Here’s a walkthrough from the PAX show floor, with Sony Bend’s Chris Reese:

And John Garvin helps round out the story by answering these questions:

1. How will you translate the PS3 Resistance experience onto the portable screen?

For us, Resistance is all about killing powerful aliens with powerful weapons in a cool alternate-history 1950’s setting. Our goal from the beginning was to capture the essence of Resistance’s core gameplay, while at the same time putting our spin on it. The “Bend Game Studio” spin is all about creating a fun game that is also a dramatic, in-depth story. We knew we wanted a sequel that took place right after Resistance: Fall of Man, but before the events in R2. While playing through RFOM I had discovered a few elements that I thought were great story hooks — things like the Cloven, or the fact that we never saw any female Chimera, so I spent some time talking to Ted Price and the guys at Insomniac, pitching ideas I had about where we could take the Resistance story on the PSP. They loved our story so we just went with it. The PSP game is probably a little more “intimate” — if you can use that word on an experience where you’re blasting the hell out of aliens — because the game focuses on the personal story of a new character we created — a British private named James Grayson. After a personal tragedy, Grayson goes on a vendetta to destroy every Chimera conversion center he can find. Eventually he learns that his efforts have been futile… in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Chimera have evolved and now use a new method of converting humans to aliens. The French resistance, called the Maquis, enlist Grayson’s help, and he joins Cartwright and Parker in Operation Overstrike — the beginning of the war to retake the European continent. So we have a great personal story, as Grayson tries to come to terms with his own demons, set against the backdrop of a horrible war fought in places like Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Bonn and Paris.

2. What is the best thing about developing for PSP?

The thing I like best about PSP is the team size. At Bend Game Studio we have about 40 team members, which is a great size for a team. We have enough key talent to make AAA games that have high production values, but we’re small enough that everyone knows everyone and we get stuff done without a lot of middle management.

3. What is your favorite game on PSP?

My personal favorite is still Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror or Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, mostly because I poured so much creative energy into them. Two games that I finished this year, and really loved, were God of War and Patapon. Two really different games in terms of subject matter, genre, and style, but each a lot of fun in it’s own way. In fact, these two games are really good examples of why the PSP is such a great hand-held platform. You have a quirky game like Patapon that sort of carves new territory in the “rhythm / action” genre, and a really good translation of a hard-core console action title, side by side on my gaming shelf. And you won’t find a game like GOW on competing hand-helds anytime soon.

4. What is one of your guilty pleasures when it comes to PSP games?

Playing games late at night while in bed. Seriously. It seems like the only time I can find to catch-up on my PSP games is late at night and there’s no more comfortable place to kick back than in bed. With the headphones on, I don’t keep my wife awake, though she was getting irritated when I was playing God of War because it’s hard not to get vocal when you die. To me, portable doesn’t just mean “play on a bus or an airplane,” it means, “play anywhere that isn’t your couch in front of your PS3.” :)

5. Where is the weirdest place you have ever played your PSP?

See above.

6. What is your favorite non-gaming PSP feature? Why?

Probably the web stuff. The PSP’s a pretty good platform for checking news… the screens a little bigger than my Blackberry’s, and websites are easier to navigate. Next would be the ability to watch movies on it — while flying, it’s a lot more convenient to watch a movie on my PSP than on my laptop.

7. How will you push the PSP hardware with Resistance?

We’re pushing it pretty hard. As you know this is our third game on the platform and we’re constantly making improvements to our engine. Chris Reese, the Technical director and co-studio director, pushes his tech team pretty hard. We’ve done a complete upgrade on our animation system, adding support for multiple skeletons so we could implement all the different types of Chimera; we’ve upgraded our character system, adding specular highlights so you can see light reflecting off of Grayson’s leather jacket; we’ve also upped the size of our character textures so everything looks crisp and clean; we’ve put in a more robust streaming system so we can have more detail in the levels, more sounds, more character models, more animations; we’ve created an entirely new enemy system so that we can have more of them on screen at once — in Logan’s Shadow, you might see 4-6 terrorists at a time, not in Resistance: Retribution, you can see 15 Leapers at once. We’ve also optimized a lot of systems in order to push out our drawing distance so we could attempt to capture the sheer scale of the Resistance vistas. So far the team is doing a great job capturing the Resistance look and feel.

