Shooter is a great game, but there's some small things keeping it from being a classic. *Spoiler Warning*
Here's a short list of the things that need addressing:
1) The game is wayyy too short. There are 15 levels (3 stages, 5 levels per stage) and it took me about 4-5 hours to finish the entire game. Of course you can go back and rescue all of your fellow miners, play the game in co-op, or find all of the hidden gems to rank up in the leader boards, but I wish this game had either 5 to 15 more levels OR something else to keep me playing. I'm still playing some PJ Monsters, for $10 I have played it way more than most of my $60 games which is what I was hoping for with Shooter. Perhaps that is unfair but this game will make you feel wanting more once it ends abruptly.
2) There is no online co-op or versus multiplayer. Although there is offline co-op I feel the lack of online co-op is unacceptable. Of course we don't have this for other PJ games BUT if the PJ Monsters PSP game can have online co-op I'm 100% sure its capable on the PS3. This one feature alone would have made the game much more worthy of it's $10 price tag. As for a versus mode, can you imagine how cool it would be to go at each other with lava shooting cannons?!
3) Simple Boss Fights. There are only three boss fights and for the most part they are very simple. As long as you are patient and can recognize patterns you should be able to beat the bosses within your first couple tries. For a next generation title that has some awesome things going for it I felt as though the boss fights were disappointingly generic. I mean the way you beat them is like what we would see on a PS1 or something. Shoot here, then once you hit that part enough the boss moves and exposes something else to shoot. They should have let us use lava, water, gas, or that mysterious black substance to take down these guys. Make us use our brains some PLEASE! These boss fights should be the exclamation point for each stage but instead they are the least impressive part of each stage imo.
4) The story is also a bit weak and doesn't act like it wants us to take it seriously. I mean basically it is this "planet friendly theme" where this mining corporation is "destroying this planet" for resources so all this crazy stuff happens. I mean Gee I haven't heard of that before *cough aliens, dead space, avatar, list goes on cough*. Plus they make it sound like getting resources from the planet is some evil action so obviously there is a subtle political tone that may make some people roll their eyes in dismay.
5) The game also doesn't end. After the credits are done rolling it says "to be continued...". This makes me happy because I want more of the game but if they plan on charging another $10 for 15 more levels I don't think I could handle it. It just makes the game as a whole feel a bit rushed and to me it feels like my $10 bought just a fraction of a game, whereas the other PJ games, although some are severly flawed (PJ racers is the most frustrating game on Earth), do feel more like complete packages.
To sum things up, this game isn't really that bad for $10. I mean that's like the price of a movie ticket or a fancy lunch. You'll easily get a good 4-5 hours out of it the first time through, and many more if you play through it with a friend or want to do some leader board competing. Unfortunately though the gameplay is so much fun I think PJ had a real opportunity to release a game that would have easily made it the best thing on the PSN but instead it comes up short in too many areas to make it better than PJ Monsters, Super Stardust HD, or Fat Princess.