games: Riff: Everyday Shooter

Today we’re looking at Riff: Everyday Shooter which has finally - FINALLY - been released on the PlayStation Network in Europe.

When you first fire this up it will seem like a hipster version of Geometry Wars with it’s seemingly slower pace, more laid back music and slick pop arty visuals. But be wary of playing this with another game in mind. Everyday Shooter is initially pretty damn hard to get the hang of. But after spending maybe half an hour to an hour of getting fracked over by it, you should find yourself immersed in its episteme and suddenly aware of its operational systems and beating heart.

Yes, you move with the left analogue and shoot with the right in a 2d minefield of enemies who leave little chips in their wake for you to collect to earn points and extra lives. But there are subtle differences that make this a worthwhile addition to a collection.

It’s really not enough just to shoot the bad guys individually. The core of the game is the chain reaction. In each level there are certain enemies which will initiate this, some of which are quite large and will take some shooting down. It’s the only way you will score points, and on some levels, the only way you will even survive. And when you see and hear those chains stacking up, you get that tingly feeling of achievement like getting gold stars at school…

Another particularly clever idea is that you move more quickly when you aren’t firing, which brings a totally different tactical mindset to gameplay.

There’s no doubting that the visuals are stunning with great enemy design which varies in appearance and behaviour from level to level. This works nicely with the different music used for each level to create a different feel for each one, including my favourite which was influenced by Miyazaki’s film Porco Rosso.

The musical integration is also pretty good, although not as intense as Rez.

But while there is a lot to praise with this game, there are a few things that do detract from the experience. The initial difficulty will put a lot of people off, so I do urge you to persevere with it, and spend your 1st points unlocking extra starting lives. It can also be demoralizing starting from the beginning every time.

Once you’ve built up a big stack of points you can unlock single play versions of the levels to practice on and a shuffle feature for the main game. But this will take a while to get to. And while the graphics are gorgeous, it can be difficult to see your ship against the background, or amongst the other white dots, and sometimes enemies will also be obscured.

The main disappointment for me though was the PS3 controller - The lack of rumble really flattens the whole experience. Given that the game hasn’t been released in Japan, I won’t know for some time if it does support rumble, but we can live in hope. Also, while movement is analogue, the firing mechanism has been mapped to 8 way giving you less precision.

But non rumble grumbles aside, this is a great game with some interesting variations on the genre. 4 stars, and a bargain at just five quid - even if it did take 4 months to cross the Atlantic.

For the best of the rest:

IGN:
US, October 11, 2007 - There are a lot of arcade shooters out there, and a tragic majority of them feel about the same. So it’s nice to see a shooter that, while borrowing a great deal of elements from previous games of its type, still maintains a spark of originality and style that carries it above and beyond the typical fare that has become frustratingly abundant. 


Game Spot:
Everyday Shooter is anything but an everyday shooter. Such a title belies this game’s level of creativity, though maybe that was the point. Developed by a single programmer named Jonathan Mak, this is a wonderfully unique and engaging spin on the Robotron-style dual-stick shooter that countless games have copied to death over the years. It offers up eight stages that provide entirely separate challenges from one another and a solid level of difficulty. It also has a dreamy vibe created by its fantastic art style and bedroom rock soundtrack. It’s the sort of offbeat little game that will probably either bore or irritate some people to no end, but for those who can appreciate its eccentricities, it’s a real treat.

Euro Gamer:
Despite his protestations in an encouraging “Notes” section that rails against “games-are-art-theory-wankery”, I have a feeling that Riff: Everyday Shooter author Jonathan Mak will struggle to escape veneration by the aesthetes of my profession - what with having cited Kenta Cho, Kanta Matsuhisa and Tetsuya Mizuguchi as direct influences, and having then turned in an album of musical shoot-’em-up levels that derive their mechanics from the principle that “even the simplest thing can be the most beautiful thing”. Whether or not you get lost in the elegance and subtle meticulousness of his compositions, though (and we will be doing that presently, by the way), you’ll still be pleased with what’s on offer here: eight distinctive examples of the two-stick shooter that start off well and only get better the more you play them.