While the game doesn’t break any barriers for new game types, Everyday Shooter puts a nice spin on the top-down 360 degree shooter. A vibrant color scheme and on-screen text hints and indicators coupled with cool guitar music and sound effects put a nice spin on the genre. While I love the game on the PS3, I can’t say the same for the PSP version.
Everyday Shooter was created by Jonathan Mak initially as a homebrew title written in C++. Sony’s Santa Monica Studio picked up the game and brought it to the PS3 where it received both critical and commercial success. Jonathan describes it best: “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.”
Like the similar PSP title Super Stardust Portable, I was pleasantly surprised at the high quality of the graphics, framerate, and sound in Everyday Shooter on the PSP. The color palette is vibrant and extremely appealing and the guitar tracks and sound effects will make you want to shoot more shapes and objects just to hear what happens and see the colorful explosions.
There are only two main modes of play in Everyday Shooter: Normal Play and Single Play. Normal Play is where you’ll go through from the beginning of the game and unlock the game’s eight levels to see how far you can get. Once you unlock these levels, you can play in Single Play to try to rack up the highest score on each level. A nice feature of the game is the unlockables you can obtain by picking up points during play. You can use these points to purchase more starting lives, change the colors and visual elements of the game, or reordering the levels for playing. I’m personally a big fan of the visual style unlocks, so there’s reason to want to come back.
Controls are similar to Super Stardust Portable, with the left analog stick used for movement and the face buttons used for shooting. However, you cannot customize the control scheme here. Like I said before, precise shooting can’t be done in all directions with the PSP’s face buttons. Like similar games, my right hand cramped up a good deal even after a short period of gameplay trying to shoot in multiple directions. I love the game, but the controls on the PSP aren’t suited for this style of play.
It really pains me when terrific console games get ported to handheld systems and the control schemes just don’t work. This genre is a perfect example. If the PSP had a second analog stick, I would play Everyday Shooter on the PSP over and over. But using the four face buttons to shoot ruins the experience. Stick with the PS3 version (which you should go buy right away if you don’t already own it).
Overall: 6 out of 10
you’re aware that the game plays identically on PS3, right? like, even if you use the right stick to shoot you can still only fire in 8 directions. the creator even states in the notes that using the face buttons is the best way to play the game.