My favourite new content on the PS Store this week is the game, Shatter. Priced at £4.79 it's great value for money - I'm certainly getting my money's worth. I've not been so addicted to a PSN game since Super Stardust HD.So what is Shatter? Essentially it's an Arkanoid-clone (the block breaking game you may remember playing as a kid). Your bat takes the form of a small space ship, limited to move in two directions (left and right on the levels where you play from bottom up and up and down in levels where you play from left to right). But there's a twist on this Arkanoid-style play. L1 sucks and R1 blows (no joke that's how they describe it in the manual!). Using these buttons your ship can coerce the bouncing ball to curve to the left or the right. It's possible to keep the ball amongst the blocks for a long while, in some cases completing the whole level after a single ball is launched from the ship (bat). As each block breaks it releases fragments - these are collected by holding the suck button and then they all rush towards you. Collecting them affects the direction of the bouncing ball though - it will also be sucked towards you.
Launching into Story Mode from the menu, you progress through waves in each of 10 different worlds. At the end of each world there's a boss to beat. I'm up to World 6 so far. Each boss I've met has been different from the last. Just like in a shoot 'em up, you have to figure out when to avoid their attacks and what their vulnerability is.
As you play through each wave, your points multiplier accumulates (unless you lose a life - then it resets to zero). Some blocks release power-ups, including additions to the points multiplier, an extra life and changes to the ball's behaviour. You also accumulate energy which can be used to briefly deploy a shield over your ship. This is handy to take care of breakaway floating blocks that are drawn towards you and will knock you off the screen for a second if they hit you when you're not shielded. Whilst your ship is off screen you'll obviously not be able to control the ball and this is when you are most vulnerable to losing a life. When your energy metre reaches a high enough point you can deploy a special attack (Shard Storm) where the ship launches a hail of projectiles for a few seconds, each one capable of causing damage to most kinds of blocks. This can clear some entire waves and also helps to defeat end of world bosses more quickly.
The presentation in the game is great with lovely HD graphics, a solid frame rate and a decent soundtrack. You'll also notice some 3D graphics between waves, as the background to each wave, twists and turns into the next. This adds to the whole impressive experience.
The score's are ludicrously high - you'll get several million on your first go. My high score is 147 million just a tad lower than Apnomis (who will be beaten soon enough! :)).
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My next goal is to try to get a decent place on the leader-board. In order to do that I would have to complete the entire game on a single credit. Mastering techniques to beat the bosses is probably key to this - as it's the boss encounters where I tend to lose lives.
ReplyDeleteGreat game. Have you tried going for the bonus mode trophy yet? Get 10million over 3 bonus rounds. It's harder than it looks.
ReplyDeleteI've heard great things, but i bought flower instead and the wipeout fury update has me hooked again, will check this out when theres a price drop.
ReplyDelete@Pablo - I've just been playing the bonus mode. I see you got over 10 mill - nice one! The best I can do so far is just over 8 million. Will keep trying.
ReplyDelete@Mittens - I had to decide between this and the Wipeout Fury pack too. Plus I am also interested to buy Flower and a lot of other stuff on the store. I wish that Sony would introduce some sort of subscription on the store where you pay a set amount and have access to all available content at no extra cost. They could even do a rental service (to keep the subscription cost lower) so that you no longer have access to the content once you stop paying the subscription.
i picked up the 'Flash and Thunder' map pack for KZ2 and have to say i am not disappointed. that's some flash! -hehe- first time it did it i stood there wondering why everyone suddenly ran off, a few moments later i was a crispy fried Helghan. played Thunder a couple of times too and will be giving that more of my time later, first impressions are good though.
ReplyDeleteI'm kinda hoping for a quiet-ish week on the store in terms of paid content - still need to get my hands on Flower and possibly the Fury expansion.
ReplyDeleteWent for Shatter and lastest KZ2 DLC this past week. Pity there is no option to drop and roll when you get sprayed with flamethrower! :(
@tone - F&T is the best KZ2 expansion in my opinion. Both the maps are great and the added twist of the nuke going off clinches it.