[E3 2008] Super Stardust Portable
What the?! New (old) Stardust outta effin' nowhere! We go hands-on with the PSP pew-pew.
Published: July 20, 2008
Super Stardust HD is an evil, eeeevil game. The addition of trophies and downloadable content packs have turned what was an already addictive game into something that stops just shy of being crack -- and that's only if you don't have an addictive personality. If you're a trophy whore (and yes, some of us on staff are), then you can pretty much kiss another $10 or so and a few weeks of free time goodbye while you unlock everything.
Maybe that's why it was such a surprise to not only see it briefly mentioned at Sony's press conference, but then to find a playable version of the game just chilling at their booth. Knowing full well what kind of trouble we could be getting into, we pulled up a chair and went to work sussing out just how difficult it would be to play a game that all but defined the twin stick shooter genre on a smaller screen with just a single analog nub.
Turns out, it works surprisingly well.
For starters, Super Stardust Portable is a 2D affair. To an extent, one could say the same about its HD brother, though there was certainly the illusion that one was traveling around a planet (and the shots certainly did curve around the sphere). There's still a planet in the background with SSP, but the camera is pushed in so much you probably wouldn't notice if you hadn't played the first game. That said, almost everything else about the game looks almost identical, from the ships to the asteroids to the three different types of shots -- though of course the move to the PSP has meant a loss in some of the fidelity to things like the space rocks actually getting chewed up by incoming fire.
Essentially, then, the whole PSP screen serves as the canvas for all the orbital destruction, and despite not having another analog stick to direct fire, just using the face buttons actually works far, far better than one would expect. Part of this is because of the light bit of interpolation between firing directions that the game does. Switching from, say Square to Triangle to fire shots left and then up results in a smooth change in direction rather than a quick jump. Not only does this allow for sweeping shots with the gold melter (the rock crusher and ice splitter are also here, switched easily by simply tapping up or down on the d-pad), but by just tapping the button quickly, you can induce the "wiggle" effect necessary for surviving some of the more hectic moments of the shooter. Even diagonal shots are possible by simply holding two directions at once.
Very, very quickly, we realized that the game could be played more or less like it's console counterpart, and in no time we were bobbing our heads along to the familiar Lavos planet music, zipping around with a boost (L Button) and dropping bombs (R Button) when things got a little dicey. Unfortunately, it didn't look like anyone from Sony was around to actually give us the full spiel, so we'll just have to wait until a little more information is made available (like, say, who is actually making the game, since things like a start-up screen or even a pause feature weren't in the build on show).
Still, even with little to no actual help, we were able to jump into the game and quickly get acclimated, which speaks volumes about whoever developed the game's knack for adapting the twin-stick controls to something a little more portable and stripped down. If the full version of Super Stardust Portable ends up being as relentlessly addictive as the PS3 one, we could find ourselves busting out our PSP the second we experience some down time. We'll have more for you soon, but in the mean time be sure to check out the screens of the game in action to see what we were talking about.
Maybe that's why it was such a surprise to not only see it briefly mentioned at Sony's press conference, but then to find a playable version of the game just chilling at their booth. Knowing full well what kind of trouble we could be getting into, we pulled up a chair and went to work sussing out just how difficult it would be to play a game that all but defined the twin stick shooter genre on a smaller screen with just a single analog nub.
Turns out, it works surprisingly well.
For starters, Super Stardust Portable is a 2D affair. To an extent, one could say the same about its HD brother, though there was certainly the illusion that one was traveling around a planet (and the shots certainly did curve around the sphere). There's still a planet in the background with SSP, but the camera is pushed in so much you probably wouldn't notice if you hadn't played the first game. That said, almost everything else about the game looks almost identical, from the ships to the asteroids to the three different types of shots -- though of course the move to the PSP has meant a loss in some of the fidelity to things like the space rocks actually getting chewed up by incoming fire.
Essentially, then, the whole PSP screen serves as the canvas for all the orbital destruction, and despite not having another analog stick to direct fire, just using the face buttons actually works far, far better than one would expect. Part of this is because of the light bit of interpolation between firing directions that the game does. Switching from, say Square to Triangle to fire shots left and then up results in a smooth change in direction rather than a quick jump. Not only does this allow for sweeping shots with the gold melter (the rock crusher and ice splitter are also here, switched easily by simply tapping up or down on the d-pad), but by just tapping the button quickly, you can induce the "wiggle" effect necessary for surviving some of the more hectic moments of the shooter. Even diagonal shots are possible by simply holding two directions at once.
Very, very quickly, we realized that the game could be played more or less like it's console counterpart, and in no time we were bobbing our heads along to the familiar Lavos planet music, zipping around with a boost (L Button) and dropping bombs (R Button) when things got a little dicey. Unfortunately, it didn't look like anyone from Sony was around to actually give us the full spiel, so we'll just have to wait until a little more information is made available (like, say, who is actually making the game, since things like a start-up screen or even a pause feature weren't in the build on show).
Still, even with little to no actual help, we were able to jump into the game and quickly get acclimated, which speaks volumes about whoever developed the game's knack for adapting the twin-stick controls to something a little more portable and stripped down. If the full version of Super Stardust Portable ends up being as relentlessly addictive as the PS3 one, we could find ourselves busting out our PSP the second we experience some down time. We'll have more for you soon, but in the mean time be sure to check out the screens of the game in action to see what we were talking about.
