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The original PixelJunk Shooter tasked players with saving scientists trapped underground on a foreign planet. They served as your "lives": If five of them died in a level, you had to start over. And if you and a friend engaged in the game's co-op mode, you shared those lives, which helped engender a strong sense of cooperation between players.
Now PixelJunk Shooter 2 (out today on PSN) wants you to fight over those hapless researchers. While the main campaign retains the shared lives system, the game's new two-player competitive mode encourages you to horde as many scientists as possible — even by stealing them from your opponent. It's an addictive premise and a refreshing twist on the typical deathmatch-based multiplayer found in games.
PixelJunk Shooter 2's competitive mode actually did start out as a run-of-the-mill deathmatch. But, according to Q-Games Assistant Producer Ariel Angelotti, simply blasting at another player with your rockets wasn't very fun. So it evolved into its current incarnation, which shares more with traditional sport games than a video-game shooter.
Each map features two dotted circles that act as "goals" — one for you and one for your opponent. The two of you trade off playing offense and defense for two rounds. On offense, you must zip around the map, grappling trapped scientists and dropping them off inside your goal. As mentioned above, you can even snatch scientists your foe has collected in their own goal. On defense, you have to seek out and destroy the other player — a task made more difficult by the fact that you can't actually see them until they pass through a "radar" that extends out from your ship. If you destroy them and manage to grab the ship icon that briefly appears, the set ends and you switch sides. If not, they respawn and continue to rack up scientists.
Both players get access to a number of ship enhancements, some offensive, some defensive, some…somewhere in between. I only had a chance to sample a small selection during my demo, but of those, I was particularly enamored with a nasty little device that temporarily reverses your opponent's controls — perfect for escaping a pursuer while on offense. As you play more matches, you will eventually unlock about 30 of these enhancements.
The cumulative effect of these rules and components is a tense cat-and-mouse game that impressively offers no one clear strategy. On offense, do you zoom around the map, hoping that if you're spotted you'll be able to dodge or distract your way to safety? Or do you play it slow and methodical, keeping an eye out for your pursuer and making sure they never spot you in the first place? On defense, do you camp out near your opponent's goal at the risk of them stealing any scientists you've acquired in your own goal? Or do you fan across the entire map, perhaps missing them completely as they circle around you and rack up the points?
Regardless of your strategy, two things are certain: (1) Those poor scientists are in for a rough day, and (2) you'll be having fun. Score one point for Q-Games.