Blast Factor Hands-On

At this point, it might be considered a game-industry faux pas not to offer a downloadable, visually impressive shooter with omnidirectional controls on your console on the day of launch. Thankfully, Sony already has that base covered with Blast Factor, its own PlayStation 3-based stab at this suddenly popular-again genre. The game has a story, believe it or not: You're a heroic nanomachine fighting against all manner of nasty viruses through a procession of "specimens," which are essentially levels, and of which there are eight total in the game. Each specimen is broken up into seven cells, or sublevels, which generally last about 30 seconds. There are actually more than seven cells per specimen, all containing different enemies and enemy patterns, but your performance and difficulty level will determine which specific path you take through each area.

The controls are self-explanatory: move with the left analog stick, shoot in any direction with the right. But you'll have a couple of less-obvious abilities at your disposal, too, such as the "repeller," which zooms in the camera, slows down time, and sends a small shockwave outward to vanquish nearby enemies. This weapon takes a few seconds to recharge, but it can be a lifesaver when you're getting swarmed by the nasties that populate each cell. You can also use the Sixaxis' tilt function to save your butt on occasion. By flicking the controller left or right, you can cause a corresponding ripple in the cell's internal liquid, which won't kill enemies but will sweep them entirely to one side so you can deal with them a little more easily.

Speaking of enemies, there were a bunch of different types in the demo we played. We were assaulted by hordes of what looked like blood cells, which would cause a little splash damage and kill other nearby enemies when we shot them. Another kind of armored enemy had to be flipped over with the ripple effect to expose its soft underbelly and make it vulnerable to damage. Yet another crustacean-like enemy had a hard shell on its front, and the only way to spin it around so we could kill it from behind was with a properly timed repeller burst. Luckily, you'll occasionally pick up some power-ups, like a three-way spread shot or a homing shot, which will make your life a little easier. Currently, these power-ups only last a few seconds, which was a little too short for our taste, but the team is still tweaking and balancing such aspects of the game.

You'd expect such a simplistic, downloadable shooter to have a worldwide leaderboard, and indeed Blast Factor will let you rank yourself against the best. The game breaks down your score quite extensively within a level, giving you point multipliers based on your number of shots fired, number of enemies hit, biggest chain reaction, and so forth. And if you get bored of simply vying for the high score, the developer plans to release a patch for the game shortly after release that will add two-player support.

Sony Santa Monica's director of production, John Hight, told us that one of the pleasures of working on a downloadable game is the short period between a game's completion and its release. To wit, the PS3 ships in just under a month now, yet Blast Factor has just hit the alpha stage and won't even enter the nearly complete beta phase until the end of October. It's already playing solidly and looking lovely, with wild lighting and particle effects at 1080p resolution, so we expect this to be one of the premiere titles on Sony's "e-distribution" service when the PS3 ships next month.