From the passive Nucleus to the mighty PixelJunk Racers, the downloadable games on the PlayStation Store have always had the same effect on us; within a few days, we become disillusioned by their novelty. The games don’t have the staying power of full releases like Resistance, and unless they offer something with real meat, like Warhawk, they don’t deserve to be remembered. Riff: Everyday Shooter, though it suffers from the same problems as most of its Store counterparts, is a highly accomplished, audiovisual massage for the brain. There’s always more to this arcade shooter than meets the eye, and it’s a real testament to how the rhythm-action genre can go beyond the sequential button pushing of the Guitar Hero series.

Everyday Shooter, created by oneman indie powerhouse Jonathan Mak, is comparable only to Rez, in that it combines an established shoot-’em-up formula with the ability to twist the audio. Although the game is controlled with the same two-stick mechanism as Nucleus, Super Stardust and other blasters of its ilk, the music, composed by Mak, is a bigger draw than the actual shooting itself.

The action takes place on a single screen, while the player triggers riffs, beats and the like, by destroying enemies with a single stream of fire. The levels change formation in time with the music, while the amount of enemies tends to swell as each of the eight levels progress. Everyday Shooter is always running in time with the track that accompanies it, meaning it’s satisfying to watch the game transform with the rhythm.

Mak’s music is incredibly hypnotic, as well: even the loading screen has a lovely little jingle to go with it, and some of the tracks lead you into a gentle daze. Everyday Shooter includes the kind of music that marries itself to your thoughts, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself gawping at the screen, dribbling slightly, as you imagine yourself floating gently through time. Obviously, the truth of life’s horrific state will kick in at some point, but it took a few hours before Everyday Shooter’s grip on us eased. As a shooter, it works just fine, but the music is what gives the game its third dimension.

Of course, we’ve paid our dues to the musical side of Everyday Shooter, but the blasting is loaded with its own merit, too. Instead of simply shooting every enemy in a 360-degree radius, we found that setting up chains was the key to each level, as well as to attaining a high score. Stop lots of tiny aircraft with a small cube, for example, and they all explode in a haze of pleasant smoke. Shoot the head off of a caterpillar, and it’ll take out the surrounding enemies with its attractive entrails. Collect the little squares that they drop, and you’re doing the right thing in Everyday Shooter (see the ‘Chain Reaction’ box out).

That type of description makes us sound like quirky retards, but we’re happy to verify that we’re not. The ingenious level design in Everyday Shooter is, by default, responsible for such diabolical situations, and is secondary only to the music in epitomising the game’s replay value. With or without an HDTV, the world of Everyday Shooter is a majestical feast for the eyes, and the designs of the environments are admirably perplexing. Each blossoming animation brings on something new, be it robots marching towards a giant eye in unison, or weird, 1942 aircraft trying to shoot the player with laser beams. With few exceptions, it’s inspiring to witness what comes next in a level. If Everyday Shooter starts a section in one place, it’ll always end in a completely different way.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to weigh in with some complaints about Everyday Shooter. The game only has eight levels, and despite being able to alter the visuals as an unlockable, it’s rather easy to tire of them. After a few hours, it’s tempting to move on from it, and the over-pleasant nature of it all is slightly grating after a while.

On top of this, the levels get hectically overpopulated, and the chains can be rather fiddly and unbalanced. Also, while we enjoyed the fact that we could collect points and then spend them on extra starting lives, there’s not much else to the extras. A multiplayer mode would’ve been beneficial, too, as it was really the element that brought the best out of Super Stardust HD.

Overall, though, Everyday Shooter is the exact type of downloadable game to do a song and dance about. It won’t be the greatest dance of all time, and somebody may have tied your foot to the maypole, but it’ll be memorable, and above all, innovative. Dual-stick arcade-’em-ups needed a shot in the arm – hell, they needed a shot in the face – but Everyday Shooter succeeds in coalescing shoot-’em-ups with rhythm action, and there aren’t enough games that even try to do that. Besides, the price is always right with PlayStation Store games, and this is about as good as it’ll ever get on the service.

Samuel Roberts