Resistance: Retribution released 14 years ago on the PSP. Now, during Bend Studio’s 30th anniversary year, this beloved portable game made its way to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles on PlayStation Plus!

Introducing players to a new protagonist in the well-established series with James Grayson, while bringing the traditional first-person Resistance franchise to a third-person action game for the first time, we’re excited for players to enjoy this classic all over again. This time around, you can experience Resistance: Retribution enhanced with up-rendering, rewind, quick save, custom video filters and PlayStation Trophy support.

To celebrate Resistance: Retribution hitting the Classics Catalog on PlayStation Plus, we brought a few veteran developers on from Bend Studio to reflect on their fond memories of the game.

Resistance Retribution is my favorite game that I’ve ever worked on...to this day! This was right after I had spent a few years making Syphon games (3 I believe), so a new IP and the mix of sci-fi and aliens was exciting to say the least. Creating the Waterfall Level and the boss fight at the end of it, matching the art style Insomniac Games already had was challenging and fun. Pushing the art a bit further, creating the animations, lighting, textures and mesh. This was truly when it was fun to be a game artist. We would do it all, create the entire level working closely with design. I worked on quite a few levels for that game, Abandoned Process Center was another memorable level. Working at PAX, and showing the game and seeing how much people enjoyed it was very cool. Getting to meet the people that play your game and getting their feedback was invaluable and an honor. It was pretty fun too!

-Brian Pape, Lead Weapons Artist

As much as I have a special place in my heart for Syphon Filter, I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to make a game in the Resistance universe. The genre and IP allowed us to push our creativity to create weapons, enemies, and gameplay experiences that we often joked about implementing during the development of the Syphon Filter games.

-Darren Yager, Manager, Design

I worked on the innovative target lock system - there was no right stick on PSP, so you had to aim with the face buttons, which was awkward. We put a "box" on the screen, and if an enemy was in the box, it would auto-target. If there were multiple enemies you could tap the face buttons to move from one to the next. Part way through the project, our multiplayer designer left, and since I was leading the multiplayer effort on the code side, I basically took over for him too. I had the QA bull pen right outside my office, so I would talk to them and play the game with them almost daily, dialing in what was fun and what could be improved.

I also got to design and implement a couple cool alt-fire modes for the weapons. One was the Razor. In previous Resistance titles, its alt-fire was a tracking dart. If you hit the enemy with it, then all shots would curve in midair to hit the target. For our version, though, I gave it a charge fire. You held it down and it would build up a charge, consuming ammo the longer you held it. When you let go an energy disk would fly out, dealing more damage the longer you had held it. However, it would also bounce off walls and terrain. Every time it bounced, if there was an enemy in front of it, it would alter the bounce angle to fly right at the enemy. That meant someone could be out of sight around a corner down a hallway, and you could bounce this thing down there and still hit them. The other one was the LAARK rocket launcher. After firing, it's secondary was the ability to pause it in midair, aim at a different target and release it in the new direction. I added a fun feature for PVP: if the rocket was paused in midair when you died, the rocket would automatically turn to aim at your killer and release. It was always fun getting a kill from beyond the grave.

-Darren Chisum, Sr. Manager, Programming (Technical Director, Gameplay)

During my time working on Resistance: Retribution I was working as Quality Assurance. My fondest memory of Resistance: Retribution was during multiplayer testing. In Resistance: Retribution we had a 4 vs 4 multiplayer mode where you would capture the flag. We got a report at one point from offsite Quality Assurance that they figured out a way to play where they said they could not be defeated in the Trench map and would win 100% of the time. We were sure we could defeat them and that their configuration and strategy would not defeat us or be undefeatable. After some discussion and coordination, we were able to arrange a time to play against them to prove their theory. Once we were able to play against them their strategy did not work against us, and we proved that there was not a configuration where they could win 100% of the time. It is still one of my favorite memories from working as Quality Assurance.

There were a few things about the game that I really liked overall. I was personally a fan of the variety of weapons and the freedom that gave us to make interesting functionality. The Razor, The Auger, and The Chaingun being some of my personal favorites. Something else I think was great in Resistance: Retribution was how we dealt with the lack of a right analogue stick on the PSP. There was an option to have an auto-targeting window that accounted for the lack of fine-tuned aiming on the PSP. That worked very well and helped account for the lack of a right stick on the PSP. Another great feature in Resistance: Retribution was that you could connect the game with the PS3 copy of Resistance 2. If you connected them both, you could control the PSP game with a PS3 controller. Connecting the two also made it so you "infected" your copy of Resistance: Retribution changing the gameplay slightly and giving James Grayson some Chimerian healing along with underwater breathing and an alternate character skin. 

One last fun fact is that I got a Resistance: Retribution tattoo on my arm near the end of development. I am still enormously proud of working on the game and happy to have the tattoo of it on my arm.

-Philip Wilson, Sr. Designer

Working on Resistance Retribution was a great experience for our Art team. Despite inheriting the intellectual property, we managed to make several noteworthy enhancements, including introducing a new main character, new weapons, shifting the gameplay to third-person shooter mechanics (an area in which we had more expertise), and relocating the game from the United States to Europe. Being our third title for the PSP, we had a deep understanding of the platform's strengths and weaknesses. This familiarity allowed us to push the PSP's capabilities to the fullest. While our ambitious plans for larger levels sometimes exceeded the available memory, we innovatively divided them into manageable sections, ensuring minimal disruption to the player experience.

-Gerald Harrison, Director, Art

Resistance: Retribution is available now on the PlayStation Store!