For a long time now Xbox 360 and Wii owners have enjoyed a wealth of downloadable games through their Arcade and Virtual Console services. It’s with baited breath then that we have anticipated Sony’s downloadable offerings with the release of the PS3.

One of the first to arrive is Blast Factor, an inherently approachable old-school shooter. Using the left analogue to control the movement of your tiny G-18 Nanite Interceptor ship, you shoot using the right analogue at microbial viruses inhabiting a cell: ie, you can move with ease in one direction while firing with precision in the other. It’s simple, it’s fast and it’s effective. Viral enemies take multiple forms, some of which require specific methods to conquer, while others split into smaller more deviant pieces.

Those more versatile foes make up Blast Factor’s best angle. Using L2 or R2 you can fire your ship’s ‘Repulser’ and flood away any nearby creature, exposing their vulnerable rears. Also, by tilting the Sixaxis controller left or right, you can trigger a wave in the Petri dish style cell to swash all hostiles to one side. It’s an innovative twist that adds a tactical dimension not only to survival but for killing certain enemies that need to be tipped over. When this works, it works a treat, but all too often you’ll accidentally cause a tsunami when you didn’t mean to, or worse, in the wrong direction. Weapon upgrades are exciting, like splitters and heat seekers, but as they’re as rare as a monkey on stilts they can’t be overly praised.

Difficulty wise, the arcade hardcore will breeze through half of the game, but for others, it can get tricky a few levels in. Interestingly, the difficulty of each stage depends on how well you did in the previous one, which although smart, can lead you to purposely die to prevent bowing out on hard setting again. There are 7 levels each consisting of 6 stages, a bonus stage and an ending boss, but don’t let that sound like it has much variation: you’ll be staring at the same hexagonal dish through every single one. It’s all rather bland and monotonous, which is hard to believe considering it has 1080p HD spec support. That alone is a major negative, but the boss stages are also poorly inspired and almost identical to each other.

The multiplayer is decent though with both co-operative and versus options available, and players’ ranks are globally viewable and automatically adjust difficulty settings for play. It isn’t a bad little shooter at all, but its let downs only serve to solidify the opinion that it’s drastically inferior to the 360’s Geometry Wars, which it isn’t. Drastically that is.

Javid Sangra