Super Breakout
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| Super Breakout

If there's one warning that fledgling game reviewers are given just before they're shoved out of the doors of the School of Game Criticism and set loose in the wide world, it's that you should never, ever, say that a game is 'quite good if you like that sort of thing'.

Which is a shame, really, because some things can only be described that way.

But we're ahead of ourselves. If you've never played a Breakout game (or one of its many clones, such as Block Breaker Deluxe 2, Arkanoid, or Eidos's brilliantly named DS title Nervous Brickdown), here's a quick rundown: at the top of the screen is an arrangement of bricks, which you destroy by moving a paddle left and right to intercept and deflect a ball upwards. It's a simple concept and yet, because the ball gradually gets faster, occasionally fiendish, which is probably why it's been so copied so many times.

That's the basic mechanic, but it's the extras that distinguish Super Breakout as a modern game. And it's on these that we'll focus.

First up there are power-ups, special bonuses that appear after destroying certain blocks. The lengthener, for example, makes your paddle longer (and therefore reduces the risk of accidentally letting the ball slip by); multi-ball adds more balls into the playing field; one power-up slows down the speed of your ball, while another makes it slice through bricks rather than bounce off them, enabling you to eliminate a huge number of blocks with a single strike.

It's not just in these that the game shows its modernity, though: also seeing upgrades are the bricks themselves. Once static and uniform, these targets can now move, as well as exhibit different types of behaviour. Some blocks, for example, only break if hit on a certain side; others act like bombs and destroy their neighbours; others still act as 'switches' and cause ghosted bricks to take solid form.

So, while there's a huge amount of variety on show across the vast array of levels, ultimately they're all mere tweaks on the formula, none of them really changing how the game is played to a significant degree. In the end, it's the same as it's always been: intercept the ball flying towards you and try your hardest to influence its bounce into where you want it.

As such, it's the sort of game that plays best when you dip in and out of it for short periods of time and, while that may sound like a negative, it just proves it's suited to the brief sessions that mobile games are most often used for. And, given the considerable number of levels available, taking such an approach should make the game last a suitably long time.

Which leads us to the conclusion so tactlessly prophesied above: solid, sturdy but slightly samey, Super Breakout does exactly what it sets out to do – be a super version of Breakout – but little more. So, (gulp), it's great if you like this sort of thing.

Super Breakout

Packed full of levels and considerable variety, this is an impressively competent version of Breakout
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