Arkanoid

The classic block-busting game has been brought to the convenience of our mobile phones in yet another good remake of the renowned Arkanoid.

Those of you old enough to remember the classic bat, ball and a variety of blocks will be finding this title every bit as familiar as the first version – as far as my memory serves, it is indeed identical in format, style and even the placement of the blocks themselves.

As with all other versions of this simple yet addictive game, the aim of the game is to launch your ball and hit all blocks in the screen before you can clear the level and then move onto the next. You get points for destroying all the blocks and even get the odd power-up as a reward for your trouble along the way. And yes, you lose a life for every time you fail to connect with the ball and it goes passed you.

Power-ups include all the usual suspects such sticky ball (it sticks to your paddle – helping you aim and take a breather should you need one), bigger paddle, unstoppable ball (which blasts through any block) extra life, multi-balls and lasers (which does away with having to try and direct the ball at the blocks – which can be quite tiresome when there’s only one block left) amongst others.

Although nearly all blocks go in one hit, some blocks are impenetrable and others take quite a few hits before they are destroyed.

Thankfully the game makers have included a few end-level bosses to compete against (as far as I can tell it’s after every 10^th level up!) These usually include fairly low resolution figures with take quite a few hits before being destroyed. However, rather than letting the ball get by you is not the only way you will lose a life. These rather annoying bosses have lasers which home into your last position and should you stay still for too long (watching the ball or not watching out for the lasers), you’ll come a cropper and lose a life. Awkwardly, the combination of ducking lasers whilst trying to keep the ball in play is quite an achievement and will keep you grinding your teeth in frustration at times as there’s simply nothing you can do to keep alive!

Thankfully these bosses aren’t terribly frequent and don’t pose a huge risk to your progress in the game should you be quite well practiced. The levels themselves are quite imaginative – they resemble ships, fruit and other familiar patterns.

For me this game is quite therapeutic and offers a decent amount of fun and thumb-twiddling action to keep you more than entertained – just as the original did on the computer.

Rating 86%

Positives

Captures the original game entirely

Entertaining, puzzling and tests your reflexes

Should you die, you can continue the game from that level onwards (rather than going back to the beginning)

Negatives

A little repetitive – only so much block patterns can do to keep this at bay

Sometimes watching the ball bounce about for quite a while can be a bit boring

Graphics are a little dated