Well, for a game with such a simple title, this game certainly has more than its fair share of girth. The install file for this thing is almost a whole gigabyte (which, yes, is not much when dealing with games, but most of these games are 50MB, tops).
The question is, does Block Breakers squander its generous memory space? Or does it use all it has to deliver an experience as jam-packed as my hard drive?
Well, to be perfectly honest, this game isn't much in terms of depth. The gameplay is as simple as the title, though the control scheme is a bit wonky. There's an optional tutorial, but with out playing it, I'm not sure how you'd figure out that you use the arrow keys to attack when movement is already handled by WASD and the mouse buttons are completely unused. Oh well. The tutorial is short and sweet, so i can forgive this game for now.
This game is arcade-style, which is good for me because it only takes me about ten minutes to play it before I've gained enough info to write a review. The main selling point of this game is the aesthetic. They really try to impress you with their 3D rendering skills. I wasn't blown away, but honestly I think that's only because I was comparing it to bLight the whole time. True, the game isn't quite as pretty as bLight, but it's still got charm, personality, and enough polygons to make my graphics chip sweat a little.
The gameplay is absolute madness. Everything moves so quickly and sporadically that it's nigh-impossible to tell what you're doing. True, the characters are varied enough that you can spot the difference between you and an enemy easily, but that doesn't help when you're careening down into the void because you didn't see that hammer flying at the block you happened to be standing on. In fact, the game would be confusing even if it weren't for the crazily paced environment shifts and particle physic nightmares. See, you are given a hammer and some enemies. Every human instinct should tell you to aim your hammer at your enemies, but that doesn't do anything. What you're aiming for is the ground beneath them, which creates a weird disconnect that leaves the game feeling overall sloppy and imprecise.
As odd as this may seem, I think I'm going to end up recommending Block Breakers for the very reasons that I've just spent three paragraphs complaining about. See, a game like this isn't meant to test your skill, and the player should know that going into it. It's very similar in my opinion to a variation of Super Smash Bros. Brawl (oh dear, I've said it. Let the firestorm begin).
Like Brawl, the controls are messy and designed in such a way that you end up blindly mashing buttons rather than learning the nuances of the game. It's not a game you compete with your friends in. It's a game you play because you want to turn your brain off and escape for a bit. And escape I did. The music, graphics and gameplay meld together in such a way that I was unable to maintain my analytical viewpoint and instead just relaxed and played. And you know what? If a game can do that, I give it my seal of approval (even if falling into the depths of space every 2 nanoseconds does ruin the flow a bit).
Links
a Mario Party minigame on 'roids: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=8714
PS - the music keeps playing indefinitely, even after you close the game...WHY?!