8. This is your third PSP game; what have you learned over the last two projects that you can apply to Resistance?

Aside from all the technical and engine enhancements noted above, we’ve learned a lot about making shooters fun on the PSP. We’ve taken the aiming system that we refined in Logan’s Shadow and Dark Mirror, and we’ve simplified it into an aim assist system that we think is pretty revolutionary on the PSP — we wanted to make the game as easy to play as we could by reducing the reliance on using the four face buttons to aim — but at the same time, not take away the sense of “skilled” shooting that a game like Resistance provides. The other thing I think we’ve learned how to do well on the PSP, is crafting a compelling player experience. For us this is a combination of challenging combat scenarios, creative level design, and dramatic storytelling. We don’t want the game to get repetitive, so we break up the pacing of the game play, we add new challenges, we create unexpected story hooks, we give the player reasons to look around, we create areas where they have to use their heads as well as their weapons. As long as we end up with a game that we want to play ourselves, we’re pretty happy.

What else do you need to know about Resistance: Retribution?

If Bryan looks to be in a good mood, he had just wrapped up an interview with Morgan Webb. I’d imagine I’m a bit of a letdown after that…

Thanks to Bryan and Insomniac Games. We’ll have more video from the show floor tomorrow.

Well over 125 of you showed up to our PAX PlayStation.Blog Meet-up last Saturday at Top Pot Donuts; making it a packed house and a big success. We quickly ran out of our allotment of 100 swag bags (with T-shirts and PS3 travel mugs), then raffled off copies of WipEout Pulse for PSP, vouchers for Bionic Commando: Rearmed for PSN (thanks, Capcom’s John D!), and a PSP Core System. Vince won the grand prize, a Limited Edition Grey Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3, following a thrilling final round of WipEout competition on PSP.

It was great meeting many of you for the first time, and seeing industry tastemakers from Joystiq, Sarcastic Gamer, Destructoid, Gamervision and Gamerscore Blog in person.

For those of you who weren’t able to make it, take a look at our pics, and the PS3 Fanboy gallery (Jem snapped the best hi-res donut pics). And YES, we’re planning on doing more of these, and not just on the West Coast.

Finally, if you’re ever in Seattle (or live there), don’t wait for us to return to try Top Pot Donuts – best I’ve ever had … ever.

The PlayStation PAX booth improves upon our awesome Comic-Con setup by adding twelve Resistance 2 stations, playable WipEout HD, Savage Moon, Crash Commando and a number of Resistance Retribution-equipped PSPs. Take a look as I give you the quick tour:

Now I know that many (well, most) of you can’t make it to Seattle by Sunday – so here’s how you can get involved in the PAX action. Tomorrow I’ll be talking with the development teams on Resistance 2 and inFamous. What should I ask them? Comment below.

I conducted an interview with Joel DeYoung of Hothead Games (Penny Arcade Adventures) earlier today using only your questions, and you’ll see the results of that next week.

Oh, and here’s the link to enter to win a free PS3 that I mentioned in the video. Good luck!

What happened is that very late in development we realized that the version of the engine we licensed for this game didn’t really have the same chops on console that it did on Windows, Mac and Linux. Imagine essentially rewriting whole sections of the engine to capture the look and feel of Penny Arcade for each console – it added months to our release date! We had to make the tough decision to get the game done and out on fewer platforms, rather than delay the whole thing several months more.

Fortunately, we were able to resume work on the PS3 version right away after that, interspersed with our work on Episode Two. Our engineers and artists have been hard at work getting the PS3 version working just right. Rest assured that future episodes will ship in a more timely fashion, as we get better at porting the code and tweaking the engine. Plus, we have plans to support PLAYSTATION Network with other Hothead games for a long time to come.

The game’s classic comic book look and feel was so well-received when Episode One was first released, it was critical to us to retain that element in bringing the game to a new platform. It truly looks amazing with the PlayStation 3’s graphics, and should be well worth the wait – check out a little of it below:

The PS3 version is going to integrate with a bunch of features on the PLAYSTATION Network, including Score Rankings and the oft-requested Trophies. Plus, don’t forget that you’ll be able to customize your character to appear in both 3D and in the 2D cutscenes and that character (look, stats and inventory) can carry forward to future episodes! Last, but not least, the game supports full 1080p resolution. We’re putting the last touches on everything now for SCEA’s final approval and the game’s launch on the PSN this winter.

