[PS3] Pixel Junk Shooter

If you have a PS3 and don't have Pixel Junk Shooter, you should get it. It has to be one of the best PSN games, and now it has a sequel.

The premise is that you're a rescue ship sent to save all the mine workers on a planet. Standing in your way are various monsters you may choose to destroy, as well as various obstacles. Most of the solutions are pseudo-physics based: douse magma in water to create stone, which you can then destroy with missiles, for example. You have to rescue or fail to prevent the death all the survivors to advance from one "scene" to the next, with five killed meaning a game over. You can die and restart a scene unlimited times, but the number of killed survivors remains; you can get "1ups" to decrease the count by collecting the remains of killed monsters. At the end of each episode (an episode is made of 6 individual and selectable encounters, which are made up of about 5 linear scenes completed back to back to clear the encounter), there is a boss fight, most of which involve some degree of puzzle solving. The episode 5 boss fight reminded me of the arcade game Raiden, requiring me to dodge massive numbers of bullets.

Everyone that I've introduced to the game has enjoied it, so you probably will too. There is a playable demo available on PSN.