A tale of two shooters (well, three)
Well, I've got both double-joystick shooters for the PS3, and I thought it's about time for me to write another review.
I've had Blast Factor since I got my PS3 back in February. It's fairly simple: you're a small ship which you move with the left stick. The right stick shoots in the direction you push; this means you can move in any direction independently of which direction you're shooting. Each level consists of a series of short attack waves in a small hexagonal playfield. The triggers set off a bomb that pushes enemies away from you, and tilting the controller to the left or right sloshes the whole level (and hence your enemies) in that direction. You have as many bombs as you want, there's just a short cooldown period between uses. The levels are in a branching system where the player gets sent to easier levels if he dies or doesn't complete a level fast enough. Running along the harder path earns more points for fast-level-completion bonuses.
The double-joystick move/shoot control system is a relic from 1981's Robotron:2084, which is one of the finest games ever made (it is also notoriously difficult). The control system has been updated for analog sticks to allow shooting and moving in all directions; as Robotron only supported 8 directions. Since Geometry Wars re-introduced the idea, it has be showing up in other games. As the sequel, GW: Retro Evolved is an excellent title, the obvious question is whether Blast Factor is better than GW:RE. My answer is that they are different.
GW doesn't have a level structure, and just continuously spawns enemies. It has a smooth difficulty curve, with the level of chaos slowly increasing as you go. BF is a series of levels that average about 30 seconds each. Also, the levels are divided into waves; so the game really presents a series of sharp challenges. GW is flashier, but BF has much better sound design. I'd say the BF's sound presentation is one of the best I've seen. GW doesn't end, while BF ends after completing 56 levels. However, BF's challenge comes from its multiplier system. The game is divided into 7 specimens, each with 8 levels. When you complete a specimen, if you haven't died, you score the total points from the last 8 levels times the number of specimens you've survived. Also, the end-of-round bonuses are multiplied by the number of levels you've survived; hence the idea in BF is to complete the game without losing a life. If you've gotten the add-on pack, you can try to do this at +50% game speed and earn more points for doing so.
Also in the add-on pack are cooperative and competitive multiplayer. Both are fun and chaotic.
Featuring the same move/shoot system as BF and GW, Super Stardust HD is an excellent old-school shooter. It's fast and flashy, and lots of fun. Of the two, Blast Factor is definitely more sedate. With its atmospheric sounds and liquid effects, BF doesn't present the user with the amount of insanity found in SSHD. It's played on a sphere; the non-euclidean geometry of the playfield makes things interesting. Your bombs destroy everything on the visible side of the sphere. You also have a turbo, which makes you move at about 3x speed, destroying anything you touch. Interestingly, points tokens chain-multiply if you pick them up during a turbo. There are three weapons to use, and they can be powered up over the course of the game.
What really sets SSHD apart from other shooters is the massive amount of particle effects. Particle effects are when small objects are spawned that don't collide with each other. Since there is no collision, they don't take much processor time, and therefore allow masses of them to be spawned without impacting performance. Even just one shot hitting a rock spawns about 15-20 little sparks. With so much going on at once, it's amazing that the game never drops a frame (well, except when loading the boss on occasion).
Since nothing in the game is genuinely unpredictable, the player can still know what is going on even with the gigantic amounts of sparks and explosions obscuring half the playfield. With practice, this game becomes a Zen-like experience, just as games like Defender and Asteroids did.
SSHD also includes a cooperative multiplayer mode, which we haven't gotten used to yet due to the way it determines where to put the display. In single player, your ship is kept near the center of the screen while the playfield rotates. When both players are there, it waits to move the camera until both players are rather close to the edge of the screen. This seems odd to me, and is really my only real complaint about the game.
People like to ask me if Stardust is better than Blast Factor. Again, my answer is that they are different. SSHD doesn't have BF's vicious multiplier system, and is brighter in presentation. Its levels are longer, and it sustains a fevered pitch longer because it doesn't divide itself as clearly into waves. But to me, these things don't make it superior. Just because they share a previously-unusual control system, it doesn't mean that they are the same game. I'm prefectly happy having bought both games, because they fill different niches in my game collection. However, BF does get a small edge for having better multiplayer versions.
Blast Factor: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Recommended.
Super Stardust HD: 4 out of 5 stars.
Recommended.
For me, Super Stardust picks up where 7800 Asteroids left off. The 7800 was a powerful little game system that came out around the same time as the Nintendo Entertainment System. The 7800 had excellent versions of both Asteroids and Robotron largely because it was capable of moving large numbers of sprites around without slowing down or flickering. The NES could not move as many sprites around, so the types of games on it were a lot different. Instead of lots of little enemies, you got a few large enemies; the problem in these games was to figure out how to defeat these enemies, rather than train yourself to survive the chaos of many small enemies. Since the NES because the most popular gaming system for a new generation of gamers, the former type of game became more common. The two most popular 16-bit systems (Genesis, Super Nintendo) continued this tradition. When the 3d-capable systems debuted (Playstation, N64), the hardware wasn't stout enough to handle large numbers of enemies in 3d, so the tradition continued. With the realism available on the PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast, the great amount of computer power usually went into cleaning up the graphics instead of increasing the number of moving objects. Now, the combination of much greater computer power in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, with the digital distribution channels, these sorts of old-style arcade games have come back. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved showed that many people were willing to pay a small amount of money for a small game; now we're seeing a renaissance in the field.
When I play Super Stardust, it reminds me of a bygone era when good players drew crowds at the arcade because what they were capable of doing seemed so incredible. A good player plowing through the fifth planet of SSHD is an amazing sight to see; the chaos looks so overwhelming that it's surprising to see the player's ship emerge unscathed.
