Homage Review: Shatter (PC, PS3)

Think of a game, new or old, and chances are you can trace its roots back to a previous game. The lineage of New Zealand developer Sidhe's bat, ball and block game Shatter is clear to see.

When you see Shatter the chances are you'll think it's just an iteration on Arkanoid, but of course Arkanoid was an iteration on Breakout, which in turn was an iteration on Pong, which, remarkably, can trace its roots back to the one of very first video games, William Higinbotham's Tennis For Two from 1958. But don't let that put you off.

At the beginning of the game you are just a bat, trapped in a cell of one of the many matrices in Sector 14G of the Kinetic Harvest Zone, knocking a ball back and forth against a spark plug to make energy. Then there's an anomaly, the spark plug breaks, your ball shatters the walls of your cell and you escape. And so begins a 4-6 hour journey as you break blocks and even battle bosses in your fight for freedom. It's not much of a story, but it's different.

I've said Shatter's lineage is clear, so let's just quickly check off all the routine stuff:

✔ Bat
✔ Ball
✔ Bricks to break
✔ Power-ups

But I said don't be put off by its generic genes, Sidhe, have gone out of their way to inject some innovation into the genre. For a start, the first few levels are horizontal, like Pong, rather than vertical like every over Breakout and Arkanoid clone. Over the course of the game you'll be batting from all sorts of crazy angles. As usual, your balls represent your lives, but in Shatter you can initiate multiple-ball mode by firing another ball at any time, sacrificing a life in the process. It's a risk, but in the right circumstances it can really pay off. Any balls that are left over at the end of the wave go back to being lives on the next wave. Next thing of note is the fragments (known as Shards) that float around the screen when you break a brick. These can be collected to slowly build up a power meter. When the meter is full you can unleash a few seconds of hot laser death called a Shard Storm, which is very handy when it comes two Shatter next innovative feature, the boss fights. I may be overlooking some obscure Breakout clone or other, but I have certainly never seen bosses in  other games like this before. They every half a dozen waves or so and in typical style they represent the end of each world. Among Shatter's 10 bosses there's a snake made of giant blocks, there's Shatter's version of David and Goliath as you face off against a giant bat, and even a boss you have to fight in 360°.

As you can tell by how you active multi-ball and blasters, Sidhe have also tried to be different with Shatter's power-ups too. There's no glue-ball or extra-wide bats here. Other power-ups include a Shard multiplier, an unstoppable ball that will break any type of block and a manoeuvre ball power up, which leads us to Shatter's biggest innovation: your bat's ability to suck and blow. This serves multiple purposes. For a start, it can be used to collect power ups. Next it can be used to direct your ball towards its target; when you have the manoeuvre ball power-up it's even possible to blow the ball back before it ever reaches your bat. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can use it to collect the Shards, which in itself puts you at risk of unwittingly changing the ball's trajectory in the process. Other tricks up Shatter's sleeve include blocks that drift towards your bat, knocking both the ball and the bat itself out of position. There's a lot going on, but with a decent multi-button mouse it's all perfectly manageable and unlike other games in this genre, Shatter is generous with its allocation of lives, so rather than being defeated within a few levels there's a good chance you will finish it and free Bat-1138. After that the game unlocks a host of new modes, including boss rush mode, but whether you'll want to play again is questionable.

Video games rely on iteration to improve and often the game that introduced some brilliant new idea was not the best example of it. So yes, Shatter plays like Arkanoid and every other game derived from it or Breakout, but it is also the best version of this genre I have played since Taito's 1986 classic.

Aside from how good Shatter's gameplay and visual are, I must also mention its gorgeous techno soundtrack, composed by Module. If you like ambient dance music, you will absolutely love the music in Shatter -- it's actually good enough to listen to on its own. With that in mind, here's the music video for world 6, Amethyst Caverns. Yes, they made a music video for the sound track -- it's that good:

Plays like

• Breakout
• Arkanoid

Highs

• Feels like a significant iteration of an otherwise well-worn genre.
• Brilliantly-realised boss fights.
• Great visuals.
• Even better sound track --one of my favourites of all time.

Lows

• Not much replay value once you finish it.

Shatter is available for PlayStation 3 on the PlayStation Network Store or for PC via the Steam service, priced £6.99.

Also available for purchase is Module's soundtrack, priced around £3. If you just want to preview it, you can listen to the whole thing on Bandcamp.com here:  http://sidhe.bandcamp.com/album/shatter-official-videogame-soundtrack.