Everyday Shooter is the PS3’s answer to Geometry Wars, created by Jonathan Mak and Queasy Games. The game plays just like Geometry Wars, for the little amount of time that I’ve played it, and focuses on musical rhythms. As Jonathan himself put it on the game’s website:
Everyday Shooter is an album of games exploring the expressive power of abstract shooters. Dissolute sounds of destruction are replaced with guitar riffs harmonizing over an all-guitar soundtrack, while modulating shapes celebrate the flowing beauty of geometry.
That’s a lot more eloquently than I could put it, but that’s the general jist of the game. The game features eight levels through which to romp through. How does this stack up against Geometry Wars, and against everything else in the PSN?
Everyday Shooter (PS3)
Developed by Queasy Games
Released on October 11th, 2007
Everyday Shooter plays out like a dream. The game’s focus is the soundtrack, and as you kill each enemy, they make their own sound effect. The whole gameplay experience becomes hypnotic as enemies explode, and the music swells to a crecendo, all while you’re trying to dodge swarms of enemies in a bullet hell type of experience. The game plays like Asteroids and Geometry Wars, where you are but a tiny ship in a sea of enemies. Of course, the game plays like a bullet hell shoot-em-up, where you are deftly dodging the enemies and bullets, which can take up some 80% of the screen at most any time.
Each of the eight levels in the game provides quite an experience. The stages act relatively independent of each other, with different methods needed to create massive combos in the game, and save yourself from utter oblivion. The essence of the game is to survive the time limit, and collect as many glowing dots as you can to earn extra lives. You move about with the left stick, and fire with the right. The game doesn’t use the SIXAXIS controls in any way, though.
The game’s art style is beautiful. Unlike Geometry Wars‘ bright colors and somewhat translucent feel, Everyday Shooter operates in a more vectored environment. It’s really depends on which style you prefer, between Everyday Shooter and Geometry Wars, but either way, the art is simply beautiful. Within the art style lies some of the challenge. The background operates like a vizualizer for Windows Media Player, sometimes making it wholly impossible to see where the hell you are and hope to God that you’re able to make it out of there alive. It’s a little unfair, but at least later on you’ll be able to deal with it better.
As you progress through the game (and proceed to die), the points you earn can be spent on various upgrades, including extra lives and the ability to adjust the contrast. The game also has a single play mode, where you can just play through a single stage, earning yourself some more points to use for unlocking things. As you unlock more and more things, the game gains more replay value, trying out each of the new things that you’ve unlocked.
The true beauty of the game lies within the blend of the vector graphics and the hypnotic music. The game’s soundtrack goes between intense crescendos of music, seemingly representative of the sheer insanity that’s happening on the screen, to lulls, where apart from a simple and sparse rhythm, the sounds made from destroying enemies is the true music. After a while, I’ll space out when playing Geometry Wars, entering a trance where things just seem to go right. With Everyday Shooter, that happens almost immediately.
The game has a few faults. First off is the high price point of $10. The game certainly is a must-buy for anyone owning a PS3, but it should probably be down around the price point for Loco Roco Cocoreccho and flOw, at around $7. The gameplay segments itself from song to song, so there’s a clear parting between each level — the game doesn’t just keep going in a smooth fashion. Finally, there’s the occassional point in time when the background overwhelms what’s going on with the enemies, causing almost certain death.
Nonetheless, this is something that’s going to be on every PS3 — it’s one of the must-own titles available on the PSN. Everyday Shooter is going to prove itself to be a good sinkhole of time for bored PS3 owners. It makes for a nice alternative to Geometry Wars, so buying Everyday Shooter isn’t going to be buying the same damn thing over again for those with both a PS3 and a 360.
Rating: 8.0
Verdict: Buy it!
