During its time, Breakout was hailed as a game that used otherwise mundane physics to greatly entertaining effect, and was also described as the result of converting Pong into a fun single-player game. Since then, there had been a lot of games that built on Breakout's designs.
Shatter appears to be the latest to do so, by implementing various features with varying effectiveness, as well as very different visual styles.
The visual styles of Shatter would be its first-most aspect that the player would experience. Sidhe Interactive's eschewing of textures for 3D polygons is apparent right from the start, opting instead for glossy finishing for surfaces that reflect light in dazzling manners. The number of polygons and the sophistication in the shapes of these in the game's 3D models are not a slouch from an aesthetic perspective either; moving 3D objects in the game have very smooth, if rather simple, animations, and none of them feature sharp edges unless they are meant to be crystalline in appearance.
To describe all of the game's artistic feats here would lead to redundancy and also dilute the praise (and complaints) when other aspects of the game that harbor these are elaborated on later in this review. Therefore, they will be described wherever the associated game designs are mentioned.
The Story mode will provide the best idea of what the premise of the game is, though some level designs in the Story mode would not appear to contribute in meaningful manners to the progression of the story.
The story appears to have dystopian themes; this much is apparent when the player is shown a lattice of cells which are occupied by paddle-like beings wasting away their time in incarceration by repeatedly re-bounding balls against the opposite walls of their cells, while an apparently more sinister-looking member of their kind flew by past them.
One of these paddles managed to crack open its cell, and it promptly went after the dark one. Throughout its journey, it will face obstacles that it will have to break through (hence the premise for the Breakout-like gameplay) and nasty bosses to battle and destroy.
It's a simple story, and it is seemingly meant to gradually introduce the kinds of challenges that the player will face as the game progresses. However, not all of the challenges would be refreshingly different from the previous ones and the ones after, especially the levels in between boss-fights.
In each of these levels, the player character, which is the aforementioned paddle, is somehow accosted and confined within a large cell (not unlike the first one from which it has escaped from). To escape from the current cell, which also doubles as a level, the player character has to launch and re-bound balls that it has accrued to destroy blocks or other obstacles that it may come across.
While the commencement of these levels one after another would not be odd to veterans of Breakout and Breakout-like games, the story's attempt to justify such a design may seem awkward to a discerning player, especially considering that they can be seen as little more than fillers in between boss battles.
Granted, some of these levels are designed to introduce the mechanics that govern gameplay. To cite some examples, some early levels show that the paddle is not necessarily bound to a certain part of the screen and may be constrained on either straight or curved rails, while some others are intended to introduce new kinds of blocks that have different properties and effects on the player character's balls. However, the other levels simply recycle such content and mechanics; while they probably will not feel too repetitive even to a jaded player, they are very likely to be perceived as a hassle in between great boss fights (which will be elaborated on later).
As for the mechanics that govern the game, the movement of the paddle will be the first that the player would encounter. As mentioned earlier, the paddle is restricted to two-dimensional rails of straight lines and curves; regardless, everything is constrained to a flat 2D-plane (as expected of a Breakout-like game). However, the ball is (of course) not under the direct control of the player, but has its own freedom of movement. Despite this, the player can choose to launch another ball and have more than one ball bouncing around the level; the benefit from taking on such greater risks is that the more balls there are, the more points that can be scored in quick succession from having them break stuff up, which also leads to a faster increase in the score bonus multiplier (more on this later).
Like the balls in previous Breakout-like games, they bounce with gusto along fairly predictable trajectories - at least when they hit straight surfaces. Curved surfaces can make the trajectories of the balls more difficult to predict, and this is particularly evident in levels where the boundaries are circular. While this is a refreshing change from rectangular levels, levels with curvaceous boundaries do not encourage the use of more than one ball; there does not appear to be any additional benefit to be had to compensate for the risk from handling multiple balls in such levels.
A feature that makes Shatter quite different from most previous Breakout-like games is the capability of balls and some other items in the level to be affected by air-drafts. Early in the Story mode, the player will be informed that the paddle can inhale or exhale to produce gusts of wind that can change the directions of the movement of these items; the player can even have things - namely the ball(s) - hurtling toward the paddle if he/she has the paddle sucking air for a long while, or keep the ball(s) and debris away by blowing at them (though this is not a perfectly reliable method of preventing things from getting too close to the paddle).
