PixelJunk Shooter
The Defence
The Prosecution
AMD equivalent
AMD Radeon HD 5770
The Case
PixelJunk Shooter is an indie twin-stick shooter originally developed for the PlayStation 3 by Q-games and was then ported later to the PC by the developer Double Eleven. The gameplay revolves around flying around in a small spaceship rescuing miners while collecting gems, all the while trying to avoid getting killed or having your miners killed by things like cave bats, lava flows and exploding gas. Unfortunately, twin stick shooters are on the same level of “go-to” for new indie developers as platformers, and many of them are rather bland. Will PixelJunk Shooter be the breath of fresh air that the genre needs?
The Trial
The story of PixelJunk Shooter is relatively simple and what little story there is has to be dug up by the player by finding special colored miners who are waving flags only found in secret areas. The giant whale-shaped vessel, the ERS Pinita Colada, approaches the planet Apoxus Prime looking for resources for the struggling human race and receives and S.O.S. from the mining colony within.
It’s a very beautiful game. Its art style fits fantastically and the ebbing and flowing of fluid is a truly a sight to behold. While the soundtrack might not be very memorable, it’s almost surreal quality fits the gameplay and rises and falls depending on how action packed or calm the game currently is. It blends into the experience like a bit of vanilla into a chocolate milkshake. The controls are mainly gamepad-focused due to the game’s origins, and this becomes most apparent when fighting enemies that seem to rely more on the “point in the direction and fire” of a gamepad’s joystick rather than just simply clicking on it. That isn't to say it controls bad, and in some cases it feels just the opposite; almost too good. The “main focus” of the game is essentially manipulating elements - be it water, lava, a mysterious magnetic black fluid or snow, ice or rock. The elements are handled extraordinarily well. Lava is naturally very hot. Just getting near it will cause your ship to slowly heat up, and touching it is almost a death sentence. That is unless you have the inverter suit, but more on that later. If you get too hot, you can take a dip in some water to cool yourself off. One of the most impressive aspect is that if there is rock between water and lava, it will heat up and melt. If there’s more lava than water, the water evaporates. If there is more water than lava, the rock will cool down, causing the lava around it to solidify. The gameplay manages to keep itself interesting with the “suits” that change your ship. The magma and water suit will replace your missiles with lava and water respectively and allow you to pick up rock and ice (respectively) with your grappling hook. The inverter suit makes your ship need to keep hot instead of cool, so you can dive in lava, while avoiding water. My personal favorite is the antimagnet suit, which repels the black liquid in the most amazing manner. Then at the end of each chapter there is a boss. They all are quite interesting and fun to fight. In order to unlock the next area, there cannot be any miners in need of rescue. It’s very dark in the sense that the game doesn't really seem to care if the miners live or die, provided no more than 4 die in a single stage. Even if you do kill a miner, be it by accidentally allowing lava to flow on top of them or a stray missile, all you have to do is collect 100 star pieces and it will be as if it never happened. To progress to the next chapter, you actually have to have enough diamonds, which are hidden away in rock and in secret areas. The only thing you get for having no miner deaths in a stage is a single diamond as a “perfect rescue bonus” while you can find around 15 of them in each stage. It’s a constant reminder that you aren’t there to rescue people, but to collect resources for the human race. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but saving their lives seems to be a mere by-product of doing so, and may be one of the best examples of narrative through gameplay I have seen in a while. PixelJunk Shooter is a near flawless game. Everything about it is well executed and gorgeous. Its art style is attractive, its levels are varied and each element acts realistically. Both Q-Games and Double Eleven have provided an experience that is well worth the purchase. I hope to see more from them on my PC in the future.
The Verdict
Case Review
- Grab an Eyeful: The graphics are absolutely stunning.
- A Blast of the Missile Kind: Not once did I feel bored while playing it.
- Why Do We Fall?: It's challenging, but a well executed kind of challenging.
- Elemental: Every element acts realistically.
- Secretive: Lots of secret areas to discover, packed with goodies.
- Get a Real Friend: There’s multiplayer, but it’s only local.
- Blink and You’ll Miss it: There are only three short chapters, and it ends with a cliffhanger.
Appeal
Q-Games’ latest PC offering is PixelJunk Shooter, a 2D action game where you pilot a whale-like ship called the ERS Pinita Colada through caverns to rescue survivors. The game kind of remind me of an 8-bit title called Jupiter Lander, which also had you piloting a ship through underground caves to save stranded people. These games are always fun to play for a quick blast, especially if you just want to kill an hour, and PixelJunk Shooter is no exception in that regard.
The graphics might look basic, but the gameplay is addictive with challenges that will test you over the 15 levels. The aim of the game is to rescue survivors, and you must save them in order to unlock a gate to proceed. While it seems simple enough, you find yourself having to navigate to avoid hot lava and bat-like creatures that shoot at you. There are times when you have to manipulate the environment, and it can be the water, lava or rocks. Just be mindful that when you get near the lava, your whale ship starts to burn and must be cooled down by flying into water.
Like PixelJunk Monsters, this game looks beautiful with strong, vibrant colours and great artistic design, which makes it a real pleasure to play. Hopefully with the success of the PixelJunk games, other titles from the series make their way to the mighty PC as well.
Appeal
Originally released as a series of downloadable titles for PlayStation 3, the PixelJunk franchise has slowly but consistently been making its way across to our beloved platform. The entry we're here to talk about today is PixelJunk Shooter, a rather unusual take on the sport of spelunking. No ropes here. No sir. But you have a spaceship with rockets, a grappling hook and a smorgasbord of scientists trapped in a series of increasingly unlikely locations, such as inside a pocket of cooled crust covered by a lake of lava, at the bottom of an underground lake...or just randomly floating in a gravity-defying bubble of oxygen and air a few feet above a lake of lava.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to shoot, grapple and avoid a variety of unusual creatures, some of which spray more lava all over the place when they die because...H. R. Giger eat your heart out! Equal parts side scrolling shoot 'em up and lateral puzzle game. It has a simple premise with simple controls, a simple execution and an extremely well-crafted difficulty curve. It will never truly feel like it's grown any more difficult as such, but not because it's easy. You simply find, as time progresses, you learn to intuit the solutions to problems and dive in headfirst. Keeping the game flowing at a brisk, consistent pace.
The levels themselves are fairly short, mostly taking no more than ten or fifteen minutes. So you can squeeze in a quick, satisfying and rewarding game pretty much whenever you want. It's no graphical powerhouse of a game, being a console downloadable title and all, but the assets and art style it uses are consistent, sufficient and generally varied enough to feel fresh, even when you spend a lot of time in areas that are basically identical. The level design and the clever use of the limited, but highly effective lighting effects and the absolutely superb soundtrack make PixelJunk an easy, fun game to while away a couple of minutes, or several hours.
Gallery
