by Ann Dennis

Created on: April 11, 2008   Last Updated: April 18, 2008

Hyperballoid-2

So OK you're supposed to shoot those little balls at a bunch of bricks? The end of the game comes suddenly without any rhyme or reason and there was no introductory frame work to give the player a context for shooting these colored bricks. Oh and you're supposed to collect gems to win but there is only two or three per level and by level nineteen after catching most of the gems I was nowhere near the 25 that one flashing set of words encouraged me to look for. And suddenly on level twelve there were red balls that you weren't supposed to catch? How was I to know that until one killed me?

The graphics are great and the sound was appropriate and in sync with the activity on the screen. I would have liked the game a whole lot more if there was a tutorial. If there was, I didn't get a chance to see it.

In spite of my complaints I was interested and played the game for the whole sixty minutes without noticing the time passing.

I would give credit for the creativity of the graphics team. The game was called an arkanoid but I know pinball when I see it. It's a very good pinball game and if I as wanting a pinball game I would probably buy it as a gift for a child that would let me play with him/her.

The coding that allows the balls to shrink, expand, turn into fireballs and then glowing green balls then grow or shrink the paddle was really cool. I would recommend that the people responsible for code look into level 15. It took one shot with the game ball and chaos ensued. So many bonus balloons were falling that I couldn't even see my ball. When some of the stuff cleared it appeared that my ball had turned into nine and had the balloon effect keeping them up at the top of the screen. It was several seconds before the effect wore off then the green ball with the blue icon fell down and the level was over, and, guess what?, I won. I recommend that this game go back to the drawing board. Include a quick instruction blurb, plus a note on how to choose game versions and levels. I stayed on the beginner level and got to level nineteen in one hour.

Basically I consider this game a gorgeous pinball game and as a rater I have to give it 3/5

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