Shatter Review
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All the way back in 1976 when I was just a twinkle in my father’s eye (if that), the first brick-breaking title made its debut in arcades worldwide as Breakout. With everything from Javanoid to Brickbeaker (which currently ships as the included game on most Blackberry smartphones), the classic Breakout style has moved from platform to platform but has stuck too firmly to its own roots and therefore has bred very little innovation. So does Shatter offer an innovative arcade experience or is it simply a pretty version of a 30 year old game?
Boss battles are reminiscent of the arcade days but can be more frustrating than challenging.
Two of Shatter’s most impressive qualities are the crisp visual style and high-definition graphics. In this regard, Shatter is far above and beyond any similar titles on the market today. The game is bright and super crisp, making the flowing fragments and physics-dependent objects easily recognizable yet quite detailed. For both a downloadable title and an arcade remake, Shatter sets a new standard for HD graphics.
Technical graphics aside, Shatter suffers from an unfortunately generic and faceless art style that screams “THIS IS THE FUTURE!” without being especially creative or inventive. You’ll find yourself quickly growing tired of the game’s visuals as the shininess wears off, and you realize that you’ve seen this version of the future a hundred times before.
When it comes to arcade titles such as this, the visuals always take a back seat to gameplay, and thankfully, Shatter’s gameplay remains both inventive and fun even while the visual style starts to wear thin. Most easily recognized here are all the brick-breaking basics: paddles, balls, blocks, power-ups, points, and of course, high score leaderboards. In this regard, there’s not much to say. It’s a tried and true game style that nearly every human on Earth has come in contact with at least once over the last 30 years. Thankfully though, Shatter is more than just a pretty looking version of Breakout. It’s got a few tricks of its own.
With the ability to fire multiple balls at once and a slew of physics-enabled objects on every level, things can get a bit complicated.
Shatter’s primary gameplay innovation is the “Suck” and “Blow” abilities that grant the player a certain level of control over the balls and objects within each stage. This mechanic controls well and helps aid some of the frustration that is essentially inherent in this style of game. It seems like I have countless memories of just sitting back while playing Javanoid and bouncing the ball off the paddle about a thousand times just hoping to hit the final block. This alleviates that common dilemma and makes the boss battles considerably more tolerable, especially in later stages, than they would have been otherwise.
Speaking of the boss battles, they cap off every world within the game, and at first, they are a wonderful change of pace with a few even utilizing some interesting design mechanics and puzzle elements throughout the battle. As you move through the game though, the bosses become less interesting and difficult while becoming more and more frustrating, culminating mostly in the second to last boss. The bosses feel cheap rather than difficult. Players who have figured out how to defeat a boss and have more than adequate skill at the game, being capable of easily beating all of the levels in the world beforehand, will find the boss resetting itself before they are able to hit the weak spot and hitting then in such a broad and quick manner as to be nearly resistant to their shield and dodging. In my playthrough, it was frustrating enough to make me stop playing and not return for many days which is not the most desirable quality in a game.
It is also worth noting that Shatter does not include any multiplayer modes, which is a bit upsetting considering the $7.99 price tag for what ultimately feels like a $4.99 game and the fact that it would have been so darn fun. The game’s quick paddling bonus rounds and interesting ball movement mechanics would have been perfect for a few intense and exciting local multiplayer modes. That said, it’s not truly a bad aspect of the game as it isn’t an aspect at all but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find myself missing it as I traveled from game world to game world.
Shatter tries to keep things as varied as possible with vertical, horizontal, and circular level shapes.
Overall, Shatter is one of the best arcade titles available on PSN, and its low price point makes it something for any arcade fan to seriously consider. It’s just a few flaws in the visual style, the boss battles, and the less-than-challenging level design that keep it from being a truly must-have title similar to other arcade reboots we’ve seen in recent years (Space Invaders Extreme for the Nintendo DS, for example). It’s also worth noting that Shatter is clearly the title that takes its developer Sidhe Interactive to something to look out for in the future, considering it is clearly their best title by a long shot.
Shatter was released on July 22, 2009 for the PS3 and is available for download on the Playstation Network for $7.99.