Monster Breakout – Brick Breaker Pixel RPG Review: Another Brick in the Retro Wall

When I first played the Atari classic, Breakout, as a lad in a suburban mall arcade many moons ago, never did I think that I’d one day play a version of this that had a story, characters who spoke, and would, somehow, not be all that fun. In fact, the overall experience would be rather...frustrating...in certain ways. And yet here we are, over four decades later, with just such a game—Monster Breakout: Brick Breaker Pixel RPG.

This title is a riff on the original Breakout (more so Super Breakout if I want to be that persnickety guy) that adds RPG elements where you defeat monsters in a fantasy world with a bouncy ball and a reflective shield. But this riff has you employing the main character as your paddle, and the action here ain’t no turn-based jam. After a brief sliver of the story, you’re walked through the basic mechanics of the experience: Strike the almost constantly moving ball—your main weapon here—with your shield to deflect it and destroy monsters and obstacles that lie before you. Knocking the ever-bouncing ball against a critter or barrier (bushes, walls, barrels, etc.) will damage and ultimately obliterate the opponent or obstacle.

At the outset of each level you get to choose from a set of shuffled cards that supply boosts such as augmented defense, or hit points, or a devastating blast that strikes everything when you first release the ball. Instead of a limited number of balls to work with, in Monster Breakout you have hit points—just like an RPG. When a ball manages to slip past you (which happened much more than I liked) or an enemy attack strikes you, you lose some of this HP. Lose it all and it’s GAME OVER time, baby, but you can expend the experience points you’ve gained on raising your skill levels, equip any new gear you’ve found (weapons and armor can be obtained from treasure chests, smashed obstacles, or slain monsters), and head back into the fray. Since the stats gained from leveling up can be freely assigned, it would be prudent to favor increased attack or HP—just my two cents, of course.

Those RPG-style flourishes keep things interesting in Monster Breakout. Although the main gameplay mechanic in this experience is Breakout-esque, the RPG elements are elegantly implemented and never felt like a burden or tacked on. At the end of the day, though, you’re just banging a ball around the horizontal screen, and not really moving all that well to do so with ball physics that feel a bit wonky to boot (more on this later). These imperfections wear thin rather quickly. Trust me.On top of all that, there’s an energy system as well, and while it isn’t the worst I’ve ever come across in the mobile games scene, it frustrated me when I couldn’t play again because I had depleted my energy, or when I had to watch an inane 30-second commercial before I could continue.

In terms of the touch controls and the overall physics employed in Monster Breakout, well, this is where this title has the majority of its issues. You can adjust the angle of your player when striking the ball so you can, ostensibly, control where the ball will go, but even if I was careful how I hit it and what angle I chose, I was still “off” or the ball would bounce in an unexpected way a ball definitely should not bounce. Not to mention that the touch controls feel sluggish and nowhere near as responsive as they should (or as a real paddle controller or spinner would)—especially when things are rocking at a rapid clip.

There are also attacks/shots from monsters that you’ll have to avoid while simultaneously aiming and dealing with the dodgy physics, and these attacks also seem to come at the most inopportune moments, when you really just can’t move out of their way. The damage caused by the ball getting behind you is typically more than actually being hit by an enemy’s attack. So even if you are likely to be struck by an enemy's assault when attempting to get to the ball, it’s better to be hit by the attack rather than letting the ball get behind you. Seems odd, I know, but that’s the logic this game employs.

The graphics found in Monster Breakout are 2D pixel art with a slightly monochrome hue that is most certainly reminiscent of an original Game Boy, and that’s super cool in my book. The music is also akin to an 8-bit, chiptune soundtrack of yore, which compliments the whole experience perfectly and really lends itself to a groovy, retro atmosphere that hit me right in the “I’m-playing-this-game-in the-back-of-my-parent’s-car-on-a-long-road-trip” feels.

I would’ve loved to have been in the room when someone pitched the concept of saving a fantasy world by deflecting a ball and breaking blocks, the same way I would have loved to have been there when Akira Fujita and Hiroshi Tsujino proposed Arkanoid to Taito, or when Yutaka Saito pitched Odama to Vivarium, two landmark titles Monster Breakout truly reminds me of. But unlike those two titles, this one isn’t a classic game—it is a decent distraction that’s fine in short bursts...but I can’t shake the inextricable feeling that it could have been so much more.

There are some enjoyable concepts floating about in Monster Breakout: Brick Breaker Pixel RPG, but it seems like they’re held back from really finding their true stride, mostly by the slow-moving touch controls and imprecise physics which are, in a word: exasperating. As it stands, I can't imagine anyone playing this for long without losing interest and moving on to one of the thousands of meatier titles available in the mobile game marketplace these days.

SCORE: 2 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Play Monster Breakout if you dig retro classics like Super Breakout.

• Also check out what’s going on with MB: BBPRPG if you like the twist/genre mash-ups like Odama and Arkanoid as mentioned in the review.