To be at least moderately successful at this game, the player will have to make use of this game mechanic; the levels in Shatter's Story mode are very much designed to encourage its use.
True to its name, Shatter gives the player many things to break apart with balls. The Story mode will introduce these, starting with mundane blocks that are easy to wreck and steer around with gusts of air. Later, there will be blocks with other properties, such as being immune to gusts of air, produce gusts of wind themselves, exploding when destroyed (thus destroying other nearby stuff as well) and even blocks that generate gravity (otherwise, every block eventually fall towards the gap in the level borders that the rails of the paddle are aligned along).
These blocks are actually 2D-sprites, but they are colorful, crisp and have more than adequate contrast with the background. They also have several, smooth transitory animations to other variants of the same sprites, if they are blocks that can take more than one hit from the ball, and they also spin about with believable momentum if they had been knocked out of their original places.
Unfortunately, Sidhe Interactive may have overdone the animations that depict the demise of these blocks.
All blocks explode with lots of bright particle effects, which can obscure the view of the level; the explosive ones explode even more spectacularly. If there are other blocks or even other explosive blocks nearby, the screen can be flooded with an astonishing deluge of particle effects. The player simply has no idea what is occurring behind these clouds of pizzazz, and this can be especially frustrating if the player's ball is behind these.
When blocks are destroyed using the ball or through the effects of explosive blocks, they will leave behind blue shards that are especially susceptible to gusts of air and have no effect on the momentum of actual blocks if they collide with the latter. These blue shards have high contrasting (fully 3D) shapes and graphical effects, so they won't obscure the screen as much as exploding blocks would. The player character can suck these in towards itself, adding them to an energy meter that can be used to pull off two kinds of moves.
The first, and more spectacular one, is Shard-storm, which can only be triggered once the energy bar is full. When executed, it has time slowing down while the paddle fires a hail of shards that can obliterate or at least severely damage most things in its way, except shielded bosses and shard-resistant blocks. This power will completely expend all energy in the bar, so it encourages the player to be careful in its usage, especially considering that the other power may be more versatile as it can be used at any time.
The other ability is a Shield that the paddle can conjure around itself to protect itself from any blocks hurtling towards it. These will not damage the paddle, but will knock it silly momentarily, possibly causing the player to lose a ball that also comes hurtling by; in later levels, such an occurrence is even more frequent due to deliberate level designs that lead to it. Therefore, the Shield may be more useful in the later levels, requiring that the player juggle between expending energy on the Shield or the Shard-storm, which fortunately still remains useful later in the game (if only for the removal of many blocks in a short time).
In addition to shards, destroyed blocks may yield power-ups that give extra balls, boost the energy bar, temporarily increase the number of shards that are produced after blocks are destroyed and alter the properties of the ball.
The last sorts are perhaps the most interesting, because they change the usual gameplay of hitting blocks with a ball that rebounds in a predictable manner. There is a power-up that change the ball into a virtually unstoppable sphere that blows through blocks without re-bounding, and another that makes it lighter and a lot easier to manipulate using sucking and blowing.
These changes require the player to make predictions about the ball in a different manner. While this makes for a refreshing change in the gameplay experience, they may also seem less like power-ups, i.e. not straight upgrades, but different modes for the ball.
In the story mode, a sense of repetitiveness may build up as the player goes from one level with all-too-familiar gameplay to the next one. This impression would melt away when the player encounters one of the bosses, which are robotic monstrosities that would apparently give more of a challenge that otherwise defenseless blocks would.
The first few of these are very simple-minded and simple-looking creatures who telegraph their moves, which are quite limited in variety; an example of such creatures is a worm-like creature (that may be an ode to the ever-returning boss in Centipede) that only knows how to lunge forward. During these early boss fights, the player will learn that the game will handily highlight the weak points of the boss that need to be hit with either the ball or Shard-storm.
During these boss fights, the player will also know to appreciate any experience that he/she may obtained through learning how the control the ball; boss fights can end very quickly if the player can trap the ball between a barrier and the bosses' weak points, having it bound back and forth to inflict rapid damage.
The later bosses are a lot smarter and a lot more fearsome looking. They hardly telegraph and have a lot more diverse attacks that fill the screen with munitions that can affect the trajectory of the player's ball and also knock the paddle around silly. They also have a lot more defenses, such as shields that cover their weak spots and which only open when they want to launch powerful attacks.
