this is quite the week! for $9.99 a piece you can pick up Super Stardust Portable and Everyday Shooter. This may be old hat to some of you folks with your big bad bluray boxes, but i ain't got one yet, and this was my first chance to get my grubby paws on these critically acclaimed titles. I've yet to pick up Everyday Shooter (i've seen it played, and it intrigues me, but i figure i'll space them out a bit, so i can actually get use out of my psp for more than a week or so).

Super Stardust portable makes me very happy. which is odd. considering the original required the use of 2 analogue sticks, and here i am playing it with a nub and some face buttons. which says tons about the developers who worked on this title. they nailed the controls. basically, you move the ship with the nub, and fire with the face buttons. holding a face button will fire a steady stream in that direction (holding 2 will fire horizontally), while quickly tapping the face button will produce the spread goodness you usually get from a little right stick waggle. sounds a little confusing. took a round or two to get used to, but it works and works well. another change from the ps3 version is that instead of flying around spherical planets (sweet!) your play field is your typical square, but the ends wrap, so if you fly as far up as you can, you come back through the bottom, but this is all seamless, so it kinda feels like flying around planets, i guess. either way, the game looks good, at times the tiny screen makes it hard to tell power-ups from other enemies, and enemy fire (there's a lot going on meng!) but its far from unplayable. there are 3 modes to choose from, arcade (fight through all the planets til ya die), planet something (try to get your high score on one planet), and then ummm.. impact mode, in which you cannot fire, and instead use your boost to attack enemies. simple gimmick, but lots of fun, as colliding with enemies prolongs your boost. when your done boosting, you have to avoid enemies for about 15 seconds (think pacifism in geo wars) until your boost is refilled, then the chaos picks back up. oh yeah, the planets are broken up into 4 waves, complete with boss battles. they're not too varried (i.e. boss one reappears as boss 3 only your fighting 2 of them, same for bosses 2 and 4), but they provide a good challenge.

for $10, do it. you won't regret it. i think there's global leaderboards as well. anyways, i'm happily impressed and surprised.