Brutal Gamer

Riff: Everyday Shooter (PSP) Review

By Zeth - February 4, 2009 - 16:47 UTC

Everyday Shooter is an album of games exploring the expressive power of abstract shooters. Dissolute sounds of destruction are replaced with guitar riffs harmonizing over an all-guitar soundtrack, while modulating shapes celebrate the flowing beauty of geometry. ” That’s how Jonathan Mak describes his product. pretentious bollocks huh? One to many half-caff grande Mocha-Chino’s? Well kinda but also, not far from the truth of this PSP incarnation of the huge PS3 PSN hit.

So lets cut to it here, there is no real story to talk of so lets forget that. infect this is not exactly a game; but is. Making any sense yet? No? Good We’re not talking Linger in Shadows here before you click on Stumble. Everyday Shooter is, at heart, a dual stick shooter (or in this case 1 stick and 4 face buttons!). Think of it as the love child of Rez and Geometry Wars (with possible Lumines sneaking a quickie when nobody was looking!). The “game” consists of 8 separate levels, or album tracks as the creator would like you to think of them. Each “track” consisting of a unique guitar based backing track and enemies. Each “track” operates differently to the last one and it takes new strategies and skills to survive each. And that’s the things with EDS, you don’t progress through the game. You just exist in the game space as it transitions between album tracks. You could, in theory just dodge like hell and never shoot a single thing – you would probably die, but you could.

Graphically the game looks fantastic. I don’t mean that in a Crysis or MGS 4 way but in a visually pleasing way. In the same way Geometry Wars does, EDS uses pulsating backgrounds and tons of vector and particle effects to make hugely frenetic scenes. A still shot does nothing for these types of game, you really need to see the game moving to appreciate what makes the visuals so appealing. surprisingly the action transferred well to the smaller PSP screen and runs at a fair speed no matter how much is thrown around the screen. Some of the text around the object can be a strain to see when the action heats up, but otherwise all is great on the graphics front.

So, as touched on before, you really survive the track, more than beat the level. Each level lasts the length of the backing track. Once the track closes out you start the next album track (aka level) and start the process again. The thing that stops this getting real old is the fact that each level plays differently. You are a small white dot trying to survive to the end of the album. Simple yeah No, anyone who has played Geometry Wars knows how damn addictive these games are. You destroy the small shapes hurtling around the screen using shots from your small dot. All the enemies take varying amounts of damage to clear and can be chained in to a large scoring cacophony. The kicker is that each level requires you to work out how to activate the multipliers. in the first level you shoot the small spiky craft, it then erupts into a depleting wave that destroys all enemies that come in to contact with it. Destroying these reveal small white dots to be collected. Each dot is banked and totalled after each game. These can then be used at the main menu to buy extra lives etc to help you through the main game.

Sound design in this game is top-notch. Each shot you unleash, courtesy of the face button on the right, when it impacts it triggers a certain guitar riff, these riffs are overlaid on the backing track to make a melodic mish-mash of guitar riffs. The resulting effect is truly wonderful adding a huge element to the game. The sounds are clear and sampled at a high rate. Due to the chaotic way the arrangement is made each time you play a unique soundtrack is produced to accompany your experience. The guitar backing tracks are more my thing than the thumbing base lines of Geometry Wars and are sublime.

Replay value is, like a lot of shooters — depends  on your dedication to this sort of game type. The beauty and the curse of these games is that they are so addictive that once you start you play the nuts off of them. You then move on and possible never go back. You may though be one of those people that just love to go back for a quick blast every now and then. To be honest the game is like £5 so you really can’t grumble too much on the longevity stakes

I was sceptical of the game on PS3 and never took the plunge. I am glad I finally did and the game is a great portable time waster. It is relatively unchanged from the PS3 version but I think that is a great thing. The whole experience comes together and the parts greatly out perform to make the whole one fantastically homogonous experience. I can’t get enough of the unique riffs and frenetic action. As a toss up between this and Geometry Wars I would be hard pressed to choose. The fact that this version is portable would probably win out in the end. There is such a pure vein of addictive “gaming” fun running through this title that you can’t help but enjoy it. Sure you get less precision with the 4 digital buttons than you would with an analogue stick but it still works well enough. The game is even more impressive when you consider that Jonathan Mak wrote it, did the graphics and music all on his own – truly awesome!

Final thought: Get it! It’s cheap, it’s fun and it’s not like anything else you have played.

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