Fire and Rain- PixelJunk Shooter Review

TideGear’s Take: To call a game “retro” can imply a lacking in innovation. The PixelJunk games continue to prove that a game can bring new concepts to the table and still make us feel like kids again. PixelJunk Shooter is Q-Games’ most inventive PixelJunk game yet.


PixelJunk Shooter is an action/puzzle twin-stick 2D shooter that shares some similarity with games like Thrust, and the recently released Gravity Crash. PixelJunk Shooter, however, places less emphasis on careful piloting. Your ship is much more nimble than the average “cave-flyer” game and collisions with most solid surfaces leave you undamaged. Even the game’s title is deceptive. While it is Q-Games’ take on the shmup, shooting is rarely the focus. Instead, the gameplay focuses more on the manipulation of various terrains, substances and fluids, via the game’s complex fluid physics simulation.

On another planet, you are tasked with exploring a cavernous mining colony that’s gone silent, and rescuing its inhabitants. By default your ship has the ability to fly and fire missiles in different directions, launch a grappling device, boost and perform a quick spin maneuver. Using these abilities you’ll often need to destroy or move terrain. Doing so will frequently cause various fluids and substances like water, magma, ice, etc. to move about and interact with each other. For example, when water and magma collide, the magma becomes destructible rock.

Your primary objective is to rescue as many survivors as possible in each area. Let too many survivors become casualties, and you’ll have to start over.  The creatures, fluids and other dangers found in the mines will add to the challenge. Instead of your ship taking damage from the game’s various dangers, it typically heats up then slowly cools.Spinning or flying into water can help bring the heat gauge back down.On occasion, you’ll find “suits” that enhance your ship with new abilities and alterations. Their use is always constrained to that particular section, but it makes the game feel a bit Metroid-like through a variety of abilities and the need to find and make your path.

As with the other PixelJunk titles, Shooter has simple but crisp and colorful visuals. The music is an excellent mix of classic sci-fi, grungy rock and peppy electronica. It definitely was stuck in my head for quite a while. The sound effects are very well done, and those that stand out are supposed to.

PixelJunk Shooter‘s basic concept alone is brilliant and innovative, and the level designs remain fresh and clever throughout the games entirety. This is definitely the best PixelJunk game yet, and that’s high praise .I only wish there were more of it. (For the most part, that’s a good thing.) The game is relatively short (a few hours, but with some hidden stuff to go back for and online leaderboards), and its difficulty never really surpasses a mild challenge. That said, it’s a decent length and challenge for such a quality game priced at only $10 USD. There is a local two player cooperative mode, but I have yet to try it.

Perhaps online play could be added? It’s probably no surprise that the game ends mentioning that there is more to come. PixelJunk Monsters and Eden both received significant “Encore” expansions, and Shooter seems destined for the same. My hope is more stages, more challenge and more features, and I imagine my desires will be appeased. I know I’ll be getting it day one. I’d love a PSP version (probably with simplified physics), but the game’s support for PSP remote play will probably have to suffice.

DesertEagle’s Take: Allow me to make a confession that may jeopardize my friendship with TideGear: I’ve been somewhat disappointed by PixelJunk’s offerings. Although Monsters was a proficient tower defense title, I couldn’t seem to find gratification within either Racers or Eden. Although I encourage the development of diversions that challenge the designs decisions presented by behemoth publishers, the two aforementioned games proved to lack any lasting appeal.

All that has changed with the developer’s fourth title- PixelJunk Shooter. Games that combine arcade action with gentle puzzle elements rarely get the balance right; many forgo their twitch mechanics just as the cerebral elements begin to dominate. With a lone exception, Shooter’s momentum never became deliberately protracted. This equilibrium is matched by the game’s lively weapons. Beyond the requisite cannon that which blasts through both rocks and aliens with equal aplomb, Shooter allows players to coat the environment with blistering lava or streams of water. Each of these abilities is presented by a suit that fits around your ship, transforming your craft into both a practical vehicle and an absorbing plaything. As a testament to the game’s design, I’d often find myself creating giant ice walls or magma pools for my own amusement.

