You know why you blink? You probably do, it’s to remove dirt and moisten the eyeball, but have you ever wondered what happens if you don’t blink? You probably have, but to fully experience the wonders of muscular eyestrain, puffy red eyes and uncontrollable tears you have to play Super Stardust HD.

It’s one of those shoot-anywhere games that were brought back to life when Geometry Wars was released on the Xbox 360. They had been popular in the early days with the likes of Robotron and Smash TV, and now they seem to be going through some sort of renaissance.

Super Stardust HD sees you playing as a lone ship flying around the orbit of a planet and protecting it from constant meteor storms. Actually what’s the difference between a meteor and an asteroid? About 50 pounds! Ho ho! Umm… no, you’re right, that doesn’t makes sense. Let’s just call them asteroids because they behave like the asteroids in the game of the same name, as in they break apart into smaller lumps of rock when you shoot them, then these break into smaller ones and smaller ones until there’s a field made up of tiny pieces of rock covering the planet.

There are different types of asteroid too, three to be exact, and it just so happens that you have three different types of weapons, each specifically designed to destroy a certain type of asteroid. So while it’s hectic enough flying around avoiding impacting against space rock, you have to switch weapons on the fly as well. Certain parts of the initially large asteroids contain weapon power-ups, score bonus and occasionally shields and extra lives depending on how quickly you can destroy them. Leave it too long and all you get is the not very helpful score bonus. And then weird biomechanical creatures appear in the planet’s orbit and start chasing you.

Thankfully, as well as your three different weapons, you can collect smart bombs to destroy everything on screen at once and you also have a boost to speed away from the crowded areas. Also, if you boost through a score bonus icon you can gain extra points with a multiplier.

Like all these games it’s really just about getting a high score, and with online leaderboards everyone can see how badly you suck at it. And you know why? You blink too much.

Tim Empey