With the game looking so good, we’re excited to show it off at the Penny Arcade Expo this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll be demoing the game every day of the show at the Hothead Games booth (#1114) and conducting a panel where we answer any questions you have about the Penny Arcade game or about the PS3 version in particular. Plus, we’ll be giving away a signed PLAYSTATION 3 to one lucky PAX attendee at the panel, so don’t forget to stop by the Walrus Theatre on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. We look forward to seeing you there!

Even if we won’t see you at this year’s PAX, we’ve made arrangements to meet up with Jeff from the blog at the show for a video interview. If you have some specific questions you’d love to get answered, write them in the comments field below, and Jeff will ask me them right then and there.

Look for that interview next week and more updates on the game soon!

For the first time ever, you’ll be able to get your hands on Resistance 2 multiplayer. We’re going to have a number of kiosks for you to jump on anytime and blast away your opponents with a slew of unique weapons in gorgeous environments.

Experience the intense and authentic high definition modern combat action of SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation in the booth Friday and Saturday/Sunday afternoons.

If racing is more your style, stop by on Friday evening or during Saturday and Sunday mornings to check out Motorstorm: Pacific Rift.

For those of you who like to take your gaming on the go, we’re going to have Resistance: Retribution on hand with its unique targeting system developed especially for PSP; alongside other PSP titles like BUZZ! Master Quiz.

Get discovered in Seattle with your talent or your brains (or both), with SingStar and BUZZ! Quiz TV taking over the main stage. Between sets of singing and trivia excitement, we’ll let you rest with onstage demonstrations of inFamous and level building with LittleBigPlanet.

While most of these games will be continuously playable throughout the three days, we’ll be holding tournaments at the times below to win PlayStation goodies.

COMPETITIONS

Friday

• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation – 5:00, 6:15pm
• Buzz! – 2:15, 3:00pm
• SingStar – 4:45, 5:15pm
• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift – 2:30, 3:15pm

Saturday

• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation – 2:00, 5:00pm
• Buzz! – 10:15am, 12:15, 1:00pm
• SingStar – 2:30, 3:45, 5:00, 5:30pm
• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift – 10:45, 11:30am, 12:00, 12:45, 1:30pm

Sunday

• SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation – 2:00, 5:00pm
• Buzz! – 10:15am, 12:15, 1:00pm
• SingStar – 2:30, 3:45, 5:00, 5:30pm
• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift – 10:45, 11:30am, 12:00, 12:45, 1:30pm

ON-STAGE DEMOS

Friday

• LittleBigPlanet – 3:30, 5:30pm
• inFamous – 2:45, 4:15pm

Saturday

• LittleBigPlanet – 11:00am, 3:00pm
• inFamous – 11:45am, 4:30pm

Sunday

• LittleBigPlanet – 11:00am
• inFamous – 11:45am, 4:30pm

Even if you can’t make it out to Seattle, you can still win a brand-new PLAYSTATION3 plus Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and SingStar PLAYSTATION 3 during PAX. Click here for more details on how to win.

Also don’t forget to swing by the PlayStation.Blog meet-up Saturday morning at Top Pot Doughnuts, for some free breakfast, before you get your game on.

That’s where we come in, dear PlayStation.Blog reader. From 8:30-10:30am on Saturday, August 30th, we’ll be camped out at the nearby Top Pot Doughnuts (5th Ave location). We’ve got the 2nd floor of this Seattle standard locked down for PlayStation fans, and the coffee and donuts will be flowing freely. That’s meant both figuratively and literally – we’re picking up the tab. As those who attended our last meet-up can attest, there’ll be more than just free food; we’ll be handing out swag and running another competition – so make sure to charge up your PSP.

We’d love to meet you, and we’ll still get you out the door and on your way for a full day of PAXness (the doors open at 10am). If you’d like to attend, please RSVP on our Facebook event page or, if you don’t have Facebook (for shame!), please feel free to drop us a line here.

And when you get to the Convention Center, make sure to drop by our booth, where you’ll be able to go hands-on with LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, SOCOM Confrontation, MotorStorm Pacific Rift, Resistance Retribution, SingStar, Buzz Quiz TV and more. Stay tuned, we’ll share our full schedule of events tomorrow on the Blog.