The PlayStation Network has had quite an amazing year, with spectacular titles hitting the downloadable library month after month. Sony has saved what is easily one of the best for last, however, with Q-Games' PixelJunk Shooter. The studio is no stranger to simple, unique and addictive games, and PixelJunk Shooter not only follows suit perfectly but is also the developer's best work yet.

The concept is very basic. You command a little ship that you fly through caverns, saving endangered miners scattered throughout the levels while fighting various enemies. The control scheme is the now-commonplace dual-analog stick setup -- the left stick moves your ship, while the right stick is used to aim. R1 and R2 shoot, while L1 and L2 use your grappling hook. The whole thing is 2D in setup, making the total package simple to pick up and start playing immediately.

The catch here, and the main gameplay hook that Q-Games built the experience around, is the changing environmental hazards that fill these caverns, most all of which are handled via fluid dynamics. The game starts with a mix of water and lava, both of which accurately flow and splash like you'd expect, while things like flammable gas, ice and more come into play later in the game. The great part about this is the way that all of these things interact with each other. Water will cool lava and turn it into rock that you can shoot, while the gas can explode and send a wave of fire running throughout the cave. In cold areas, the water can freeze and turn into ice, while lava can then melt it and carve a path for you to travel through. In short, it's a stellar and inventive mix of elements that work together fantastically.

This elemental catch makes up pretty much all of the puzzles that you'll encounter in PixelJunk Shooter. If there are a couple miners trapped below some lava, you may need to get a water source to the lava to turn it into rock, and then blast your way through to them. There are sections where ice blocks your path in every direction, and you need to manipulate mirrors that are reflecting lasers in order to melt the spots that you need to pass.

This whole time you're dealing with your ship's heat level. When you're near lava (and certainly when you're touched by it), your heat level rises, and if it gets too hot, you lose control of your ship and you come crashing down in a fiery wreckage. If you can happen to land in water to cool off then you'll be saved, but that's not exactly easy to pull off.

What's really cool is that you won't always need to watch out for heat affecting your ship. Without spoiling too much, I'll just say that PixelJunk Shooter mixes things up a few times throughout the experience, and what was once detrimental may begin to help you, and vice-versa.

Again, the whole setup is very simple, but figuring out how to approach a situation correctly is always interesting. If you go around shooting everything in sight, you'll inevitably take out some rocks that'll send lava (or something else equally bad) onto the miners that you need to save. It's never too difficult to figure out how to get by a section, but it's always rewarding, and that fine design touch is what makes PixelJunk Shooter shine.

While you're required to "deal" with all of the miners in a section to move on (either by saving or killing them), you'll also be on the hunt for hidden diamonds (retrievable with your grappling hook) and hidden passageways that contain more goodies, including special miners that tell the game's story (which is simple but finishes up brilliantly at the end). This collection element helps extend both your interest in exploring as well as the replayability for PixelJunk Shooter, as you'll undoubtedly want to head back to previous sections to find all of the miners and diamonds that you've missed (the interface does a nice job of telling you what you're still missing). If you ran through the game, getting to the end credits wouldn't take incredibly long, though for a downloadable title it's certainly within reason. But when you go back to collect everything, your playtime can double in total length, and it remains fun the whole time.

There are three main chapters to PixelJunk Shooter, all of which end in a big boss fight of some fashion. Each of these are designed like what you'd find in the heyday of shooters in the SNES era of gaming, with weak spots you need to find, patterns that you need to figure out and plenty of attacks to dodge. The second boss in particular is fantastic and is now one of my favorite PSN gaming moments thus far.


Like in Q-Games' past titles, you can play with two players cooperatively through the game (locally; online is only for leaderboards). The coolest part here is that if one ship overheats and begins to plummet, the other player can grapple them and keep them safe while they recharge. Other than that, it's exactly the same as the single-player game (and even uses the same save), but it's great fun to head into the caverns with a buddy and work together to save the miners.

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