Bite-Sized fun on the Playstation Network
One needs to take only a cursory glance over the selections available on both Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network to notice that there is an absolute glut of titles available in the dual-stick shooter category. Even if you're a PS3-only user, there's still quite a few left to choose from. I've bought and played most of them, and SSHD is one of the true standouts of the bunch.
The game offers several modes of play, but they all come down to your ship against wave after wave of enemies and asteroids on a spherical playfield. You'll have three weapons to choose from (using the R1 and L1 buttons) and there are, conveniently, 3 different kinds of asteroids to shoot with them. The weapons (Rock Crusher, Gold Melter and Ice Splitter) correspond to the elements of Earth, Fire and Water, and each asteroid type (Rock, Gold, and Ice) is weak against one of the weapon types. Enemies are more diverse, but each is also weak against one of the weapon types as well, and are color-coded to highlight this weakness.
While it may sound simple, as the game goes on and the difficulty ramps up, you'll be assaulted by enemies and asteroids of multiple types at the same time, so split-second weapon management is critical, as is choosing which weapons to upgrade.
In addition to your weapons, you'll also have the ability to use a speed dash (L2) which grants you temporary invulnerability, and a limited number of bombs, which will blow up everything in your general vicinity. There are few things in gaming more satisfying than speed dashing into the heart of an asteroid or enemy swarm and timing your bomb explosion at the exact right moment to blow everything to bits, leaving you with nothing to do for a few seconds but to collect all the powerups left behind.
The game is divided into 5 planets, some of which are tied heavily to one of the 3 elements, and some of which offer more variety. They get progressively more difficult as you advance through them, and each of them should provide a stiff challenge to most players. The game rarely if ever reaches the levels of screen-filled-with-enemies insanity of Geometry Wars, but it can get pretty intense from time to time. Boss fights are included at the end of each planet, though they disappointingly repeat previous bosses, opting to make you fight multiple bosses on later planets.
Graphically, the game looks fantastic, and rivals many retail releases in sheer beauty and detail. Asteroids break apart exactly as you expect they would when shot with the various weapons, instead of on a pre-determined break pattern. Bosses explode in a beautiful shower of particles, reminiscent of the Death Star destroying Alderaan in the original Star Wars.
The audio in the game, likewise, is well done - though there's only so much you can do in the audio realm for what is, at its heart, a classic arcade "pewpewpew" shooter. Still, nothing stands out as out of place, and sometimes the greatest praise you can make for a game's sound design is that you never even noticed it, since everything just fit exactly the way you'd expect.
While I don't have much negative to say about the game, I will say that the score screens between phases on each planet serve to break up the flow of the game a bit, and I'd prefer to just keep playing than to look at a score screen, especially considering that the game state persists through the screen. Also, once you've completed all 5 planets, you'll be good enough at the game that playing Arcade mode for a high score can be a real time sink.
Neither of those negatives should deter anyone who is even remotely interested in the twin-stick shooter genre from playing this game, however. It's among the best games in what has become a very cluttered genre on these download services, and is definitely worth the time (and 10 dollars) of any gamer who likes blowing stuff up in outer space.
