This is a weird sequel. It’s like they took all the pros from our review of the original Xyanide on the Xbox and turned them all into cons. Fortunately, the original cons were rectified to a certain extent, which makes up for it.

Concentrating on what were originally prosfor a moment: whereas the original game seemed fresh, now the same ideas are rehashed with a different coat of paint. One of the big draws first time around was the Live ranking, but that's not possible on the PS2. The cool lighting effects have been removed, so eye-candy is not so prevelant. Finally, the tight controls are now replaced with floppy Dualshock sticks that make hitting anything on the harder settings a bit harder than it should be.

However, when you look at the cons, the action-gaps are much less noticeable, so the suspense - before attack waves arrive - is higher. Also, a new branching pyramid-shaped easy/hard level path, like Outrun, means that, although there's a certain amount of repetition within each level, the shorter and more numerous levels keep the attack waves fresh. The cons from our earlier review also complained that the backgrounds were fairly dull; but this time, the actual scenery is very impressive for a PS2. It looks like it’s streamed from the disc, but since you can turn all the way round and enjoy the view from all angles, it’s quite some feat. Be it vast canyons filled with enemies, or open space with giant gas clouds and fast attack-ships, or firing over the surface of a huge spaceship, there’s great variety. The visuals, unfortunately, fail to reach greatness because there’s a blurry softness applied to everything, sometimes making it difficult to pinpoint what is important and what is just scenery.

The story is now entirely optional, with a comic stip-style narrative played out inside the game menu, with each chapter unlocked in conjunction with each level completed. It’s slightly animated which is a nice touch. However, the story is background filler, bearing little relationship to the gameplay, which is an odd choice. If it works or not will purely depend on whether you are the sort of person that can bothered reading it.

Flying your ship through each level will involve shooting down groups of enemies that attack from all around you, although you can normally turn around and start picking them off before they get going with their missiles. Their basic attack consists of fairly slow, glowing bullets which can be avoided most of the time by just moving off-course slightly. Those that have missiles appear red on the radar, so need to be picked off first. If they do manage to release their pay-load, the player will need to quickly shoot down the missiles, because they dole out some serious damage. They can be dodged using the strafe buttons, but they will circle around quickly and, all too often, hit home, so they should remain top priority. This is occasionally frustrating and compounded by the loose analogue controls.

The first game had a very gradual, but ultimately satisfying weapon-upgrade system in which you had to choose the bias towards certain types of enemy or boss, and was one of the major selling points. Resurrection instead has a simple shopping arrangement based on amount of Xyanide collected during the levels (from shooting down enemies). There are four slots on the ship in which to put the goodies, butin reality some options are clearly better than others, so every time you play the same choices will be made. It’s not a show-stopper but could have been tweaked better for greater replay value.

As well as the branching easy/hard path choices, there’s an overall difficulty setting. The easier settings are better balanced in terms of hit-ratio and weapon effectiveness. Thus they allow the player to progress far enough to feel satisfied before getting wiped out and trying again.

Probably the best recommendation is that if you found Panzer Dragoon Orta too hard, but are determined to play a similar game, then this would fill the gap. The loss of the Live ranking is significant, since that gave a decent incentive to improve and see how much scope for improvement there was. However, the overriding impression is that it’s all been seen before and done better. It tries to provide significant differences from the original, but there’s not enough here to recommend a purchase of this thoroughly average offering.