With impressive visuals and addiciting gameplay, Super Stardust HD is a great comeback to an old series.
Your spacecraft is armed with 3 weapons, all with unlimited ammo, which is necessary as levels will become bombarded with various objects, and without unlimited ammo would become impossible to complete. Certain weapons will be more effective on specific planets and objects; this is indicated by a percentage that pops up besides your ship when you switch weapons.
With every phase comes an increase in enemies and difficulty. When you reach the climax of a phase, you are given multiple, fairly strong enemies to destroy, a bar in the lower center region of the screen will updated you on how many enemies you have left to destroy before that phase is complete. Once you have wiped out every enemy within a phase and completed it, you will be given a score on how well you did. This score will continue through each level & phase and is calculated by the time it took to complete that phase, and is then times by the current "multiplier level" you were on when you completed that phase. If you exceed the recommended time to finished a phase, then your multiplier level wont count towards your score.
Your multiplier level is a level given to you throughout the game and starts from 1 and works its way up when you accumulate points from destroying all kinds of objects. When you die your multiplier level will reset back to 1.
Upon completing all 4 phases, you will be given a boss to battle for the 5th phase. A timer counting down from 10 seconds is shown at the beginning of the 5th phase, once the timer is up, a batch of asteroids will fly down and cover the planet, along with the boss for that particular planet. There are a limited number of boss designs in the game, but each boss has their own way of being destroyed. For example, the first boss can only be defeated if you shoot out all of its jet accelerators on the sides of the spaceship. Once you've have defeated a boss, you will be given your score (like previous phases) and the name of then next planet in line that you have unlocked.
In later levels you will be give more than one boss to face. But alongside the boss, you can be given a batch of minor enemies that you will have to focus you attention on destroying before taking on the main boss.
With simple but stunning graphics, Super Stardust HD truly stands out amongst other duel-joystick shooters out there.
A lot of attention to detail has been focused on the backgrounds, ships, carriers, weapons, enemies and bosses, leaving the planets and asteroids to be left without major detail and textures.
Most textures can be see in weapons such as the "Gold Melter" which lets out an endless beam of fire. Weapon damage on ships and bosses is also impressive, enemies will issue out smoke the closer they are to dying, allowing to judge how long it is before they will fall.
Explosions look immense, and when they occur during chaotic sequences, they really set a feel and tone to the battle at hand.
But then again, they don't call it "HD" for nothing….
The game features a limited number of upbeat tracks to listen to. The tracks correspond well with the tempo of the gameplay but soon become catchy and very repetitive.
The sound effects do the game justice, from deep explosions to quick firing weapons, each sound is very distinct and adds to the atmosphere of the game.
The controls are extremely easy to learn, and anyone can learn them within a matter of minutes. L1 and R1 are used to cycle through your three weapons, R2 to instantly explode a bomb, left joystick to control the movement of your ship, and the right joystick to choose your direction of your line of fire, as well as shoot.
With addicting gameplay and a number of repetitive game modes including Arcade, Planet and Co-op, there's enough to keep you going for over an hour. The range of gameplay modes feel limited and pointless once you have completed the main goal of the game.
Overall, Super Stardust HD is worth your money if you're looking for some short addicting gameplay, but long term, doesn't have enough content to make replay it later down the line.
[Note: Review doesn't include any add-ons or packs, and is reviewed based on the content you buy with the full game.]