Q-Games is known for making surprisingly simple yet addictive games on the PSN and their latest entry in their PixelJunk series is their grandest adventure so far. The game takes influence from old shoot’em ups and there’s not much to the story except you’re a ship onboard the ERS Pina Colada and a distress beacon has gone off in the planet your colony is mining for resources. Your job is to get down there and straighten things out the only way you know: With lots of missiles.
PixelJunk Shooter
Developer: Q-Games
Price: $9.99
Platform: PS3 (reviewed)
The controls are very simple with the left stick controlling your movement, the right stick controlling the direction you’re facing, spin the right stick to spin, R1/R2 is used to shoot(hold down for missiles), and L1/L2 is used for your grappling hook. The hook here is that you’ve got to constantly be aware of the environment because of the added elements. You’re first introduced to water and lava that both act exactly how you would expect them to. Eventually you are given ice, flammable gas, and a magnetic liquid. The most intriguing part about all this is how they all react when they come together. Water cools lava and turns it into a hard rock you can either shoot or use the spin move to get through, ice will melt when connected with lava, water will freeze when touched by a bit of ice, the gas spreads fire when hit by lava, and the magnetic liquid either dissolves when connected to lava or will turn into flammable gas when hit by water. The way the elements move looks great thanks to the physics Q-Games worked on and they all behave realistically.
Instead of a health bar you’re given a heat meter that fills up when near lava or hit by enemy fire. Of course if you crash directly into an enemy that’s an instant death. The heat meter fills up depending on how far you are from the lava(filling faster the closer you are) and the only way to deplete it is to get away from the lava and have it slowly go down itself or find a water source to dive into. Get the heat meter too high and your ship goes into a fiery fall where your only hope is that there better be a pile of water at your crash destination instead of rocks. Later in the game they switch things up on you by introducing new ‘suits’ your ship wears that switches the game around by allowing you to fly into the lava at the cost of death from getting too close to ice or water. Some of these suits actually allow you to fire streams of lava, water, or even deflect magnetic liquids.
There are 3 chapters with their own theme and 5 stages within each. Your job during the game is to collect as many miners as possible without killing too many. Get 5 killed either by your own bullets or by enemies and it’s game over. Rescuing them is as easy as grabbing them with your grappling hook but the problems come when you’re racing to get to them before the lava does. Also hidden within each stage are diamonds that you can collect and special miners that give a little more insight on the planet. Each stage has a set amount of diamonds/miners for you to collect(it helpfully lets you know how many of each you’ve already acquired) and definitely encourages re-playability to discover all the secret areas to find them all. Each chapter ends with a boss encounter that are gigantic compared to your tiny ship. Each fight feels like old school shoot’em up fights with clever weak spots and plenty of attacks to dodge. There is also a video capture option included where you can record your play-through and save it to your HDD or even upload it straight to YouTube. An interesting addition is the Playstation Home support that unlocks pieces of a miner costume for your PSHome avatar with each trophy you acquire.
PixelJunk Shooter supports local coop where a friend takes the role of a green ship. You both support the same abilities but the neat changes are that if your friend starts burning up you can grapple them till they recharge. Another addition is that there are added power-up stations to allow your friend to play around with the various different suits. Oh I should probably add that you can hurt each other while wearing the suits so expect to kill your friend a few times(we all know you did it on purpose so stop saying it was an accident).
The Final Word
Q-Games has once again nailed an old genre, put their own influence on it, and made an outstanding game. PixelJunk Shooter is brilliant and is a must play for any fans of shooters. The physics incorporated into the game are also a sight to behold and since the game supports same-screen coop bring a friend along for the ride.– MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent
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