Yet, as fearsome as they are, they can never destroy the paddle and the ball. It would not take long for the player to realize this certainty, which may take some exhilaration away from fighting these otherwise intimidating enemies.
Right after these boss fights, which signal the end of chapters in the Story mode, the player will enter a Bonus level of sorts, which apparently serves as a transit between chapters. In this bonus level, the player's paddle turns into little more than a regular paddle, and has to juggle three special rapidly accelerating balls. Losing these do not result in a game-over, but re-bounding them as many times as possible is a sure way to rack up huge scores.
Shatter can ever only be played locally. The main way to compete with other players over the Internet is to rack up as many points as possible to submit to leaderboards (in the case of the PC version, it is managed by Steamworks). To facilitate this, there is a point multiplier that will amplify the points that the player gains from destroying blocks. This multiplier can be increased by destroying as many things as possible without losing a ball; the loss of a ball sends the multiplier to zero.
That the game has no multiplayer component that allows other players to join the player's sessions may seem disappointing to players who may deem that the game would have more value if it has one; this lack of multiplayer may not faze fans and veterans of Breakout, of course. However, that there is no multiplayer could have been for the better, considering that just a single player can already generate so much visual chaos on-screen.
That is not saying that there can ever be only one paddle on-screen. There are two co-op modes that allows two paddles, and thus two local players to play at the same time to remove incoming stacks of blocks. However, these modes are not as impressive as they sound though; the paddles share different rails, one of top of another, and there is no way to play the story mode in co-op.
The other main modes of play other than Story mode is Endless and Time Attack. In Endless, the player(s) will face incoming stacks of blocks that have to be destroyed. There will be new stacks after the ones that have been destroyed, and they will keep coming anyway if the player fails to destroy the previous ones. The new stacks are even more complicated and tricky to remove. Time Attack is like Endless mode, but only gives the player(s) five minutes to break as many stacks as possible and as efficiently as possible.
These modes are really only there for competition in the leaderboards; they will not give the same satisfaction as the Story mode would. Furthermore, the player will have to unlock the Endless mode (by completing the Story mode) and then play a session of this one to unlock Time Attack. That the player has to jump through such hoops to unlock game modes that do not offer tremendous value to the game would irritate players who had been expecting more from these in compensation for meeting the unlocking requirements.
The Bonus mode, in which the player is really doing nothing more than playing a bonus level ad nauseam, is even more apparent as a leaderboard-oriented mode.
The Boss Rush mode is perhaps the most fun one, as it is one boss fight after another. The bosses are none other than the ones in Story mode, however, so while a player who had fun fighting them would relish fighting them again without the hassle of completing the filler levels in between, he/she would eventually tire of them.
Shatter is far from an ugly game, but its reliance on glossy surfaces and curvaceous polygons would not be impressing a discerning player. However, the sound designs of this game would seem a lot more terrific.
The developers have approached the sound effects in the game with the same enthusiasm as they did the particle effects. Exploding things combust and scatter, accompanied by impressive booms and bangs that would have made exploding them satisfactory if not for the particle effects getting in the way. Balls also re-bound with clear, sharp plinking noises, which conveniently contrast with any other sound clip that is being played. There are also
The game understandably does not provide any voice-over to the obviously non-human player character and other characters, but that did not stop Sidhe Interactive from giving them audio clips for them to express their personality with. The player character is a disappointing exception, because it only ever makes utterances when something bad happens, e.g. losing a ball or getting knocked about by debris.
The bosses are better at expressing their personality, though they are all practically ever-angry beings. Hurting them does elicit some startling sound clips and animations though, which are also meant to prevent the player from killing them too quickly for any fun to be obtained from fighting them (unless the player gets to perform the aforementioned trapping of the ball).
The soundtracks are the best of the sound designs for Shatter. Many of them are electronic and techno soundtracks which are befitting of the game's upbeat gameplay, and there are different sets for different chapters in the Story Mode. Boss fights are accompanied by even more heart-thumping and anxiety-inducing tunes, which are then replaced by more uplifting beats during the Bonus levels.
In conclusion, Shatter may have recycled its own gameplay designs too much in its Story mode, and some of its visual designs stifle some of the fun that can be had. Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy entry in a line of games that give tribute and build on the designs pioneered by Breakout, especially through its exhilarating boss fights and ball-controlling mechanics.