PixelJunk Shooter (PC) Review

The word 'shooter' in the title is quite deceiving, because while a lot of shooting is involved, this is, for all intents and purposes, a puzzle game. The story follows a small, unfortunate band of scientists, who seem to have been trapped inside an alien planet, and can't do anything else but wait to be rescued - a deed that, luckily for them, will be done by a tiny spaceship that hides more than meets the eye under its unimpressive hood. The environment that this vessel must travel through is quite hostile, with alien creatures, proximity mines, lasers and other kinds of traps being just a small sample of what lies down there. The most common danger, though, usually comes in liquid form, like those pools of molten rock that are scattered around the place, making this rescue mission a bit complicated.

The trick here is to try and manipulate the various kinds of liquids in order to save as many scientists as possible - a concept that might sound a bit strange, although in practice it's pretty simple, especially due to the magnificent controls. PixelJunk Shooter has a twin stick set-up, with the left analogue used for movement, and the right one for aiming, plus one button for shooting, and one for a grappling hook. Everything is very responsive and feels quite natural, but, to be honest, aiming is a bit better when using a mouse instead of the gamepad.

At first the player will just have to blast away rock formations to divert streams of lava, water, steam and other substances into a different path, and the simple but at the same time fascinating physics of these elements works like a dream. Cause-and-effect is the main principle here, and it's also the most important puzzle solving-tool, because many of the problems encountered tend to have a solution that involves mixing these various substances available.

It's possible to cool lava with water, direct a torrent of hot steam into fire to create a chain-reaction explosion, melt ice with lava or create ice by throwing water on a frozen surface, and much more. An interesting innovation is that the health bar is replaced with a heat meter that goes up when approaching something hot, when shooting missiles, or when the spaceship gets hit - but, thankfully, all it takes for it to cool down is a dive in a pool of water. Things get trickier the deeper the player goes, but many new tools of the trade can be found to help things out, like items that keep the spaceship cool no matter what's near, which enable shooting lava/water, or even make it possible to swim in hot magma, which in turn makes water and ice dangerous.

This quest has 15 levels, which are evenly divided in three differently themed episodes. Each level in these episodes is made out of a couple of small areas, and the concept is pretty simple: save or kill all scientists and the door to the next area opens up. The level design is very good, with a learning curve that is as smooth as a baby's… as a desert dune, with each stage being just a few steps harder than the previous one, and with a nice boss encounter at the end of each episode. The problem? PixelJunk Shooter is very easy and very, very short.

The various puzzles faced never reach the expected level of challenge, making everything feel more like a somewhat tricky stroll, rather than a tough mission. Furthermore, each mission can take from five to eight minutes, which translates to, approximately, two hours of fun, but not exactly challenging, and somewhat repetitive gameplay. There is also a co-op mode, which is great (although it doesn't keep separate scores), and it's possible to try the various stages again for a better time/score, but in the end, this is nothing more than a short and sweet - but mainly short - pastime.