Super Stardust HD

by Drew James - 2008/01/31 5:52am

Back in the golden arcade days kids, teenagers,and gamers of all ages would blow 5-10 dollars a weekend on quater arcade games. With next generation hardware and services that allow you to save games on your hard drive. Sony brings part of the arcade to you. Super Stardust HD.

We've done it before. the classic dual analog control scheme. Left stick to move, right stick to fire and steer. But to what limits have we been using them? In the typical scenario you shoot the object and thats it, in Stardust, you're object (craters) multiply and have to be broken down and destroyed multiple fragments at a time. But you aren't doing it with one boring laser. You choose from: Gold melter, Ice splitter, and rock crusher. Each are meant to be used with different objects. And sure you could just use one and attempt to blow through the whole game with it, but you'll find the experience more painful than pleasant. After a few minutes into any stage, you'll find yourself contantly weeving between objects while trying to shoot down enemies and other flying debri.Throughout each level you're give power ups that will disentegrate large rocks faster zap the smaller ones instantely. Five worlds to orbit with five stages filled with waves of enemies within each. For those unfamiliar with these old school type space shooters, you'll die more frequently than you want to. Once you get the hang of it though, you'll find that the only reason you died is because your thumb slipped.

Even though the levels are played in outer space, revolving around each planet's orbit, the game looks great. exploding rocks look as good as they do in movies, lasers look as high tech as the mind can imagine and when ships explode they back the meaning of "HD" thrown on the end of the title.

Everything sounds fluid. Rock crusher and Ice breaker deliver the classic "Pew" sound you'd expect from any kind of laser. And the good melter gives the sound of something being welded together or tampered with by fire. Rocks break apart and give a deep crackle when they do. You can hear everything in this game. From the sound of your ship exploding upon collision with a rock, to the sound of your ship being morphed back to life as you drop back down to finish the stage. There's only one background music track which is an uptune track which you'd instantly pair with some sort of old arcade game if you happened to hear it in a store. But if spaced out music isn't your thing, you don't have to listen to it. Stardust is the first game on the PS3 that offers custom soundtrack. Listen to rock, rap, jazz, pop, dogs barking in melody, whatever it is you want, while you enjoy one of the best Playstation network games to date.

Super Stardust HD: 9.0
Replay Value: 7

Instead of playing through the same level the same way you did the first time. Stardust developers decided to add a system that increases the difficulty the second time around. So you want be shooting the same enemies, you'll be shooting different ones mixed in with other ogjects and enemies. So the second time around, level one may feel like level 3 etc.