Shatter

Arkanoid + Gravity = Awesome?

Breakout didn't necessarily need another game, but when Arkanoid showed what you could do with the Breakout formula, apparently there was a need for another Pong-like block-smashing arcade game.

Fast forward an awfully long time, and the PlayStation Network is a new home for smaller titles to shine, and what better way to grab some attention than to stand on the shoulders of giants?

One part Breakout/Arkanoid, one part physics playground, Shatter wants to show you how far this gameplay can go.

Fun Times

I am fairly confident in declaring that Breakout didn't need a story mode, but that's what we've got in Shatter, loose though the definition may be.

A domed paddle breaking out of whatever it was in and causing havoc on whatever dares gets in its way isn't exactly a story to drop everything for, so what about the gameplay? Surely there's more to Shatter than turning Breakout sideways.

Of course there is. Stellar allows players to suck things towards their paddle, including the pickups you'll need to fill your power bar, and the ball you're flinging towards all these glassy shatterable blocks.

I'm playing the PC port of this game, where controlling your paddle is as simple as moving the mouse up and down, and sucking as simple as holding the left mouse button. I wonder if the right mouse does anything?

It blows! Should have seen that one coming. Now armed with the infinite ability to blow and suck things away or towards our paddle, we can better manipulate the playing field so that the most amount of destruction is caused and our ball comes nowhere near our paddle - if we can help it.

Shatter wants you to be a genius ball manipulator here, gently nudging your shot into a new orbit or trajectory to maximise its effectiveness before it bounces back towards you, at which point you can blow like you've never blown before and push it back into play before it even touches your paddle.

It's a nice idea, but it's not like you're a puppeteer with precise control over your ball. It still sucks trying to get the last block sometimes. And that wasn't a pun.

As you'll have noticed, graphics have come on a long way since the 1980s, so expect lots of particles and lighting and the kind of High Definition flair that the 2000s had, in that time where it was somehow cool to be in HD, but now looks a bit laughable. It's not dated, as such, but it has an air of old HD about it.

Luckily, it doesn't play half bad at all, and after a few standard levels, we get a boss fight.

By collecting the shattered remains of many blocks, we've been charging up our power bar which allows us to do a few things, notably for boss fights, launching a second ball into play, or spamming a lot of missiles or something.

It looks fancy, depletes the power bar mighty quick, but has done a fair amount of damage to this bad boy. It's not too long before he's out of here and we get a bonus stage to grab a few last-second points.

Frustrations

Without much pause, it's onto the next round, where already it's starting to get a bit old.

I suppose different block types and power-ups have made an appearance, and having to dodge incoming blocks that have escaped their starting positions or have inadvertently been sucked towards you is different - and there's even a shield you can use to help out there, should you ever reach that button quick enough.

It's just that what I'm doing here is nothing special, really. It's not horrible to look at, it's not a chore to play, but I don't really know why I'd want to play Shatter.

Circular levels? Well, that's nice, but once the spectacle of everything exploding dies down, we're still left with that awkward climax of struggling to smash into the last block, even with sucking and blowing at our disposal.

The second boss is a space octopus with regenerating limbs that you have to wallop on its eye to do any damage to it at all, and again, this is nice and all, plays well, look good, but I'm not wowed by it. I'm not hooked. I'm not desperate to see what's next.

Final Word

And so I don't see what's next. I've unlocked some endless modes, I think I read, which sound like more of a classic Breakout experience, but how often do you sit down and think "I really want to play Breakout or something like it"?

You don't, right? I don't. There might have been a time where such a game was a perfect mobile game to fill time when you're sat down waiting for something, but nowadays even mobile games are so much more, or they certainly can be.

That's not to say Shatter is pointless, not at all. Shatter does nothing wrong, and makes quite an effort towards a new twist on a classic game. It's just that I don't particularly want to play it for any great length of time.

Nice to know what it is, name to a game and all, but I would have brushed Shatter aside when it came out as much as I'm doing so now. But if you do want to try it, give it a shot. Definitely worth at least one go with it.

Fun Facts

It supposedly gets a little closer to a bullet hell than a puzzler later in the game. Does that entice us anymore? Might end up putting me off it...

Shatter, developed by Sidhe Interactive, first released in 2009.

Version played: PC, 2010.