Despite its many issues, Brick Breaker can still prove an oddly compelling and undoubtedly addictive experience. The messy visuals, twitchy controls and inconsistent physics all do their best to ruin the fun, but the strong underlying template ensures that there is still fun to be had from what remains one of gaming’s most resolutely popular concepts.
Basically an HD remake of Breakout with broken physics and an impossible survival mode. First few levels are beatable albeit you'll get caught out by some of the unexpected rebound angles. By the 30-something levels this was no longer an enjoyable gaming experience. Many of the trophies are simply unachievable.
It is hard to mess up Breakout clone but this does by having too much crap going on the screen it is hard to tell what is going on. I think I played better version on a 286 PC in 1989. Stay away and don't waste your money on this poop.
I registered for Metacritic just so I could review this game.
The Good - Very little, and none of it worth buying. It's pretty visually, and the music is a fairly nice techno score along the lines of "STEALTH: A Clone in the Dark." Repetitive, but doesn't get on your nerves.
The Bad - just about everything else.
I bought this Arkanoid clone on sale because I love Arkanoid clones and I had a PlayStation gift card.
My first rule about an Arkanoid clone - I will not score higher than a 6 (out of 10) if the paddle bounces the ball DOWN. And this game commits this cardinal sin so often that it is the primary way you will lose your lives. The rest of the game's physics are equally bad/random (e.g. you want to reverse the bounce of the ball by hitting it on the other side of the paddle, but it continues in its original direction).
It does not help, either, that the graphics get "busy" when bricks are exploding or when you've got a 3-ball and/or fireball going on. It's tough to track the ball(s) at all sometimes, and this gets highly problematic when the action is happening close to paddle-level.
Speaking of which...
The paddle control is beyond poor. Not because it doesn't move, but there's no way to quickly move it rapidly to the other side of the screen for a desperation save, and there's no fine movement control at all. The second most common way to lose your ball in this game is to try to nudge the paddle just a smidge to one side or the other, and it turns out it's just a bit too far and the ball goes right past the paddle to its ignominious demise.
It is POSSIBLE that if you own one of those steering wheel controllers, that you might be able to move the paddle faster to one side or the other, or finesse it to where it needs to be, but I wouldn't go out and buy a steering wheel controller just to play this (refer to cardinal sin above). It might almost have been better to try to program it so you could use the touch-pad in the center of the controller to move the paddle. There are phone apps that are far superior to this console game.
There are supposedly 100 levels in this game. I un-installed it when I hit level 34. You will almost certainly not beat it. You can tell when you look at the trophy counts. A measly 5.6% (as of this writing) got the trophy for clearing level 30 (me among them, yay!). Only 1.0% had obtained the level 40 trophy. And 0.1% of people got past level 90 in arcade mode (if anyone actually did... 0.1% is the default number).
This game also includes a Survival mode where you have a set amount of lives to get through as many boards as possible. Trophies are available for clearing 10, 30, 50, 80, and 100 levels in survival mode. I was not shocked AT ALL to see that 0.1% of players even popped the 10-level survival trophy.
Kudos to those with the patience of Job, but this game should only take a matter of hours to clear, not what I'd calculate to be "months". You kill your own replay value. I had no real desire to go back and play levels again to get 3 stars/improve my score. I was just glad I beat the bloody board.
Avoid, avoid, avoid.
Glad I bought this on sale as it is a waste of money. I like these types of games, I don't like this one.
-controls are responsive but hard to manage
-gameplay is slow
-graphics get in the way of gameplay
-music gets repetitive
-very boring at the start, slightly less boring later
SummaryBrick Breaker, the classic arcade game, is back. Collect bonuses, avoid traps and shoot your way to victory. Play alone or with up to 4 players on a split screen.