Resogun is a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up, similar in spirit to the developer’s previous game series, Super Stardust, but slightly different. This is a pure arcade experience. The goal of each level is to survive and defeat all the enemies. Your ship can only move left or right, and thus can only shoot left or right. Enemies will swarm you in huge numbers so there are a few other abilities to improve your chances of survival. There is a bomb, which clears enemies from the entire field; there is an overdrive, which is a super attack that takes on the form of a plasma beam; and there is boost, which increases your ship’s speed allowing it to ram enemies. The bomb is limited by ammo, while the other two will slowly recharge after use.
There is an additional optional activity in each level, which plays into the backstory of the situation. You are in a combat simulation and are there to save humans. During the level, enemies that glow green, known as Keepers, will appear. By defeating these, it will free a human from their cage and you can then pick them up and save them by taking them to a safety point. Doing this will give you positive effects such as additional lives, bombs, shields, or points. It’s purely optional as you can still finish the level without saving any human.
This is a small game given that the single player mode only has five levels. Each level ends with a boss fight. The game can be challenging, although you can select how hard you’d want it to be given that there are four difficulties to choose from. There are three different ships, where each one has different parameters and attack patterns, so each of them plays a bit different compared to each other. One ship has a homing attack, while another can only shoot in a straight line, and the third shoots in a shotgun style.
On the standard or easier difficulty, you’ll be able to play through all the levels within two hours, which includes any retries if you died. As with a lot of this developer’s games, the fun comes from replaying each level as your skills improve to get higher and higher scores. The ending can come as abrupt since the final boss of the whole game feels just like the other bosses, and you were expecting the next stage to load up only to see the credits instead.
Once you’ve finished the five levels, there’s actually not much additional content outside of this single player mode. You can aim for a higher score, since it’s designed for you to try and beat all five levels in one go without dying. Thankfully, even if you do die, you can immediately retry that level and don’t have to start from the very beginning, which is very welcomed, especially on higher difficulties. The paid DLCs unlocks several new modes, and the game’s title screen teases these modes by showing them as options, only to ask you to buy the DLC when you try to play them.
The last thing to mention is that the graphics are great, especially in HDR thanks to all the flashy effects. Your shots, and the explosions that are caused when you kill an enemy, causes an impressive array of colors. Coupled with the fast paced soundtrack and smooth visuals, and this is a slick game that hooks you in as you get into the zone dodging all the projectiles and taking down everything in your path.
Overall, Resogun is a good game. The fast paced arcade styled gameplay is a perfect for a quick and fun experience. The biggest negative of the game is just how little content there is in the base game. It’s just five levels that you can easily finish within two hours in your first run, and even shorter in later ones as you improve your skills. Replaying the same levels can only keep your attention for so long, so if there were at least another five levels, that would have been great.