SUPER STARDUST HD

By Housemarque Sony Playstation 3 2007

Reviewed by Mike B

Housemarque return with a PS3-exclusive update of the Amiga's fondly remembered 'Asteroids' homages: Stardust and Super Stardust. Is it a Geometry Wars beater?

I'll get a couple of things out of the way before we start this review proper. I don't like the design of the your ship. Writing this I have a mental image of a rather nondescript brown blob and I couldn't really tell you much else about it, even after a few hours play. Nothing like the quite memorable and sleek looking beast from the Amiga 1200's Super Stardust which I could quite happily render a fairly decent likeness of from memory despite not having played the game in about 5 years. Nor has it the charm of the original craft in the first Amiga Stardust game. As we'll hear later though you're not actually going to be looking at it as much as practically anything else on your screen, or at least you'll not be sat casually admiring the paintwork. Secondly I do miss the original rotate-y 'Asteroids'-style controls with their more realistic physics, which Super Stardust HD eschews in favour of a much more straightforward Geometry Wars/Robotron-style control system, but I expect this has something to do with the desired pacing of the game. Which, on later levels, makes the original two games' already fairly manic intensity look positively somnambulistic.It's insane, I tell you, totally insane. But I love it.

Finnish developer Housemarque's Super Stardust HD, as several other reviews have pointed out already, is probably the most notable source of unadulterated old-fashioned damn good fun on the PS3 to date. That it's arguably far more entertaining and certainly far better value for money than any of the current batch of high-street shelf releases is something I'll leave Sony's in-house development, marketing and localization teams to work out amongst themselves. While SSHD's core gameplay concept is decidedly old-school the revolutionary way in which it is executed is so brilliantly done I'm amazed no one's ever thought of implementing something like this before. Imagine taking the original 'Asteroids' game and then zooming it out to an epic planet-wide scale and you'll get the basic idea. Super Stardust HD is a 2D-shoot-em-up on a three-dimensional grid-like spherical playfield, representing the outer atmosphere of the hulking great planet below you. As you manoeuvre your craft blasting hostile (can asteroids be hostile?) great orbiting nuggets of silicon to their component atoms (via smaller but hopefully less dangerous nuggets of silicon) the whole playfield and its enclosed planet, along with every single asteroid, enemy craft, piece of shrapnel, explosion or particle effect is beautifully rotated in three dimensions around (or in the case of the planet below) your ship which, in a manner similar to Konami's classic Time Pilot, stays fairly central on your screen. And it looks absolutely stunning.

Anyone who has played and enjoyed the original Amiga games might be wondering how SSHD compares play-wise. In many ways there are similarities but there are also many notable changes here from the originals. As mentioned before the game isn't really 'classic' Asteroids anymore, it's got the same tried-and-trusted control system as Geometry Wars, with one of the dual-analogue sticks being used for moving your craft and the other for aiming your firepower multi-directionally. I have to wonder if this change was in any way influenced by Sony after Geometry Wars' massive commercial success on XBox 360 Live, but it suits the more intense Robotron-like pace of the game and probably makes it a lot more accessible to the PS3 demographic so I can understand the reason for this modification. Like previous Stardusts the flow of the game is divided into stages, with five 'planets' subdivided into five levels each, 25 in total. Your task is simple enough, blast everything around you into tiny pieces, from enormous mountain-like mega-planetoids to the tiniest fragment of space rubble, along with any pesky interfering space aliens that should materialise and take pot-shots at you. As each level progresses asteroids (along with other enemies) will come flying Armageddon-like into your planet's outer atmosphere, the imminence of which is signified by handy coloured 'impact boxes' to warn you to move your ship. Stay alive long enough and your score-multiplier will increase exponentially, putting high-score chasers in Nirvana. Blow enough stuff up, while enjoying the ridiculously pretty on-screen fireworks and jaw-dropping particle effects, and it will soon be time to continue your reign of apocalyptic destruction on the subsequent level, culminating with a big boss-showdown at the end of each planet sub-stage.

Every now and then you'll be presented with pick-up items amidst the chaos, which will either provide weapon upgrades, extra smart bombs or points bonuses.Your craft is equipped with three different specialized weapons which can all be upgraded in this manner, and can be switched between in-game to deal with any particular hazard in your path. The three weapons are the 'Rock Crusher' spread laser, the 'Ice Splitter' gun and my personal favourite the 'Gold Melter' flame-burner, which is enormous fun when you power it up and swirl it through 360 degrees across the screen frazzling anything in its path. Each weapon is particularly effective against one of the three different asteroid types populating the game, so selecting the right weapon type is obviously an important consideration (very similar to previous Stardusts this), especially later in the game when you'll come up against a large percentage of tough-to-crack Ice and Gold asteroidal behemoths. Screen-clearing smart-bombs become an invaluable tool as the game ratchets up in intensity, as does an 'escape boost' feature which is dead handy for hot-tailing it out of trouble, and which, later on you'll be using a lot. Like the original Asteroids' 'hyperspace' though it can sometimes get you into trouble as well so you might not want to overdo it..

Super Stardust HD gets extremely chaotic rather quickly (curses on you Housemarque programmers for those un-faltering homing wormie-things!) and it's probably safe to say that even seasoned Geometry Wars veterans won't be sampling its final stages any time soon. But it's such undeniably great fun to play, if only to try and rack up a remotely respectable score, that you're certainly not going to mind the challenge of getting there. High-scoring achievers can take advantage of the online leaderboard to display their handiwork ( just don't ask where I am on it though - its got four digits). There's also a two-player co-operative mode which I've yet to experience because my PS3-owning pal refuses to shell out the necessary 30 quid for a second controller, though I'm unsure how restrictive this might be given the game's free-roaming play-field system. In all I'd have to say this was a Geometry Wars-beater due to its beautifully implemented play-field dynamics, greater depth, increased variety and phenomenally spectacular 1080p visuals. For these reasons, combined with the ludicrous low price tag (about a fiver in the UK) as a PS3 network download it most certainly deserves the multiple accolades so far bestowed in its general direction, and if you own a PS3 it would be criminal to ignore it. Unfortunately I'll have to make do with Geometry Wars myself just for now..

Score out of Five:

1/2

Mike B

The 'tunnel' sections (bottom centre) in Super Stardust
were fantastic as I recall..