Today we’ll be looking at Blast Off, which you can find on the Playstation Store for $2.99.

This game is the second PSP minis offering from Australian developers Halfbrick Studios, who also brought us Echoes. Since it’s been a while since my last review, I just wanted to remind you all that Echoes is an amazing game and you should all own it. Blast Off is another action-slash-puzzle game, but it’s of a completely different variety. You’re tasked with launching a rocket into a little universe that’s littered with spacial bodies and attempt to rescue the astronauts floating within. It’s complicated by the fact that every planet, asteroid, and black hole exerts its gravity on your tiny ship. It’s an addictive puzzler that can be played a couple different ways. It is also incredibly challenging; some folks might be put off by its sharply escalating level of difficulty.

Blast Off’s 45 levels are evenly divided between four difficulty settings, from Easy to Insane. The game forces you to complete most of the levels in each difficulty before moving on to the next, which might seem limiting but is actually pretty smart. Like Echoes, the first levels serve as a tutorial for the controls and concepts in Blast Off. The game plays very simply. In each level, your rocket starts on a miniature planet Earth. The d-pad or analog nub rotate the planet, changing your launch direction, while holding the X button builds up thrust power. Once you launch, you are at the whims of every source of gravity on the field. However, you can still hit X to fire your thrusters, and steer your ship with the directional controls. You can also hit the L button at any time to abort your current attempt and try again. I appreciate this feature the most because Blast Off is definitely a game of trial and error; the faster I can recover from failure and try again, the better. Thanks to the L button, I can instantly detonate my little rocket the moment I realize it is going to fail its mission. Whether you crash into a planet or destroy the ship yourself, there is no penalty for failure; you simply respawn at your starting point. You don’t have to worry about a finite number of lives or retries, and there’s no loading pause between attempts. I don’t usually care for trial-and-error exercises, but Blast Off makes retrying so painless that I actually enjoyed the process.
There’s plenty of variety to the obstacles put in your way. There are asteroids, planets, and black holes, each with their own gravity that affects your ship in flight. Mostly these objects are stationary, but some levels may find them in motion, adding a new dimension to the challenge. Making contact with any of these objects is instant death. As you navigate the field, you have to collect astronauts to unlock the portal to the next level. Typically the number of astronauts needed to unlock the gate is less than the number of astronauts floating around the level. The game scores you on how many astronauts you saved, your remaining fuel (which is how much you used your thrusters after launch), and your remaining air (which is basically how long you took). Regardless of what you score, you can only get as high as a silver star in a level if you don’t save all the astronauts. Save them all, and you win a gold star, unless you can beat the high score set by the developers. Earning a Brick Star in a level is a sign of true mastery. Sometimes it feels like there is only one specific way in each level to earn a Brick Star; the exact amount of thrust on exactly the right trajectory, and so on. However, some levels can be mastered on sheer force of will (and a little luck). Now, you might forget about mastering the levels by the time you near the end of Medium. At this point the difficulty seems to ramp up unreasonably. I found myself getting very frustrated at some of the later levels (and my wife found herself frustrated by some of the very early ones) so I do have to emphasize that Blast Off is very fun up to a point. I strongly suggest wearing some sort of wrist strap while playing this game, because the urge to throw your PSP is bound to arise.

The game has an excellent visual design for such an inexpensive title. Each level is set on a star-filled backdrop filled with beautiful nebulae. The celestial bodies lack a little variety but all look very well-rendered, with dynamic lighting and rotation showing off their quality textures. Even the rocket and astronauts are 3D objects. It can be hard to appreciate the visuals on a small PSP (or smaller PSPgo) screen, so if you can, I recommend booting it up on the PS3 at least once. It looks just as good on a large TV, and it controls exactly the same.

The sound design is excellent, something I am starting to expect from Halfbrick Studios. The music is a collection of four tracks that feel both calming and energetic; utterly appropriate for the game’s space-bound antics. The soundtrack is now freely available from their website, Halfbrick.com. The sound effects are a perfect fit for the game, though I do wish there was a better one for the thrust buildup at launch. The current effect is a flat sound, whereas I would appreciate one that raised in pitch as it built further up. It would have just helped to have an audio gauge of thrust power in addition to the visual one on-screen. Regardless, The existing sounds fit the game’s theme perfectly. They have an otherworldly feel, and their echo implies a vast space. I’d much rather have these sounds during my space travels than the silent void of actual outer space.

So, how does Blast Off wipe up? When it comes time to flush, Blast Off is somewhere between heavenly triple-ply and a decent two-ply. It would be perfect if not for the abrupt jump in difficulty, but it is still incredibly fun challenge to try and try again.

The game for this review was purchased by the review and not provided by the publisher or developer. Music is from the game Blast Off, generously provided by the developer Halfbrick Studios. You can leave feedback for the reviewer on Twitter by following HWY_Z, or on the VGEvo forums at VGEVO.com.