these shorts pages is where i plan to write about games that i enjoyed enough to reccomend but didn't feel passionate enough about to write a full article on, usually 3 at a time but i guess we'll see, this week will be superstardust portable for the psp, a twinstick on a console with one stick, crossfire x, a game from remedy studios which does not exist anymore and pinball heroes for the psp, a crossover pinball game of some of sony's ps3 era IP's.

the first of the three is super stardust portable, i played this on the playstation 4 using sony's backwards compatability program and i also platnumed it under this. the game took me a lot longer than i had planned to actually play it as. for some reason, the game was unplayable for me on ps4 for months, it was on the store but it just never let me download it for some reason until after the trophy patch had came out. the game itself is super fun, a small game from former indie studio housemarque and a followup to an earlier amiga game that i sadly have not played and it exists mostly as a portable version of the PSN game, super stardust HD, which was known for being the first game to have trophies. it plays like a modern version of asteroids, 3 weapons you power up with drops, meteors that split into chunks, enemies, bosses and a mario galaxy style spherical planet system, it looks great for a psp game, a lot going on with tons of particles, it's super hectic and very difficult in the late stages of the arcade mode, the arcade mode is short but it works for the console, planets can be finished in around 10 mins which is perfect for pick up and play, there isnt a story or anything either, it's an arcade game through and through. the controls are also very cool, it's a twinstick on the psp, so instead of a second stick you use the face buttons, with two put in for diagonals and three for an alternate attack, it ads a lot of strategy with the three weapons, a straight powershot, a spread and a homing attack, you even have a recharging dash and a bomb for your powerups, it's a cool game overall with a ton of replayability, you even get some extra modes like a bomb only mode, survival and a dash mode, there's a lot here, the only major issue i found myself with was the music, it wasn't very memorable.. the game would be followed up with 2 sequels, with super stardust delta for the vita, my favourite one, in 2011, and super stardust ultra for ps4 in 2015, which would even get a PSVR release shortly after.

the next game is the now dead modern military shooter, crossfireX, mainly it's first single player campaign, named operation catalyst, it was developed by remedy in 2022 for the xbox series of consoles, it's a very strange release, a single player campaign for a primarily free to play game popular in china, but with the campaign developed by the european remedy, which is why it interested me so much, on top of the fact the game was dying shortly after i started playing, i started the campaign a week before the games death and finished it over the course of a single sitting while i watched a video on tenchi muyo. the game is now entirely dead, even though it was single player in its entirety, you can't play it anymore, it's only real remnants in the form of some videos on youtube, which admittedly isn't as sad as it was for another game that had a similar fate, babylons fall. where i loved babylon and it was one of my favourite games of that year, crossfire is just kind of lame. it's a pretty standard shooter for the most part, some slowdown mechanics (which is really all that seperates it, it plays like a standard military shooter beyond that) and a small scale make it a little bit more interesting than it could have been, the game takes place in a single small eastern european inspired town and it does have some trademark remedyisms like FMV and trippy dream sequences, but it doesn't help it from being just kind of bland and boring, not bad at all as i dont think it deserve the abysmal scores it got from critics, it's really not any worse than your average COD game, but it's also not remarkable either, it plays fine, looks pretty good as it has a lot of snow which i like, but i don't remember much about the vibes beyond that, the music is very generic and the story, while it gets a little crazy later on, is a little boring until then, if it were still alive i would maybe reccomend it to remedy fans, but no one beyond that.

lastly we have pinball heroes, the crossover pinball game from SIE san diego, a studio mostly known for games like LBP karting, MLB the show and modnation racers. it's a pinball game with a ton of fanservice for first party sony games, you got a total of 8 tables, 4 in the initial release (uncharted, pain, everybody's golf and high velocity bowling) and 4 as dlc (fat princess, wipeout HD fury, modnation and motorstorm), later releases like pinball heroes complete for vita do have every table included, as does the 2022 ps4 release VIA the backwards compatability program, so play those versions if you can, you even get trophies! the game is a ton of fun though, some tables like fat princess and modnation are kind of duds, neither were very fun, very difficult to do much in and had mechanics that just didn't work super well, but i still liked the vibes of both because i like both of those games, the other tables though are great, the everybody's golf table has cute golf mechanics that you can use to score tons of points with, high velocity bowling lets you play bowling in pinball and thats just cool, pain has a funny OST (that games theme song is too catchy for what it is and has some funny mechanics although it was one of the more difficult tables i felt, uncharted had a cool adventury treasure system that was a ton of fun to figure out, you even do cover based shooting *with pinballs*, then there's wipeout which has a full race system with scoring and placements and even multiple tracks along the table and motorstorm has the same, though motorstorm just works better because of how you can modify the table and how its a little bit more of a puzzle vs wipeout, the fanservice here is really off the charts and it does a lot to work with the fact this is a video game and it can do more than a normal table would. it even looks and sounds great, all the theming is on point, with sound effects, references and music from the games, you got the VA's doing voicelines even i loved it and i'd love if it got a physical release sometime, this is a must play even if you don't enjoy pinball. i would say if you can, go for the vita version, it ads touch controls, a sideways view of the whole table which is a real game changer for this, is complete and even has a bunch of online mechanics like tournaments, though i'm not sure if those are still up, sadly it didnt seen to have near integration, which is a shame, i think near score challanges would have been very fitting for a game like this.