PixelJunk Shooter
Review
Earth, Wind and Fire
by Kiran Sury
reviewed on PS3
Earth, Wind, and Fire (cntd)
Though the game only has 15 stages, it is constantly reinventing itself, making each stage, let alone each episode, fell distinct. You constantly encounter new enemies and interactive environmental objects to deal with, not to mention new suits for your ship. Your default ‘suit’ lets you shoot bullets and move through water and has a heat indicator. Moving near lava or getting shot raises it, diving into water or moving through air lowers it. If it gets too high, your ship overheats and crashes. Other suits, however, turn this on its head. The water suit makes you spray water instead of bullets, while the magma suit gives you similar fire powers, with the added caveat of still being sensitive to heat. The inverter suit takes care of that and gives you a cold indicator instead. Feel free to dive through hot lava, but beware of water. By changing up the gameplay, Shooter makes each level a unique challenge, and maintains a level of interest throughout that few other games have managed.
The boss fights are large-scale affairs against screen-filling foes. Each boss has its own attack patterns, requires a lot of dexterity and is fun to fight. Considering how fun they are, it’s a shame there’s only three of them.
HFB
Though limited in color scheme, Shooter’s 2D environments are anything but dull. The reds, blues and blacks of lava, ice and magnetic fluid are all bright and expressive, and the liquid behaves as liquid should. The colors pop with good use of shading, and though slightly cartoony, the look fits. The music is a techno/trance soundtrack from a band called High Frequency Bandwidth. It really meshes with the game, and the best thing that can be said about it is that after a while you get so into it you cease to notice it’s there. When you stop playing, though, you feel something is missing.
PixelJunk Shooter is an excellent game, my personal favorite in the series. The game lasts the perfect length of time – it’s neither too short, not does it overstay its welcome. After completion you can go back to collect any treasure you have missed (and trust me, you will miss some) and special hidden survivors. At any time a second player can join for co-op gameplay. This makes fighting enemies and bosses easier, as you can catch your partner in the middle of an overheat-freefall and wait for them to cool off, as well as simply respawn as long as your partner is alive. Unfortunately nothing changes, as the game is the exact same as the single player game. This means that there is only one suit-changing station at a time, and one player gets all the fun while the other just hangs out. Still, for only ten bucks, Shooter is one of the best games you can get on PSN, period.
9.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
