Review: PixelJunk Shooter 2

I was a huge fan of the first PixelJunk Shooter. When a sequel was announced, my excitement level grew. Dylan Cuthbert and team and Q-Games have a great track record of providing very solid gameplay experiences. Being the first true sequel in the PixelJunk series, Shooter 2 builds upon the original with new fluid dynamic gameplay elements, new ship upgrades and a fun multiplayer component to give you more dual stick shooter fun. The difficulty has been cranked to eleven, so even though the game has a wonderful design, it may cause you to break a controller.

PixelJunk Shooter 2 starts the moment the first game ends, with your ship being swallowed by a monster alien creature. The first of three worlds in the game has you going through the belly of the beast with new stomach bile fluid types that stick to your ship and eat away damage until you drop into the water to wash it off. The other two levels have similarly well done new fluid types with lava, ice and metallic elements, as well as a great use of light and dark, but I’ll let you discover those and how they interact on your own. That fluid interaction and some new ship upgrades such as a chomping attachment to eat through bone are used extensively for puzzle solving in each the five stages per level in a way that will certainly make you appreciate the varied level design. However, that appreciation will somewhat go out the window when you die repeatedly from the highly punishing enemies in the game. Homing missiles, instant kill fluids and all kinds of nastiness will come at you at every turn. I rage-quit the game at least five times — something I rarely do. PixelJunk games have never been easy, but the difficulty level in Shooter 2 is so high, it will easily put off a decent portion of its potential audience.

The added multiplayer is a nice touch and really extends the gameplay experience in PixelJunk Shooter 2. The matches are one-on-one comprised of two rounds — one on offense followed by one on defense. The object is to save more survivors than your opponent and return them to your base area. The caveat is that while on defense, you cannot see your opponent unless they’re in your field of vision, making the experience even more interesting. You can steal survivors back from your opponent while on defense if that’s your play style, which sometimes infuriates your opponent. By playing and winning, you earn Q Points that can be used for various ship upgrades from missiles to shields to special attacks that reverse the directions of your opponent’s movement. New players that get matched against long time experts may get slaughtered quickly as you don’t have many ship upgrades and don’t know the exact layout of the maps, but even when you’re losing, it’s a pretty damn fun experience. Matches are quick, lasting anywhere from two to five minutes, so you can run through quite a few matches in a typical gameplay session. You’ll be able to level your ship up quickly so that you aren’t at a disadvantage for long.

The new varied level design is great and, as expected, the visuals and sound are top notch. I very much enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of PixelJunk Shooter 2 and have a feeling I’ll be firing that up regularly to keep upgrading my ship. If it wasn’t for the absurdly cheap, punishing difficulty level, I would have given the game 5 stars. Since I almost broke a controller and had to walk away a few times during the Adventure Mode, I had to dock it a star. I would definitely suggest playing the original game if you haven’t before picking this one up, but for those of you who love PixelJunk Shooter as much as I do, give this sequel a go.