PixelJunk Shooter is a dual stick shooter that is a joy to play. The controls are simple. Left stick for movement, right stick for aim. Right trigger for shooting, holding the trigger will unleash missiles. The catch is that missiles will overheat your ship. Cave ship. Not a space ship. The left trigger sends out a grappling hook to pick up stranded miners, which is the objective of the game. When you get the stranded miners, it opens a door to the next level. Each 'stage' has a few levels in it.

The real selling point of this game is the incredible interaction that you have with the environment. You can destroy soft terrain. Your bullets will take out chunks and not the entire terrain / wall. There is water that is fluid and dynamic. It will also cool down your ship when it overheats. There are enemies and lava. The lava flows just as the water, makes your ship overheat and when it meets water, they bond together to form soft terrain that you can destroy. Its such a nice dynamic.

There are powerups to keep your ship cool from the lava's heat. There are objects that you can grapple and tow around, such as a water bomb, good for drowning a volcano. There is a watercan object that you fill in water or lava, and when you take it out, it showers whatever liquid you have in it. Again, there is a lot of interactivity in the game.

This is a game that rewards and encourages exploration. If it looks like there is a way off screen, that's probably a secret area with the game's main collectable diamonds. Well you need diamonds to progress past a certain stage. You will have to go back and play each stage a few times in order to collect enough hidden diamonds. While it might seem like a downer to replay stages and levels, its all fun. Nothing seems like a chore. Its soothing, relaxing, nice to look at and with the incredible interactivity that you have with your environment, no playthrough is really the same.

On top of it all, the game sets itself apart with its art style. Its a beautiful, simple style instead of typical dualstick shooters that overload you on bright visual effects.

It is well worth the price and you can probably pick it up in an indie bundle. I've also got the sequil on PSN and personally, I think this it better.

I remember Pixeljunk Shooter being good fun a few years ago when I played it on the PS3. But playing it now it managed to annoy me sometimes. Some of the deaths are annoying, sometimes even cheap, resulting in you having to replay entire sections because of one tiny mistake. And no, the sections aren't all that big and can be completed in just a few minutes. But it's frustrating when you're almost near the end of a level.
It's also the only thing that annoyed me, because what you have here is a cute looking, physics based, twin stick action game (it's not really a twin stick shooter, so naming it that would do it injustice) where you save trapped workers and try to find as many gems as possible. Why is the last one so important ? Because you can only progress until you have a certain amount of these gems. Still, it's not that time consuming, because the game can easily be finished (not 100%) in 3 or 4 hours. There are 3 worlds and they consists of several levels each, and each levels consists of several sections. At the end of the world there'll be a boss fight. Those can be a bit difficult, but collecting enough stars allows you to earn extra lives. You'll rarely have to replay an entire level. Anyway, the environmental puzzles are fun to solve, and it's cool to look for secrets (I don't know if you can really call them secrets, though).
Ask me if this is the best Q-Games/Pixeljunk game and I'd have to say no. That honor still belongs to Pixeljunk Monsters. Shooter is a close second, though.
But ask me if it's worth it and I'd say yes.

PixleJunk Shooter is a personally long awaited port of the PSN game and whilst it doesn’t add much else to the PC version of the game other than 1080p and 120Hz display ability and a well ported control scheme, the game is still as fun as the day I purchased it on the PSN.

Shooter is a colourful and physics based Puzzle/Shooter, you are tasked with saving the people of a mining colony from a world that appears to be fighting back against the miners, along the way you fight various creatures and bosses and different methods to attack them with. The games difficulty is not very high but unless you know what you are doing enemies may surprise you. The game also comes with a Co-Op mode to allow you to play with your friends.

Shooter is an addictive and charming little game well worth the small price tag. To 100% the game you may be looking at 4 to 8 hours.

- 9/10
My #1 PSN game, now on PC? ♥♥♥♥ yeah.

Pros:
- Addictive and fun
- Colourful with nice graphics and Physics
- Good controls for mouse and keyboard (To say the game was built for consoles)
- Plenty of levels

Cons:
- Once learned, an easy game
- Very few Achievements

PixelJunk™ Shooter is a bit hard for me to categorize but lets call it a physics based Puzzle/Shooter thingy. While I am not a fan of the shooting in the game I don't mind the exploring or puzzle parts of the game and the few times the shooting/fighting shines is during the few boss fights in the game.

A pretty straight forward list of achievements mostly being for collecting the various scientists and gems in the levels which can be fairly challenging to find (at least the gems). The game also has an achievements for finding all secret areas so exploring is recommended. There are really only two achievements that might take some extra work and that is the big kill grind (1000 enemies) and an achievement for collecting 100 coins in a single spin. The later might take a few tries but can be made easier by using a guide to check out ideal spots for it.

Time to 100%: 9 hours

Ridiculously charming, clever, and addictive. Easily tops the list of the best dual-stick shooters.