Super Stardust HD

"The good old days?"

This game takes me back. A nice little homage to the 80s when life was so much simpler and games were so much harder.

I tend to shy away from such manic games as this. Blasting everything in sight, constantly until the end of time. But I thought I may as well have a go considering how cheap it is. Basically you take control of a tiny ship that has to navigate around a spherical platform destroying countless asteroids and some enemy ships too. Most of the time you will be completely surrounded by floating objects just waiting to smash into you send you into a rage.

There are five planets each with five 'phases' within them. These phases don't last too long so the game as a whole is a bit on the short side, although to be fair you will be playing through this game more than once. The graphics are quite impressive, nice colours and I especially liked the way the rocks split apart. Not terribly interesting but nice all the same. The music is OK but nothing to get excited about and the sound effects are surprisingly drab.

You get three weapons to use against the onslaught, A green rock destroyer, a red gold melter and a blue ice splitter. To be honest though the green weapon is almost useless and the blue one is only of limited use.

The game certainly doesn't give you much of a helping hand, you only get two lives to start with and will see precious little bonus ones. Shields are somewhat rare and if you die, bang, it's game over. It would have been a bit fairer to send you back to the start of the phase you were on, rather than kick you right back to the start. But then again, these games were never supposed to be easy were they?

The boss battles are a little lazy too. To begin with they are fine, but later boss battles are just the earlier ones, but more of them. It's a shame they couldn't have been a little more creative and designed a couple of extra bosses.

But if you just want to have a quick blast to remind you of the 'good old days' of gaming then you can't go far wrong with this game. Good but not excellent. Call me a modernist but I feel games have moved on.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/08

Game Release: Super Stardust HD (EU, 06/29/07)