BreakQuest: Extra Evolution Review

If you haven’t had a chance to play BreakQuest, you now have a second chance through the Playstation Network. BreakQuest: Extra Evolution brings back BreakQuest with enhanced graphics and sounds to bring a fun experience for all. Created by Nurium games and published by BeatShapers, this game provides hour of fun, no matter where you are.

BreakQuest: Extra Evolution is a complete throw back to classic games like Arkanoid, which I spent hundreds of hours playing both in the arcades and at home. With those games well carved into my past gaming experience, it was a no brainer on figuring out how to play BreakQuest. You simply shoot the ball into the play field and keep the ball from getting past you.

As with Arkanoid, there’s no need for a huge back story or plot to this game. Just pick up the controller and start plugging away at each level. In essence each level is like a puzzle. In some levels you need to hit certain objects first, such as power reactors, in order to turn on the main reactor. Once the main reactor is on, you can then knock it out of the field.

With over 100 levels, you certainly get your money’s worth. With each level being completely unique, there’s no real sense of grinding or repetition in game play either. Each level is broken down to ten each, with a boss battle at the end. The boss battles are hard and certainly rewarding when completing, but I found that if you lose the boss battle, you have to start back a level instead of jumping right back into the boss battle.

Much like Arkanoid, you get power ups along the way. Some power ups are helpful, while others can be hindrances, so you need to be careful which ones you choose. You also have a wall defense below you and once you figure out how to use it, it becomes a huge tool.

With Breakout: Extra Evolutions being released through Playstation store as a Mini, you can either play Breakout at home on the PS3, or you can take it with you on the go with the PSP or PS Vita. With clean solid colors, reminiscent of Loco Rocco, this game looks good on any console.

Although the physics of Breakout clearly rival that of older games like Arkanoid, I found at times that the physics would simply break. If you get your ship to the ball a little too late, it could cause a glitch where the ball breaks through your shield and can get stuck inside your ship. Whenever you break physics, a game wigs out, and in the case the ball will immediately shoot out in a random direction. If it shoots back into the field all is good, but if it shoots past you, it could mean certain doom if your defensive wall is not up, or in some cases it can bounce off the defensive wall and then bounce back to the ship. This causes a dribble effect and eventually the ball will shoot past the broken wall and you lose.

Even though the graphics are clean and vibrant, it’s very hard to tell what you need to hit until you’ve hit it. This makes starting each level very confusing. It’s hard to tell if you’re about to shoot the ball into an open space, or a block half and inch from the ship. There are also some blocks with physics that change up game play, however if the physics wigs out, again you’ll have no chance for recovery.

BreakQuest: Extra Evolution is one of those games that is fun to play without having to worry about story, plot, leveling up, or any other nuisance when you want to just get into a game and turn your brain off. The puzzles are challenging, although sometimes the challenge comes unexpectedly from bad physics or blocks that blend into the field. This game feels like it’s built so you can jump on a bus, or subway, pop out the PSP/PS Vita and hit a few levels before your stop, although it might be too much fun, and you might miss your stop. The graphics are solid enough that it looks good on a big screen too, and if you don’t want to sit next to strangers and play this, PS3’s got you covered.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 3.