Everyday Shooter (PlayStation 3) review "I don’t care what you’re doing, it’s instantly way cooler when things are exploding and someone’s riffing on a guitar behind it. That you’re the cause of these explosions and riffs makes Everyday Shooter not only amazingly cool, but also extremely addictive."

I’d like to meet Jonathan Mak, the one man development team of Queasy Games. I’d like to ask him a few questions. Where’d he learn to program? Where’d he learn to play guitar? Where does he get his drugs from and how can I get a hold of his dealer? All of this would be foreplay to a major discussion about his Indy Game hit Everyday Shooter.

What is Everyday Shooter? Well, you’re a little ship on a rectangular playing field, and you have to survive countless barrages of enemies while a solo electric guitar plays in the background. There’s a bunch of different levels, each set to a different song. The twist is that the guitar only plays chords and a back melody. The main melody is set by you, the player, by blowing up adversaries, picking up points, and starting massive chains of combos. The combos are the most satisfying, because the music starts riffing out something major.

There's not a ton of levels but there's a lot of variety in what is given. Some levels you're waiting for the screen to get full for the ultimate chain, others you're engaged in dodge-fests with guns blazing, and still others are boss fights against anything from geometric tanks to giant glowing eyeballs. The graphics are simplistic, but effective, and the backgrounds respond to your movements in a similar way that the music does. The game is easily controlled with the thumbsticks (left to move, right to aim your shots), so no one should have any trouble diving in and trying it out. The difficulty curve isn't bad either, so you usually find yourself getting better very quickly.

You know what, though? This “by the books” review really isn’t doing the game justice. So buckle in your seat belts and let’s try another approach.

“Captain! Multiple bogeys on the radar! Permission to fire, sir?”

“What was your name again, son?”

“Er... Lieutenant James, sir. I’ve been serving with you for four years, if you’ll recall.”

“Ah yes, four is a good number. Have you ever heard Stairway to Heaven?”

“What? Er, no, sir. But I really think you should see the radar, it’s-”

“You’ve never heard Stairway to Heaven? Here, I’ll put it on for you.”

“Sir, I hardly think this is the time... are those tabs of acid?”

“Yes, would you like one?”

“No, sir, what I’m trying very hard to express here is that we’re in very grave danger-”

“Hold this guitar, will you?”

“- of being destroyed by multiple giant asteroids. If you’ll just take a quick look out the window, sir-”

“OH GOD GIANT EYEBALLS THEY’RE EVERYWHERE FIRE ALL MISSILES DEAR LORD FIRE THEM ALL! DAMMIT JIMMY, KEEP THAT GUITAR RIFFING!”

In short, what would you get if the pilot from Asteroids took LSD and put on some Led Zeppelin before climbing into his spaceship? Jonathan Mak provides the answer in the form of Everyday Shooter. We have here a game that takes two simple concepts, guitars and lasers, and mixes them together in the gaming equivalent of Woodstock.

Bottom line? I don’t care what you’re doing, it’s instantly way cooler when things are exploding and someone’s riffing on a guitar behind it. That you’re the cause of these explosions and riffs makes Everyday Shooter not only amazingly cool, but also extremely addictive. It’s fast paced, it’s great on the eyes, and it gets my vote for game I most want to play while on shrooms. If you’re tired of every game looking the same, do the market a favour and put ten dollars towards this amazing innovation of game design. With desirable unlockable features (like options to mess with the simplistic graphics even further), and guitar solos that are never the same, you'll just keep coming back.

Freelance review by Jonathan Stark (December 17, 2008) Zipp has spent most of his life standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox there. Sometimes he writes reviews and puts them in the mailbox.