Played as part of Atari 50.
Slogged through some of those final levels and I gotta say, for the most part this is a perfectly fine version of modern breakout (finally one in this collection with ricochet), but wow, do a random couple of levels have the most horrendous Breakout level design I've ever seen.
The biggest culprits here are those metal blocks that you can't destroy and the orange blocks which create more blocks if you hit them from the bottom or side. Both of these demand precision to avoid and create some levels where you're finicking back and forth with the paddle trying to pass the ball between two blocks next to one another, and you really just don't have the ability to manipulate the precise angle given how the paddle works here. For most levels this is fine but any level that demands precision is a nightmare to complete that feels more like trial and error than anything. You don't really run into many of these levels for a good while, but there's like 3 or 4 of them within the last 10 levels and it's just the worst shit ever.
The rest of this is fine though! It's just that those half-dozen actually miserable levels very much soured my experience of the other 40 or so, of--let's admit it--a competent but unremarkable brick breaker.
Versus mode isn't very good and forces you to use digital controls and always ends in a sweep one way or the other because of how much the scales get tipped against someone the second they start losing. It's not really worth playing.
Slogged through some of those final levels and I gotta say, for the most part this is a perfectly fine version of modern breakout (finally one in this collection with ricochet), but wow, do a random couple of levels have the most horrendous Breakout level design I've ever seen.
The biggest culprits here are those metal blocks that you can't destroy and the orange blocks which create more blocks if you hit them from the bottom or side. Both of these demand precision to avoid and create some levels where you're finicking back and forth with the paddle trying to pass the ball between two blocks next to one another, and you really just don't have the ability to manipulate the precise angle given how the paddle works here. For most levels this is fine but any level that demands precision is a nightmare to complete that feels more like trial and error than anything. You don't really run into many of these levels for a good while, but there's like 3 or 4 of them within the last 10 levels and it's just the worst shit ever.
The rest of this is fine though! It's just that those half-dozen actually miserable levels very much soured my experience of the other 40 or so, of--let's admit it--a competent but unremarkable brick breaker.
Versus mode isn't very good and forces you to use digital controls and always ends in a sweep one way or the other because of how much the scales get tipped against someone the second they start losing. It's not really worth playing.