With more and more people picking up Playstation 3’s (whether they’ve become more enticing, or it’s simply due to folks getting their economic stimulus checks) there are a lot of great games that people might miss out on since they’re no longer “new” or on the “Featured Releases” page of the store. As a courtesy to any new PS3 owners out there, here is a Sarcastic Gamer Public Service Announcement.

Super Stardust HD rocks… and it’s only getting better!

Sure, dual-stick shooters almost seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking out one of the (if not the) absolute best of the genre. Immediate comparisons are made between Geometry Wars on the Xbox 360 and SSHD on the PS3 since they’re both dual-stick shooters exclusive to their platform (although Geometry Wars now has versions on other platforms and SSHD is based off an old Amiga shooter), they both have incredibly vibrant, incredibly busy screens when playing. Having played both, I’m fully convince that SSHD is the superior game.

When SSHD was first announced, Housemarque (SSHD’s developer) announced the game would throw over 10,000 objects on screen complete with physics and collision as well as more than 75,000 particles, all while keeping a crisp 60 frames per second.

Not one to sit and rest on their laurels, Housemarque has been busy and recently released their Solo Pack expansion to SSHD. They’ve worked out how to display double the original 10,000 objects improving on already amazing visuals and have also added a retro soundtrack to improve the audio side as well. If you don’t like either soundtrack, SSHD supports custom soundtracks, playing music from your PS3’s hard drive. The new solo modes are Endless, Survival, Time Attack and Bomber. The add-on is more than worth the $4.99 asking price for SSHD fans.

Housemarque is very close to finishing their Team Pack which will offer up to four player split screen versus and co-op, a ship editor, a 5.1 orchestral soundtrack and yes… trophies. I would expect this to be priced at the same $4.99 price point as the Solo Pack, but if Sony handles this like some of their other PSN games, I would expect a limited time “bundle” price for some combination of the base game and/or expansions to show up. I’m guessing if the two expansions are $4.99 individually, we might see a $7.99 bundle for a month or so. We’ll have to wait and see on that.

Bottom line though, if you like eye-candy, if you like frantic-paced dual-stick shooters, if you have a killer TV and crankin’ sound system… you should already own Super Stardust HD for your PS3. If you don’t, I hope this reminder gets you to at least go check out the demo. The game is absolutely worth the $9.99 price tag. Don’t be immediately caught off guard when your first game scores you only a few hundred thousand and you see others with scores in the tens or hundreds of millions. Once you get into “the zone”, and get some basic strategies down, it’s a very deep arcade style game.

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