Shooter’s beauty exists within the game’s myriad of minute details. From the diminutive clouds of steam created when the player’s ship nears ice, to the sensation of resistance created when traveling through falling water, the game’s skillful minutiae merge to forge a fascinating world. Nearly every stage is brilliantly designed, making perfection-seeking replays enjoyable. Accidentally kill a crewman, and you’ll be yearning to go back and correct your misstep.

Most importantly, death to the player comes from carelessness, not from attackers moving at a blistering rate, or being surrounding by a bevy of foes. Players will likely find themselves laughing at their own absent-minded blunders- as I did when I sprayed a stream of magma skyward, and watched as it rained down upon my ship. Some might find Shooter too easy; I find the game a welcome reprieve from Q-Games typical level of challenge.

Like a well-engineered amusement park ride, PixelJunk Shooter’s voyage is exhilarating, yet also regrettably short. For most gamers, their jaunt across the game’s 15 stages and mini-game final credits will last about three hours. While some might object to that duration, realize that nearly every moment of Shooter is gaming bliss. Like TideGear, I’ll be picking up the game’s inevitable Encore the moment it becomes available.

About Robert Allen

Since being a toddler, Robert Allen has been immersed in video games, anime, and tokusatsu. Currently, his days are spent teaching at two southern California colleges. But his evenings and weekends are filled with STGs, RPGs, and action titles and well at writing for Tech-Gaming since 2007.

47 comments

  1. Awesome review, guys!

  2. YES! Tag team review FTW!

  3. Need to buy a PSN card, ASAP!

  4. Nice James Taylor refernce.

  5. Deagle must be cave-shooting crazy from all these reviews!

  6. I really liked the game, but I thought the music was repetative. Wish there was more of it.

  7. How could you not love Eden? It’s an amazing experience.

  8. Love the two man take, Tide and Desert. Keep ’em up.

  9. This is one of the rare occasions where TideGear and Desert have the same taste. It’s like an lunar eclipse or something.

  10. The back and forth reminds me of the old EGM, which I loved. Keep it up, guys. Bookmarked!

  11. When two people love it, I know it’s going to be a great game.

  12. I’m in one of the lava and ice levels, where there’s a place to grab the water suit, but I can’t get through the dirt. Any tips?

  13. Way too easy and way too short.

  14. I got stuck there, too. My brother got through the level for me, I didn’t see what he did though.

  15. Seconded!

  16. Some of the word in Tide’s section don’t have spaces between them.

  17. I loved the game UNTIL I saw “To be continued”, then my heart broke.

  18. I gotta say I think the soundtrack was pretty generic. I would have went with bluesy harmonica riffs. I don’t think a game has ever done that.

  19. These screenshots look like my game, but most others show a different HUD. Is that an unlockable or something?

  20. How many difficulty levels?

  21. I’m gonna wait until the PixelJunk $20 bundle. All their game in one download!

  22. I’m gonna grab this when I get paid.

  23. This one’s getting a lot of love.

  24. Great review guys! I’m going to try to get this.

  25. Looks cool. I’m looking forward to this one.

  26. Cheetos - God of Cheese

    I like all the PJ games, even Racers, which is fun when playing mutliplayer.

  27. It’s the first three- Racers, Eden, and Monsters. It’s be avail on Dec. 22nd.

  28. Great write-up.

  29. I love that song.

    “My body’s aching and my time is at hand
    And I won’t make it any other way”

  30. I saw hopping it would be more of a shooter 🙁

  31. Loved the dual review!

  32. I saw this got a A on 1up.

  33. Great review. I like reading what two reviews say about the same game.

  34. I have to agree with the great score on this one.

  35. Shooter is not in the bundle?!?

  36. I’m glad to hear it’s not Junk at all 😉

  37. Reviews and a new podcast. Yes!

  38. Great reviews. I like both Tide’s overview, and Desert’s evaluation. Good stuff!

  39. I’ll have to buy this one. I loved Monsters!

  40. Me too.

  41. Looks excellent.

  42. This or Gravity Crash?

  43. It’s a bit too relaxed for me.

  44. Music by dad listens to is full of failure.

  45. I need to pick this up. How big is the file size?

  46. Thanks for the review. Love the Playstation 3

  47. Very cool review guys.