I've had Blast Factor since I got my PS3 back in February. It's fairly simple: you're a small ship which you move with the left stick. The right stick shoots in the direction you push; this means you can move in any direction independently of which direction you're shooting. Each level consists of a series of short attack waves in a small hexagonal playfield. The triggers set off a bomb that pushes enemies away from you, and tilting the controller to the left or right sloshes the whole level (and hence your enemies) in that direction. You have as many bombs as you want, there's just a short cooldown period between uses. The levels are in a branching system where the player gets sent to easier levels if he dies or doesn't complete a level fast enough. Running along the harder path earns more points for fast-level-completion bonuses.
The double-joystick move/shoot control system is a relic from 1981's Robotron:2084, which is one of the finest games ever made (it is also notoriously difficult). The control system has been updated for analog sticks to allow shooting and moving in all directions; as Robotron only supported 8 directions. Since Geometry Wars re-introduced the idea, it has be showing up in other games. As the sequel, GW: Retro Evolved is an excellent title, the obvious question is whether Blast Factor is better than GW:RE. My answer is that they are different.
GW doesn't have a level structure, and just continuously spawns enemies. It has a smooth difficulty curve, with the level of chaos slowly increasing as you go. BF is a series of levels that average about 30 seconds each. Also, the levels are divided into waves; so the game really presents a series of sharp challenges. GW is flashier, but BF has much better sound design. I'd say the BF's sound presentation is one of the best I've seen. GW doesn't end, while BF ends after completing 56 levels. However, BF's challenge comes from its multiplier system. The game is divided into 7 specimens, each with 8 levels. When you complete a specimen, if you haven't died, you score the total points from the last 8 levels times the number of specimens you've survived. Also, the end-of-round bonuses are multiplied by the number of levels you've survived; hence the idea in BF is to complete the game without losing a life. If you've gotten the add-on pack, you can try to do this at +50% game speed and earn more points for doing so.
Also in the add-on pack are cooperative and competitive multiplayer. Both are fun and chaotic.
Featuring the same move/shoot system as BF and GW, Super Stardust HD is an excellent old-school shooter. It's fast and flashy, and lots of fun. Of the two, Blast Factor is definitely more sedate. With its atmospheric sounds and liquid effects, BF doesn't present the user with the amount of insanity found in SSHD. It's played on a sphere; the non-euclidean geometry of the playfield makes things interesting. Your bombs destroy everything on the visible side of the sphere. You also have a turbo, which makes you move at about 3x speed, destroying anything you touch. Interestingly, points tokens chain-multiply if you pick them up during a turbo. There are three weapons to use, and they can be powered up over the course of the game.
What really sets SSHD apart from other shooters is the massive amount of particle effects. Particle effects are when small objects are spawned that don't collide with each other. Since there is no collision, they don't take much processor time, and therefore allow masses of them to be spawned without impacting performance. Even just one shot hitting a rock spawns about 15-20 little sparks. With so much going on at once, it's amazing that the game never drops a frame (well, except when loading the boss on occasion).
Since nothing in the game is genuinely unpredictable, the player can still know what is going on even with the gigantic amounts of sparks and explosions obscuring half the playfield. With practice, this game becomes a Zen-like experience, just as games like Defender and Asteroids did.
SSHD also includes a cooperative multiplayer mode, which we haven't gotten used to yet due to the way it determines where to put the display. In single player, your ship is kept near the center of the screen while the playfield rotates. When both players are there, it waits to move the camera until both players are rather close to the edge of the screen. This seems odd to me, and is really my only real complaint about the game.
People like to ask me if Stardust is better than Blast Factor. Again, my answer is that they are different. SSHD doesn't have BF's vicious multiplier system, and is brighter in presentation. Its levels are longer, and it sustains a fevered pitch longer because it doesn't divide itself as clearly into waves. But to me, these things don't make it superior. Just because they share a previously-unusual control system, it doesn't mean that they are the same game. I'm prefectly happy having bought both games, because they fill different niches in my game collection. However, BF does get a small edge for having better multiplayer versions.
Blast Factor: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Recommended.
Super Stardust HD: 4 out of 5 stars.
Recommended.
For me, Super Stardust picks up where 7800 Asteroids left off. The 7800 was a powerful little game system that came out around the same time as the Nintendo Entertainment System. The 7800 had excellent versions of both Asteroids and Robotron largely because it was capable of moving large numbers of sprites around without slowing down or flickering. The NES could not move as many sprites around, so the types of games on it were a lot different. Instead of lots of little enemies, you got a few large enemies; the problem in these games was to figure out how to defeat these enemies, rather than train yourself to survive the chaos of many small enemies. Since the NES because the most popular gaming system for a new generation of gamers, the former type of game became more common. The two most popular 16-bit systems (Genesis, Super Nintendo) continued this tradition. When the 3d-capable systems debuted (Playstation, N64), the hardware wasn't stout enough to handle large numbers of enemies in 3d, so the tradition continued. With the realism available on the PS2, Xbox and Dreamcast, the great amount of computer power usually went into cleaning up the graphics instead of increasing the number of moving objects. Now, the combination of much greater computer power in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, with the digital distribution channels, these sorts of old-style arcade games have come back. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved showed that many people were willing to pay a small amount of money for a small game; now we're seeing a renaissance in the field.
When I play Super Stardust, it reminds me of a bygone era when good players drew crowds at the arcade because what they were capable of doing seemed so incredible. A good player plowing through the fifth planet of SSHD is an amazing sight to see; the chaos looks so overwhelming that it's surprising to see the player's ship emerge unscathed.
posted by Almo at 9:31 PM
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