There are also powerups for the paddle. The typical ones are here – cannon, giving your paddle bullets to fire at the field, ball catcher to let you aim the ball, and extend, which makes the paddle larger. But there are also some more effective/inventive paddle poweups, such as the magnet, which draws the balls to your paddle when you hold X, useful for steering the ball while it’s on the field. The most powerful, however, is the laser, which is a one-shot deal that obliterates any brick from the bottom to the top of the field within your paddle’s width. While some of these powerups override the others, it is nice that some of them stack, such as the ball catcher, which can allow your paddle to catch and hold multiple balls at once, helpful for multi-ball situations.
So, yes, this game got the fundamentals right. It is a very fun Arkanoid clone. But how about other functionality? The game supports trophies, of course, but they aren’t particularly difficult to earn. By the time I had run through both worlds, I had collected every trophy. Hyperballoid HD also supports custom soundtracks in a limited sense – it is not through the XMB’s built-in player, which would have been better. Instead, the only way to change songs is to disable and then re-enable the in-game payer. SIXIAXIS motion control is here as well, but the implementation is awkward, forcing you to tilt the controller too much to move from side to side.
The lack of multiplayer is not a big surprise, considering the genre, but there are not even online leaderboards. Though you receive points for every brick destroyed and every powerup collected, including a bonus 1000 points should you take the time to meticulously destroy every breakable brick on the field, none of that really matters. There is not even a local leaderboard, which brings to question the existence of these points or why someone would bother to clear the board. You are also timed on each level, which makes little sense when, again, there are not even local leaderboards. This timer also counts up when the “level complete” animation is playing, and before you can even move your paddle at the start of a new level.
[youtube width=”425″ height=”344″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEP-cKPi5w8[/youtube]
Overall, this title does so many things right in terms of staying true to its genre. There are some amazing levels, inventive powerups, and the soundtrack is decent while thankfully the option to play a custom soundtrack is there. But outside of the custom soundtrack and awkward SIXAXIS implementations, there really is nothing going for this game that would entice anyone who is not already a fan of this genre to pick it up.
PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score
Some truly excellent level designs Custom soundtrack support helps playability, though it does not use the XMB player No leaderboards or any sort of PSN feature usage to speak of
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