Gameover: Space Is At A Premium
My friends and family know I’m nuts about space. I read online news about rocket and shuttle launches, I grit my teeth whenever some nutty bureaucrat or politician questions the rate of return and advances based on space research spending (hint: it’s often as high as 10-to-1). It’s also one of those things I’ll talk passionately about to just about anyone about even if they’re just trying to be polite and make conversation, much to their horror. Over the last week I had my chance to get my hands on a couple of space-themed titles and I loved one and appreciated the other.
Super Stardust HD on the PlayStation Network has jacked into my action-game brain and my space brain not just with the fast, attractive, asteroids-like gameplay but with the sci-fi, synthesized, old-mod-scene soundtrack and sound effects. It’s a very exciting game and I’ve already lost a bunch of hours to it. This also ensures that at least James will lose hours to it as well — there isn’t a game with an online leaderboard that he won’t strive and succeed to outscore me at. If you liked Blast Factor at all, this game blows the cell walls off of it and has several game modes to play with, along with already-integrated offline co-op (Blast Factor needed a patch).
I also had the chance to spend a few hours with Bounty Hounds on the PSP, another space-themed game. I didn’t expect its graphics and style to be as great as they are, and while the world is shown in 3D, your 3rd person action gameplay only really occurs on two dimensions. It does get repetitive, and the load times are a little too long to make the required trip back to the starship to identify and equip any items you pick up easy to forgive. Overall I agree with Gamespot’s assessment of 6.9 for the game — it has some nice ideas, but the camera, load times, and to a lesser extent repetitiveness drag it down somewhat. It was still fun to shoot, slash, or bring a big hammer down on robotic bad guys and then level up my character with lots of distinctive-looking, slotted weaponry and armor types, but it could have been better. I might pick it up if I see it fall into impulse-buy pricing territory.
What did you play this weekend?
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