When Hasbro Interactive and Atari remade Pong, you knew
Breakout couldn't be far behind it. Originally designed to act as a
single player sequel of sorts, Breakout was just as simple and
addictive, not to mention popular, as Pong. Fast-forward
twenty-plus years and Breakout makes its 3D debut in this
completely redesigned edition of the arcade classic. Blast your
way through bricks, barriers and barricades in this… love story?
Breakout opens with a cute introductory scene featuring Bouncer
and his buddies having a beach party. Bouncer, for those
wondering what I'm talking about, is the main paddle, errr…
character in Breakout. To make a long and relatively wacky story
short, Batnik, the evil paddle, crashes the party and captures
Bouncer's friends, including his girlfriend Daisy. Batnik drags
Bouncer off to prison as he proclaims the world as his.
You play the roll of Bouncer as you begin the game in prison. Your
first objective, once you complete the training mission, is to
breakout (pardon the pun) of your cell and fight through a number
of levels in order to find and rescue your friends from the evil
Batnik. Once out of the prison, you'll progress to some Egyptian
pyramids. From there, you'll hit a farm, a castle, a factory, and
finish up in space for the climatic finale with Batnik himself. Each
of the 6 distinct areas features between 4-6 levels, adding up to
approximately 30 levels in total. As you complete each area, you
rescue one of your friends. You can switch and become any one of
the paddles/characters you rescue during the game.
The level design in Breakout is well varied. They've mixed in
some of the original brick and block smashing levels with others
offering puzzles, and still some featuring bosses. They've even
tossed in a few chase-based levels where you have to run around
and avoid obstacles. One of the main problems I had with
Breakout was the lack of overall difficulty. I was able to breeze
through many of the levels and complete the game in a single day.
Most of the levels are simply too easy, although that's not to say
that some aren't challenging at all. The pipe puzzle levels, for
example, are extremely difficult. You really have to master control
of the paddle on such a level, but why the Robot boss at the end of the
factory level wasn't harder is beyond me. I was able to defeat him
with little to no resistance. Too many levels in Breakout offer little
resistance and that is a shame. You can change your Ranking at
the beginning of the game, which is basically a difficulty setting
and features 7 different levels, but it didn't seem to do enough to
create trouble. The Ranking also alters itself as you progress
through the areas, in an attempt to match your skill level.
Breakout offers plenty of diversity when it comes to ball types and
power-ups. Everything from massive paddles to fireballs to dual
and quadruple balls is available. You can collect power-ups and
select which you'd like to use at certain moments, but
unfortunately you can't carry power-ups from one level to the next,
so make sure you use any special items you manage to grab
throughout each level. There are also little tricks you can perform
with your paddles such as angling and curving. These manoeuvres
allow you to better control the balls that deflect off your paddle
and you'll need to learn each of these tricks if you want to
complete some of the puzzles in the game.
The visuals in Breakout are very colourful, although unspectacular.
Supporting resolutions up to 1024x768, the detail level could have
been a little better (although how much detail do you need to draw
a paddle and a few blocks?), but the interactive environments are solid
none the less. In terms of the audio, the effects are rather
generic but the music is upbeat and goes hand-in-hand with the
style of play. Breakout supports multiplayer via hot seat only,
where up to four players can challenge each other on the same
computer.
When the sun sets and the day is done, this newly redesigned edition of Breakout is a
fun little game. Unfortunately, the emphasis in that sentence is
placed on 'little'. Breakout is a little too short and sweet, due to the
relative ease of many of the levels found in the game. The mixture
of ball types and power-ups, along with the level design, certainly
helps create a varied gaming experience, but unless you're a big
fan of the original Breakout, this particular edition isn't addictive
enough to overcome the overall lack of gameplay.