My past self: ''Y'know, I think it's time I give Breakout a shot! It'll take me what, 10, 20 minutes to get something out of it? I'm sure I'll be done in a while...
My present self (2 hours later): ''Y'know, I used to be fucking stupid when I was younger!''
And you mean to tell me that founding Apple is Steve Wozniak's highest achievement? But... this shit is better than the MacBook!
Despite so many years of playing Breakout in different versions and in scattered moments, it never truly hit me till now how much fun of a game it actually is. You could have fun by yourself in Pong, it’s just like bashing your head against a wall: even if you end up enjoying, it’s not gonna last very long before something caves in.
Breakout answers to that idea by making that wall fun to bash against! It’s a back and forth against yourself that feels rewarding beyond the mere act of seeing the number score getting higher; dismantling that multicolored wall piece by piece is as simple as it is addicting, which it’s a lot.
Even tho Breakout’s pitch is pretty much ‘’Pong but singleplayer focused’’, I also like to think of it a sort of reinterpretation of pinball machines into videogame territory. A really simplistic one to be sure, but that lifts of elements from it that fit —like the strike system, with a certain number of balls given to you per coin to get a high score—, but also shifts away from the ‘’choose your own path/route’’ that the best machines make you feel and instead puts your objective in front of you. Am I overthinking things? Most likely! But it’s hard to not let your mind ponder over the little things as you break away and have a fun little time.
It’s one of those games that just works… except when it doesn’t. The rather clunky hit detection that was already present in Pong hasn’t gonna go anywhere, I would like to say that it’s just a matter that the paddle’s hitbox as the paddle itself, but it seems to depend more from where the ball is coming, sometimes making contact is enough, others you need to line up perfectly, and it can feel a little discouraging when it messes you up when you are having a good run. It does fix the speed of the ball on spawn tho, it makes it pretty much impossible to miss in your first throw and eases thing into getting as fast as hell, so ya win some ya keep some, I guess…
Breakout is still very much a win, and it doesn’t need dragons on the cover art to show that, it’s another piece of the massive domino that was the arcade industry of the 70’s, piece that would lead to amazing games like Space Invaders, but also a great piece on its own.
My present self (2 hours later): ''Y'know, I used to be fucking stupid when I was younger!''
And you mean to tell me that founding Apple is Steve Wozniak's highest achievement? But... this shit is better than the MacBook!
Despite so many years of playing Breakout in different versions and in scattered moments, it never truly hit me till now how much fun of a game it actually is. You could have fun by yourself in Pong, it’s just like bashing your head against a wall: even if you end up enjoying, it’s not gonna last very long before something caves in.
Breakout answers to that idea by making that wall fun to bash against! It’s a back and forth against yourself that feels rewarding beyond the mere act of seeing the number score getting higher; dismantling that multicolored wall piece by piece is as simple as it is addicting, which it’s a lot.
Even tho Breakout’s pitch is pretty much ‘’Pong but singleplayer focused’’, I also like to think of it a sort of reinterpretation of pinball machines into videogame territory. A really simplistic one to be sure, but that lifts of elements from it that fit —like the strike system, with a certain number of balls given to you per coin to get a high score—, but also shifts away from the ‘’choose your own path/route’’ that the best machines make you feel and instead puts your objective in front of you. Am I overthinking things? Most likely! But it’s hard to not let your mind ponder over the little things as you break away and have a fun little time.
It’s one of those games that just works… except when it doesn’t. The rather clunky hit detection that was already present in Pong hasn’t gonna go anywhere, I would like to say that it’s just a matter that the paddle’s hitbox as the paddle itself, but it seems to depend more from where the ball is coming, sometimes making contact is enough, others you need to line up perfectly, and it can feel a little discouraging when it messes you up when you are having a good run. It does fix the speed of the ball on spawn tho, it makes it pretty much impossible to miss in your first throw and eases thing into getting as fast as hell, so ya win some ya keep some, I guess…
Breakout is still very much a win, and it doesn’t need dragons on the cover art to show that, it’s another piece of the massive domino that was the arcade industry of the 70’s, piece that would lead to amazing games like Space Invaders, but also a great piece on its own.