- Great value: $5 bucks for 100
levels of classic old-school arcade gaming
- Once the majority of the level is cleared, the “completion”
orb saves gamers frustration in trying to clear last tiny
remnants
- Some of the broken pieces
splinter into too-small debris that gets lost in the background
- Music (it-came from-the-1990s techno) is way too repetitive,
to the point of being annoying
Be
notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out
twice weekly.
Enter
E-Mail Address Below:
Hyperballoid HD
Score: 8.0 / 10
Such a simple concept for a game: bounce a
sphere off a paddle into “bricks” with the goal being to entirely clear
the level of each and every last one. First with Breakout and even more
so with Arakanoid, it became known as the brick-breaker game, relatively
popular in the early, early days of gaming in the 1970s and 1980s.
Just released as a PSN downloadable PS3 title, Hyperballoid HD applies a
next-generation facelift to the brick-breaker genre. Featuring 100
levels for a great
bargain price of only $5 bucks,
Hyperballoid HD has all the old-school gameplay flavor of Breakout and
Arakanoid with a shiny-new graphical presentation.
But if Hyperballoid HD were only a nifty-looking game all about simply
bouncing a ball into bricks, gamers would get bored rather quickly.
Instead, the gameplay
Advertisement
challenge is increased with the unpredictability of variable orbs being
released from shattered “bricks” that affect gameplay either negatively
of positively.
There are two types of orbs, the “bad” reds and the “good” greens, that
gamers can avoid/collect with their paddle. The reds act as Hyperballoid
HD’s little fiery gremlins, causing mayhem like making the paddle turn
invisible or shrinking the paddle and making the bouncing ball much
tinier. The greens orbs, on the other hand, assist in gameplay, such as
by increasing the size of both the paddles and ball, giving gamers
temporary weapons to shoot bricks (including the awesome flash bang that
wipes out a large chunk of bricks if shot in the right spot), along with
also giving gamers two paddles and releasing multiple balls bouncing
around at once.
That’s one of the biggest challenges gamers will have in Hyperballoid
HD: keeping a handful of balls in play at one time (and the requisite
PS3 trophies that gamers can “win” to up the challenge ante). There’s
also a “completion” orb that releases either when the level is entirely
cleared or just nearly cleared with a few tiny pieces remaining,
removing the frustration of trying in vain in attempting to dissipate
each and every little piece from each level, especially those small ones
that can get lost easily in the background. And it also helps gamers
avoid having to listen to the annoyingly repetitive so-1990s techno
soundtrack more than they have to.
It’s a shame gamers have to bust up the levels. Both the Ancients
(inspired by Egyptian pyramids) and the Planetary (zodiac symbols and
starry skies galore) collections of 50 levels each are graphically
impressive for what they are a small-scale, downloadable arcade-style
casual game.
Costing only $5 bucks, PS3 gamers that enjoy old-school arcade-style
gaming won’t find a much better value than the next-generation
brick-breaker Hyperballoid HD.
