Mini games to show off your Vita’s fancy new tech.Solid, fast framerate and a great sense of action.It looks gorgeous, as you would expect.They’re no replacement for the main play style but they do present some nice diversions and the leader boards will encourage friends-list feuds. Each one makes use of some fancy new control scheme, whether it’s using the front and rear touch to crush rocks between your fingers or the gyroscopic controls to aim and shoot at waves of enemies from orbit. The mini games seem to exist primarily to show off the new control systems the Vita allows. The final stage of each planet consists of a large-scale boss battle and completing each one unlocks a new mini game from the main menu. The ultimate goal of each stage is to clear enemies but destroying the rocks gives you more space and uncovers ship upgrades and bonus points to help you along. Each stage sees a hail of asteroids landing on the surface, along with waves of different types of enemy. The main mode has five planets, each consisting of five stages. This can be more of a hindrance sometimes, depending on how you’re holding the Vita, but it’s easily switched off completely. There’s also a neat bit of gyro control which allows you to tilt the device slightly and peek around the horizon. If you prefer the classic Stardust boost, you can play in Pure mode, which removes the slow motion boost as well as the two new special weapons, making Delta much more similar to the PS3 version’s gameplay.

In the default mode, your boost button engages a kind of slow motion effect as it bursts you through rocks and gets you out of the way of the encroaching enemies. Only having two weapons to switch between, via a shoulder button, means that you don’t waste valuable hundredths of a second cycling to the correct weapon for taking down a particular enemy. Perhaps “honed” is a better way to describe the reduction though. The three weapons of previous Stardust games have been cut down to just two. There is a bomb, as in the PS3 version but there is also the option to create a miniature black hole which swallows up smaller asteroids and enemies or let loose a radial burst of missiles to stave off enemies and allow yourself a little space. There are now three different special weapons, although they all make use of the same limited pool of Special Attacks. Super Stardust Delta is practically the same as the PS3 version, with a few important differentiations. This PlayStation Vita outing is something of a fresh start for the Stardust name on portables then, and it won’t be held back by hardware this time. This isn’t Housemarque’s first portable release in their Stardust series but the previous one was a fairly lacklustre affair, stymied by the PSP’s control restrictions.

Super stardust delta ps vita