BreakQuest: Extra Evolution Review

After getting about eight or nine levels into the game, I began to uncover a few additional mechanics that the game had failed to ever really introduce me to or even make readily apparent. The first is a pair of bars along the bottom of the screen that fill up over time. Hitting the corresponding shoulder buttons will then move these bars up at which point they begin to act as barriers that can be hit twice by the ball before disappearing and letting the ball fly past freely. Upon my discovery of this, the game became far easier than it already was, especially considering that secondary bars can be charged while the barriers are still up allowing you to immediately replace a barrier after it is cleared.

The second mechanic was much more unusual and I never came away from the game with a completely clear understanding of it. Through the collection of specific power-ups and possibly other ways, the player may collect “parts.” These parts look like quarter-pieces of a ball. After collecting four parts (which are only visible from the game’s pause screen), the player can cash them in for one new ball or essentially an extra life. It’s unusual to have a power-up that only displays on the pause menu, especially when considering that unless the player is constantly keeping up with the amount of parts he or she has by hitting pause, it is easily possible to hit a game over after depleting your lives despite having enough parts to cash in for another ball.

Unfortunately, nothing has been done to deal with this specific game type’s biggest flaw: the closer the player gets to the end of a level the less blocks there are to hit and therefore the more the player is just sitting and watching a ball fly through empty space. While some games attempt to alleviate this through a heavy use of laser power-ups or increased ball speed as the level drags on, BreakQuest does nothing in this department and as such, I spent about ten minutes at the end of each level just watching a ball slowly float through empty space, rarely even needing to move my paddle and redirect the ball. It reminded me of my least favorite aspect of ball-and-paddle games on a regular basis.

Overall, BreakQuest: Extra Evolution is a game you’ve probably played before and when you did, it was probably better. In a world full of Arkanoid and Breakout clones, a game looking to create a similar experience needs to stand about from the crowd either through visuals or gameplay, neither of which BreakQuest is every really able to pull off successfully. While boss fights act as a somewhat unique addition to the genre, BreakQuest is a less than ideally controlled, somewhat muddy package of a game we’ve all played countless times before.