More like PixelJunk Elements
Calling Q Games' latest PixelJunk game a shooter is almost insulting. After all, it's so much more than that.
Published: December 27, 2009
Q Games' latest entry into the overwhelmingly successful PixelJunk series is many things; an action adventure, a puzzler, a game with an emphasis on exploration. Ironically what it's not, is a twin stick shooter. Or at least not to the extent its title might lead you to believe. The Kyoto (Japan) based developer can be credited with creating four of the PSN's best and most innovative titles in less than two years of development time, and what very few of you probably know, is also responsible for the development of the PS3's and PSP's XMB interface.
While PixelJunk Shooter is not your average “brainless” shooting experience, neither is it an inaccessible title. Actually quite the opposite is the case. The very second you boot up the game for the first time, its atmosphere and charm make it astonishingly tough to pull away from. While the game's graphics obviously aren't its main draw, Q Games did a fantastic job of creating a believable and most importantly fun physics engine making the game's environments constantly feel vivid, unpredictable and alive. Your goal in each of the three episodes, which are split up into five relatively short stages, is to safely rescue all of the survivors and to find and collect as many diamonds as possible. While rescuing (or killing, for that matter) each survivor is directly tied to your progression within the level (miss a survivor, and the next pathway won't open up), finding the majority of diamonds which are cleverly hidden throughout the different environments is crucial to unlocking the game's other two main episodes.
What makes PixelJunk Shooter stand out among its competition is the way Q Games encourages and forces the player to make use of the physics engine. In order to safely navigate through the underground caves, find all the diamonds and rescue each survivor, you need to understand and manipulate a number of different elements and fluids like rock, ice, water, lava and a couple others that I won't go into detail on for the sake of not spoiling the experience for you. I'll give you an example: In order to get to a survivor who is stuck in a cave beneath a pool of lava without killing him, you need to shoot the rocks at the top of the cave which then opens up a stream of cool water. Once the water comes into contact with the liquid magma, it turns it into a solid form of rock which can then quite easily be dug through with the spacecraft's weapons. The more you progress in the game the more complicated it gets. However I've never felt overburdened with any of the puzzles in the game. Rescuing all of the survivors is probably the easier one of the game's two main objectives. PixelJunk Shooter is not a very hard game to make it through (after all you could kill all of the survivors in order to progress – but who would commit to such a terrible act?). Neither is it a very long one for that matter. The main challenge comes in the form of finding all of the quite well hidden diamonds. While finding each and every diamond in the first episode is not that hard to pull off, doing so in the environmentally very unstable later stages is much more challenging.
Something that is essential for your survival is your ship's temperature meter. If you get too close to a hot element like lava, then your temperature meter rises. If it hits a certain spot, your ship will overheat and you will lose control over it. Once that happens, your only chance for survival is to engulf your ship in a cool liquid like water. Doing so instantaneously cools off your temperature meter. Later in the game you will come across element suits that invert how the different elements affect your spacecraft. This makes for an interesting twist in how you view the different elements. An at first seemingly safe element like water suddenly becomes your biggest threat and vice versa.
PixelJunk Shooter is definitely not for everyone. It's called “shooter,” despite only truly deserving to be called so during each of the three boss fights at the end of the episodes. While I absolutely dig the more intelligent approach to the genre, some might argue that this game has nothing to do with classic twin stick shooting. Definitely a valid point for some, but ultimately Shooter is a game that will charm its audience with its fantastically atmospheric soundtrack, its stunningly simple and effective graphics technology and art style and its smart and innovative gameplay mechanics. Its biggest fault is that it simply ends too soon, ultimately leaving you aching for more. But not giving it a chance because of that would be unfair to one of the year's best and most charming downloadable games.
While PixelJunk Shooter is not your average “brainless” shooting experience, neither is it an inaccessible title. Actually quite the opposite is the case. The very second you boot up the game for the first time, its atmosphere and charm make it astonishingly tough to pull away from. While the game's graphics obviously aren't its main draw, Q Games did a fantastic job of creating a believable and most importantly fun physics engine making the game's environments constantly feel vivid, unpredictable and alive. Your goal in each of the three episodes, which are split up into five relatively short stages, is to safely rescue all of the survivors and to find and collect as many diamonds as possible. While rescuing (or killing, for that matter) each survivor is directly tied to your progression within the level (miss a survivor, and the next pathway won't open up), finding the majority of diamonds which are cleverly hidden throughout the different environments is crucial to unlocking the game's other two main episodes.
What makes PixelJunk Shooter stand out among its competition is the way Q Games encourages and forces the player to make use of the physics engine. In order to safely navigate through the underground caves, find all the diamonds and rescue each survivor, you need to understand and manipulate a number of different elements and fluids like rock, ice, water, lava and a couple others that I won't go into detail on for the sake of not spoiling the experience for you. I'll give you an example: In order to get to a survivor who is stuck in a cave beneath a pool of lava without killing him, you need to shoot the rocks at the top of the cave which then opens up a stream of cool water. Once the water comes into contact with the liquid magma, it turns it into a solid form of rock which can then quite easily be dug through with the spacecraft's weapons. The more you progress in the game the more complicated it gets. However I've never felt overburdened with any of the puzzles in the game. Rescuing all of the survivors is probably the easier one of the game's two main objectives. PixelJunk Shooter is not a very hard game to make it through (after all you could kill all of the survivors in order to progress – but who would commit to such a terrible act?). Neither is it a very long one for that matter. The main challenge comes in the form of finding all of the quite well hidden diamonds. While finding each and every diamond in the first episode is not that hard to pull off, doing so in the environmentally very unstable later stages is much more challenging.
Something that is essential for your survival is your ship's temperature meter. If you get too close to a hot element like lava, then your temperature meter rises. If it hits a certain spot, your ship will overheat and you will lose control over it. Once that happens, your only chance for survival is to engulf your ship in a cool liquid like water. Doing so instantaneously cools off your temperature meter. Later in the game you will come across element suits that invert how the different elements affect your spacecraft. This makes for an interesting twist in how you view the different elements. An at first seemingly safe element like water suddenly becomes your biggest threat and vice versa.
PixelJunk Shooter is definitely not for everyone. It's called “shooter,” despite only truly deserving to be called so during each of the three boss fights at the end of the episodes. While I absolutely dig the more intelligent approach to the genre, some might argue that this game has nothing to do with classic twin stick shooting. Definitely a valid point for some, but ultimately Shooter is a game that will charm its audience with its fantastically atmospheric soundtrack, its stunningly simple and effective graphics technology and art style and its smart and innovative gameplay mechanics. Its biggest fault is that it simply ends too soon, ultimately leaving you aching for more. But not giving it a chance because of that would be unfair to one of the year's best and most charming downloadable games.
