Super Stardust Portable

Super Stardust Portable

Since its release nearly two years ago Super Stardust HD has established itself as one of the PlayStation 3’s strongest downloadable games. A twitch shoot ‘em up in which you control a tiny spaceship circling around a planet, blowing up asteroids and taking down alien ships before they shoot you, it's the nearest thing that Sony’s console has to a Geometry Wars.

With bold, brash visuals, intense, action packaged gameplay and a seasoning of the magical ‘just-one-more-go’ powder, it’s a game that’s gained a strong and dedicated following. So for both fans of the original and those handheld owners who don’t own a PlayStation 3, this PSP update is an exciting proposition.

And, for the most part, the game delivers on that promise. There have been some concessions, but these have almost all been brought about by the move to new hardware, rather than through game design. While. In the PS3 game you control the ship and fire its guns using two analogue sticks, here you use the face buttons to direct your stream of fire.

Each face button, pressed on its own, directs your stream of fire toward that side of a compass and, when used in conjunction with another button you can fire across the diagonals. Double tapping on a button causes it to spread out slightly, a neat idea that helps recreate some of the wobbly feel of analogue shooting design. You also have access to a limited number of screen-clearing smart bombs and a dash move that renders your ship temporarily invulnerable, allowing you to smash through any rocks or aliens nearby.

The game presents five different levels, represented by planets, and each one is broken into five distinct stages. To begin with, only the first planet is open for play: you must clear all of its challenges before the next one in sequence unlocks and the challenge at the standard difficulty is high. There’s a ‘casual’ mode on offer if you’re finding progress too difficult, but the game is designed to make you practice to make perfect, and progress deeper into the game, when it comes, is all the sweeter for that challenge.

It's possible to upload your scores to a global leaderboard across the Internet and this aspect to the game provides an additional layer of challenge to trying to beat your own high scores. The result is a tight, impressive handheld shoot ‘em up, emerging as one of the strongest games for the handheld, just as its cousin is one of the strongest shoot ‘em ups on PlayStation 3.

4 out of 5