Everyday Shooter

[Noyb]

So I saw Everyday Shooter, a synesthesia shmup formerly only for PSN is now on Steam. It's kinda like a guitar remix of Geometry Wars, but with a more balanced difficulty curve and more variety in both the gameplay and the music. I'm not normally a shoot-em-up fan (only shmup I ever beat was Operation Spacehog, a Gradius clone by the maker of Icy Tower. Seriously.) , but this game is damn fun so far. It's simple -- the graphics are sparse but functional, all you can do is move and fire in 8 directions -- but each level changes up the gameplay dynamics. I'll spoiler a few since discovering how they work is part of the fun.

In the first level, certain enemies act as bombs, whose explosions can be briefly sustained by shooting them. Only enemies destroyed by these Every-Extend style explosion chains drop points used to gain extra lives. My favorite level so far (only survived to level 6) is the fifth one, where the game essentially plays an RTS against you. As a kicking electric guitar alternates between two different themes, engineers build and repair turrets up top while tanks and ground troops charge in from the bottom, eventually merging as the music picks up speed.

It's got this great difficulty curve where you can go either for pure survival, or more skilled mastery of the level, with appropriate risk/reward, and you can use the points you accumulate in both the main game and single levels to buy extra lives and levels to practice independently to make the game easier. Unfortunately, there's no demo on Steam, but I'm happy with my impulse buy so far. And fair warning, I've only played it with my wired 360 gamepad so I'm not sure how well it plays with the keyboard.

[miffy495]

Very first thing I bought when I got my PS3, actually. Great little game, although it does take a bit of getting used to that your character sprite is essentially the same thing as the bonus points you pick up. Don't know how it plays on PC, but after my time with the PS3 version, I'll also chip in a recommendation here. Been playing since January and it's a great little time waster.