specific enemy) though.
This person is the closest thing Greyson has to a friend here *. Forgot his name, but he and Greyson seem to have a history.
* This is a lie. Greyson later reveals how it was this man's confession that landed him in jail in the intro
And this marks the end of level 1.
The second level begins in the sewers with an obvious canon fodder soldier along with me. How many minutes before this guy dies ? Well, not many, unfortunately i wasn't able to take a cap of when he dies
Retribution answers the series question of "female Chimera's". These are the Biolers. Female's converted into Chimera's in the conversion centers. They have nearly indestructable armor on their bodies, but as you can see they have large bulging heads. Which is obviously the weak point.
Shooting the head a few times accurately results in their head exploding in an awesome way. A massive fountain of blood gushes out for a few seconds afterwards. Take that bitch.
A little farther i come to this open area where i have to locate water valves to give me access to higher area's. The canon fodder soldier guy gets killed here by little spider things, but i couldn't take a picture of it because it happened too suddenly.
Power of 333 mhz bitches ! Reflective water surfaces ! Something very rare on the PSP. By the way, after this the rest of the level takes place in a dull looking ware house area. I didn't like it so didn't take any pictures for it.
Level 3 begins with another artsy introduction. The massive turret you see in the background is the main objective. I have to find it and destroy it. Greyson's jacket has an awesome skull on the back side by the way.
More 333 Mhz goodness. The roof as beeming light rays and dust particles dropping from it every now and then which looks great in motion.
The level of detail on the chimeran enemies is great. Too bad you wouldn't be seeing it for most of the game, except for moments like this. Right between his six eyes lulz.
Greyson is a master of the cover mechanics. He can take cover behind anything and shoot from impossible angles at pin point accuracy. Fuck yeah !.
Did i mention how killing these female chimerans is so satisfying. There is a flip side to it though. If they get close to you they explode themselves which takes off a chunk of your health.
It's very much possible to take on the standard chimeran's with the manual aiming system. In-fact you can get head shots for quick kills. But it's still a lot slower compared to the auto aim so it's not recommended in open area's (like the image above lol).
Moar 333 Mhz bitches !. The massive canon seen in the background constantly fires off large rockets in the air, the entire warehouse shakes and dust falls into the opening. It looks really good in motion.
Sub Boss part 2. It's the same boss again. The same techniques apply. Cover mechanics help.....
.... but all I have to do is stare at it with anger and it blows up itself out of embaressment because it knows its no match for me *.
* obvious lies, i had to fight it
So the game decides to be a dick right here, and when you kill that one sub boss, the game throws two more at the same time. As you can imagine trying to take them head on would be suicide. The proper method is to run around, backwards, and throw grenades, and use the grenade launcher to get rid of them safely.
Fortunately, because of a stroke of pure luck I was able to kill both the goliath's in the same grenade launcher shot after weakening them individually. This was in no way intentional and just happened out of luck.
And as you can see, the results are glorious. The explosion and the fountain of blood afterward are amazingly satisfying.
This is by far the stupidest thing I've encountered in the game yet. A QTE to place a dynamite on a control panel, what the flying fuck ? and it's not even a single QTE. It's a 3 level QTE.
The ensuing blast and the destruction of the massive pipe powering up the turret is all in-engine and again, shows off more of the 333 mhz power levels !!
The canon in the background finally subsides and my mission is over. Time to head back home guys. Or not.
Joking aside 333 mhz really does bring out a lot more of the PSP as this screen shows. All the water rendering and wave splashing is done in real-time on the PSP.
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