SSHD is an arcade style game. You can play it at certain difficulties gaining higher scores with the more enemies you kill, the longer you stay alive and what not. My top score which is ~72,000,000 lies about 87XX in the world rankings. At my last check the highest score is 228 million! Little was I to know when I first downloaded it that I would playing possibly the most addicting game I’ve played since Pokemon.
The game’s premise is very simple – you control a spaceship which flies above planets clearing them of asteroids and enemies to save the planet below. Your ship has 3 weapons; a green rock crusher, a red gold melter and a blue ice breaker. As you can imagine those descriptions tell you what each weapon is best suited at. Enemies will somewhere on them have a colour, indicating the best suited weapon for them. By blowing up asteroids and enemies you gain points. You steer your ship with the left analogue stick and fire your weapon with the right. L1 and R1 change between weapons. The more things you obliterate without dying the higher your multiplier goes (a 10X multiplier actually unlocks a Gold Trophy), thus creating an intrinsic challenge of obtaining a higher multiplier aswell as a higher score. When you blow up larger asteroids, they may contain glowing green rocks, which when destroyed release white point tokens or colour coded tokens for each of your weapons. The more of these you collect the more effective your weapons become. Picking up an upgrade after reaching 100% with any weapon sends it into “overdrive” firing faster and dishing out more damage for a fixed period of time.
Along with your three weapons you have bombs triggered by R2. These can be picked up by destroying special carrier crafts which are found on certain levels. When fired a bomb will destroy all targets in a certain area or at the very least weaken larger ones. You also have a boost activated by pressing L2 which thrusts you in a direction determined by the left stick destroying anything in your path. Unlike the bombs which you need to collect, the boost regenerates over time, so using it appropriately is an acquired skill (a silver trophy is unlocked for not using a boost during a single planet). The other two power-ups available are a shield (purple) and an extra ship (or life) which is yellow. Picking up subsequent “shields” whilst already equipped with a shield has the same effect as firing a bomb, only your total number of bombs is not depleted.
The game’s basic mode is arcade, which sees you blasting away over 5 different planets. Each planet consists of 5 phases, with increasing difficulties and the 5th and final phase consists of a boss battle. Alternatively you can play all these missions co-operatively with a friend.
Released after the main game was the Solo-add on, which I have only recently downloaded. This mode offers new gameplay in the form of “Endless”, “Survivor” and “Bomber”. Endless sees you fighting hoards of enemies, Survivor leaves you with one life and bomber disables everything except bombs. I can’t comment any further on these as I really haven’t played them enough. The most recent add-on was the Team Add on which I believe allows for split screen co-op.
In conclusion, SSHD is a highly addictive experience, with impressive colourful visuals, a rockin’ soundtrack, and the addition of Trophies makes it a must own for any PS3 owner.
Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 9
Sound: 9
Longevity: 10
Presentation: 8
Overall: 8.8
~The Damo
