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Good afternoon everyone,
Please accept my apology for not offering any reviews this weekend due to ill health. However, I think I’m back on track now and noted that it had been a while since I reviewed any games lately. So guess what I have for you today? 
Arkanoids and dozens of Arkanoid clones have been a long time favorite of gamers. Someone once told me that games which include lots of multi-tasking cause the player to exercise the opposite side of their brains, as opposed to the game that requires very little of us. It’s an interesting theory.
Break-out games happen to be one of my favorites, so I know I’m going to have fun taking this on a test run.
Developer: GameOver Games
Supported Languages: English
System Requirements: Pentium-166MMX or higher; Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Additional Requirements: DirectX 7.0 or higher; 640×480xHiColor
Tested on: Windows XP Pro.
Opening Screen:
The game opens to a screen filled with (clearly) professionally created images. The theme is space and the colorful graphics display various alien planets and the player’s main menu, which includes: New Game; Load Game; Hi Scores; Instructions; Options and Quit.
Options:
As with all games and other software, let’s check out the options first:
- Music and Sound Indicators: Adjust the music and sounds to your own preference;
- Reverse Stereo: What this basically means, is that you have the ability to change the sounds in the left speaker to the right, and vice versa;
- Vanishing Blocks: Even after playing the game, I don’t know what these are, perhaps they vanished a little too well!!
- Scroll Speed: You have two options here; fast and slow – the default is fast.
Other than changing the volume of the music, I left all of the defaults in place.
Instructions:
My first comment is that the help file is very difficult to understand, due to the English language obviously not being the developer’s first language. I think probably only Arkanoid or other break-out game lovers will be able to extract the meaning behind the very inadequate translation.
Another flaw, is not being able to directly exit out of the help file. I thought for sure, that I’d be able to exit if I hit the back arrow all the way to the first page, but I was mistaken. However, resorting to my friend the trusty [escape] key, did take me back to the main menu.
I will explain the game as we go.
Playing Field
When you first hit [Play,] you’re presented with a multitude of different planets, all of which represent the levels you’ll be playing. So, for the first game, only the first planet can be chosen, since all the other levels are essentially locked.
Along the bottom of the screen are …. rocks, each of which are really links to Start; Shop; Save and Exit. The shop allows players to buy any of twenty-one power-ups or credits, to help them pass the levels. Most of them we’ve seen before in other breakout games, however, there are a couple that seemed new to me, which you can discover for yourselves.
Again, the background has an attractive space themed backdrop, but this time it has a purpose more sinister than simply dropping anti-bonuses. The animated background, with it’s planets rushing by, and space rocks hurling in every direction, can fool the eye into thinking that they’re obstacles (or power-ups) and should be avoided (or caught,) when in fact they’re of no consequence to the player whatsoever. Still the player (when concentration slips,) cannot help trying to avoid or catch them once in a while.
Displayed at the bottom of the playing field:
- Completed: Shows the percentage (%)
- Lives: The player begins with three;
- Score.
Game Play:
The bat you control, is called a Block Hunter. Thankfully (for me,) it’s a curved bat – somehow I have always had a better chance of predicting the physics, than when I use a straight bat.
Unlike many other games of its genre, the direction of play is to move your ball upward through all the bricks, (collecting bonuses along the way,) without any requirement to break all the bricks in order to progress further. The higher you go, the closer you are to the end of the level.
The only other game that I can think of having played in the past that uses this method, is Chak’s Temple, which not only moves upward to progress, but also uses the background as a purposeful disadvantage to the player.
During the game, there is a plethora of bonuses and credits that continuously drop down throughout the play. It’s especially important to the player to catch the credits, which display as small colored pyramids, all worth differing amounts. These are used to buy more bonuses (bombs etc.,) from the shop, which you can later activate by hitting its corresponding number on the keyboard.
Interestingly, when the player saves the game, the power-ups gained, are also saved along with game progress for use the next time you play the saved game.
Music:
I had thought at the beginning of the game, that it wouldn’t be long before I turned the music off altogether. But I found that the music changed from time to time during play and that (for me,) there was no annoyance factor for the rest of the time I played.
Features:
- Great graphics;
- 100 levels;
- Cheat Codes;
- Definitely challenging game play.
Negatives:
- No option to play in window mode;
- Not all power-ups explained;
- The window indicator on the task bar is not in English and needs to be translated;
- While the instructions may be understood by some who have played Arkanoid-type games before, the entire file needs to be addressed and correctly translated into English. I wouldn’t have that this could be a viable game for public release without it.
- In the first couple of screens before you play, there is a constantly throbbing checkered cursor, which seems completely out of place with the space theme. Besides that it’s just plain annoying.
Points:
- Design: 7/10
- Animation: 9/10
- Originality: 6/10
- Functionality: 8/10
- Intuitiveness: 7/10
- Enjoyment Factor: 7/10
Summary:
Overall, I enjoyed playing this game, though I did experience some ongoing frustration because of not being able to identify, two of the constantly falling objects, and whether to catch or avoid them. I enjoyed the fact that this game developer put a twist to the long enjoyed break-out genre of games.
Price: US$14.95
Recommendation:
Arkanoid TVI., as well as being a fun game to play, would even challenge the concentration of a world class chess player. However, until all the negatives in my review have been addressed, I don’t believe that this game is worth the asking price of US$14.95. Perhaps wait until the next game upgrade, or you can download a free, fully licensed copy, (today only!) as the game stands now (still very enjoyable!) - from my good friends over at Game Giveaway of the Day.
I do hope you’ve enjoyed this review, and moreso, I hope you enjoy the game when you play it!
~ Swan
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