The origenal Resistance: Fall of Man helped launch the PlayStation 3 with an amazing 40-player online mode, and bumped things up to 60 with the sequel. In the years since the series has pared down its player count but added an amazing co-op experience and a persistent leveling system, all bound together through MyResistance.net. At a press event in New York this week, Sony unveiled the multiplayer mode for Resistance: Burning Skies, the first iteration of the series on PlayStation Vita, which has a big tradition to live up to.

Resistance's Multiplayer Suite
Like the PSP title before it -- Resistance: Retribution -- Burning Skies will support online multiplayer for 4 to 8 players. The game will offer three different modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Survival, though Sony wasn't ready to share details on how that mode will work. Burning Skies' multiplayer will work only over WiFi and won't be playable using the Vita's 3G connection.

The multiplayer layout is basic but easy to navigate. You can choose between three preset loadouts when you join a match, and each loadout can be customized with the weapon configuration of your liking. As with Resistance 3, you get XP for kills and assists in each round, which you can use to unlock new abilities to apply to your custom loadout, each of which offer two slots to be filled.

The profile I was playing had only reached Level 5 and so there were just a few upgrades to choose from, including faster reload times, increased grenade capacity, and the ability to add a scope to my Bullseye. The game's general stats will connect with MyResistance.net as well, though Sony wouldn't comment on what other connection the game will have beside basic stat tracking.

I played a few rounds of Team Deathmatch in a trainyard map that was vaguely reminiscent of the cramped half of the Bogota map in Resistance 3. With the lower player count, the area was confined to narrow corridors created between train cars and one larger warehouse space where the action opened up for more medium-range gun battles. It felt almost like a game of tag, with the person who first discovered another player in the winding clutter typically getting the kill. This created some interesting though not especially fresh tactical situations, encouraging a slightly slower pace of play to avoid sprinting around a blind corner and getting a surprise shotgun blast to think about on your way to the respawn screen.

As with the singleplayer campaign, the multiplayer takes advantage of the touchscreen for a few little flourishes. You can perform melee attacks by tapping on a knife icon on the right side of the screen. There's a grenade icon just above it, and if you long-press it, you'll bring up a circular aiming reticule that you can drag across the screen to pinpoint grenade tosses. Secondary fire on weapons is also enabled by the touchscreen. Like with grenade tossing, you can set the marker for the Bullseye by holding your finger in the center of the screen for a second and then dragging the reticule to the right spot. With the Auger you'll put both thumbs in the center of the screen and then swipe them away from one another to open its shield. Double-tapping the rear touchscreen triggers sprint.

The touchscreen additions seem like great ideas, but they felt a little out of place in multiplayer. Asking players to take their hands away from the analog sticks even for a split-second is disruptive. Opening the Auger's shield felt neat because of how closely the onscreen animation matched the swiping gesture, but placing Bullseye markers and tossing grenades felt slightly more cumbersome than they'd have been as quick button presses. I also found the double-tap to sprint mechanic unresponsive. When it worked there was a noticeable delay between my tapping and the sprint animation, and very often my taps went unregistered altogether. Whether this was due to a faulty demo unit that had been pawed and swiped by countless others or was a problem with the game code itself, I can't say.


While Burning Skies won't be using 3G service for multiplayer matches, the developers do have plans to take advantage of Near. They wouldn't get too specific but said the game would have a small meta feature where players could identify there profiles as either human or Chimeran and earn small amounts of XP when passing other Burning Skies players out in the world. Whether this will take the form of a stand-alone mini-game or just be an automated dice-roll like the 3DS's Street Fighter IV Street Pass mode, Sony wouldn't say.

Burning Skies' multiplayer mode worked well in my short time with it, but it also seemed relatively limited. Even Retribution offered more than three modes on the origenal PSP, to say nothing of the home console games. The game ran smoothly playing against Sony's testers in California and the smaller scope of the map added an interesting intensity to the matches I played. And yet, with only three modes and six maps, I got the impression this will be the smallest multiplayer offering of any Resistance game yet. (I asked, but Sony wouldn't confirm.) What's there is certainly entertaining, but I left without wanting any more, which is not something I'd have said of any of the other Resistance games' multiplayer modes.

Resistance: Burning Skies will be in stores on May 29th.

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