Brick Breaker Revolution 3D

Can you teach an old dog new tricks? I don't mean in the taking your Granny down to your local Chicago Rock in a mini-skirt sense (we've all done it, right?), but rather genuinely helping someone or something adjust or reinvent itself for the modern world. So many supposed reinventions are nothing more than taking a slab of mutton and dressing it as lamb rather than actually making a difference.

My Gran isn't going to read this, is she?

Brick Breaker Revolution 3D is one such supposed reinvention, taking the basics of 1970s arcade classic Breakout (itself based largely on Pong) and making them more palatable for the mobile generation. In essense, this means attaching a sort of plot - which revolves around you escaping from a computer matrix, adding an element or two to the gameplay and dressing it up in flashy 3D visuals. Essentially, however, underneath the make-up and the perfume, this is the same beast as it ever was: you, a bat, a ball, and a wall of bricks.

For anyone who missed out on Breakout or any of its recent clones, your job is to launch a ball towards a pack of bricks confined in a room. Once in motion, the ball takes out any bricks it touches, bouncing straight back and also ricocheting off the walls that surround them. It's then your aim to keep the ball in play for as long as you can, controlling a paddle at the bottom of the map that sits in an open chasm, moving it left and right so that you can deflect the ball back towards the bricks.

Clearing the screen is your eventual goal, but some of the bricks also release power-ups that can either help or hinder your progress. Green power-ups – ranging from gun turrets to laser beams – can be picked up by touching them with the paddle as they fall from the mass of bricks to the bottom of the screen, while red ones have to be avoided, as they generally add an impediment or two, such as reversing the controls of the paddle or making it smaller.

However, Brick Breaker Deluxe 3D's main trick is the Revolution mode, which ramps up the challenge by adding a gap and paddle to the top of the map as well as the bottom from the off, meaning that once you've cleared a level of the majority of its bricks - bricks that act as a buffer initially -there's a chance of losing the ball at the top as well as the bottom.

Though only a minor alteration on paper, in practice this changes play entirely (or revolutionises it, as Digital Chocolate would claim). No longer can you rely on the safety of the back wall to bounce the ball back into action - instead it becomes a hazard, meaning not a second can pass without you keeping your eye on the ball's path, tracking it at every moment so you're ready to paddle it back into play when required.

Perhaps more problematic than this is the game's new 3D viewpoint, which sees the bricks - or cubes as they appear here - explode on impact, covering a fair portion of the screen and often blocking your view of the ball. As a result, it's perfectly possible to lose the ball in the furore, only to discover it again as it slides out of play.

Things don't stop there, either. An unlockable Nightmare mode ups the ante further, speeding up play and providing more pitfalls than either the Revolution mode or the game's Classic mode, which attempts to serve up a truer replication of Breakout. Indeed, it's this classic interpretation that shines - while the attempt to shake things up a little with Revolution is admirable and suggests a genuine desire by Sumea to further Atari's original rather than simply aping it, it could well make the game too hard, too frustrating, and just a little bit too taxing for the average player.

Brick Breaker Revolution 3D also stumbles when it comes to the Classic mode, given that Gameloft's Block Breaker Deluxe series follows the original Breakout more closely, making it the more natural choice for aficionados. That said, for anyone who found the original game just a little bit too light, this is your perfect next destination.

The revolution might not be complete, but there's value in having a go and enough here to suggest hauling in some of the game's needless and distracting advances could result in an altogether more rewarding follow-up.

Brick Breaker Revolution 3D

Brick Breaker Revolution 3D is a Breakout clone that attempts to further the challenge by twisting play a little, but results in a title that may well be too taxing for anyone out for reliving an arcade classic
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Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.