Shatter
Score: 83% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Sidhe Developer: Sidhe Media: Download/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Arcade/ Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: The Pong game concept was the first videogame ever. Since then, there have been quite a few variations of Pong and several new twists to it. Shatter is a Pong derivative with several twists to it! When you launch Shatter, you'll feel like you're in space. Your "paddle" is a space type vessel and you're shooting at various objects. Graphically, I found it to be very visually pleasing. When you hit the items, they shatter into a whole bunch of fragments that you have to collect; these are all very beautiful looking and easy to see, so you can collect them easier. The projectile is also quite easy to keep track of on the screen as it does not look similar to anything that you're trying to collect so that you don't get confused by any of the objects on-screen. The music in Shatter has a definite spacey sound to it. The sound effects and the music just fit right with the game. Granted, they're not necessary to play the game, so if you want to mute it and listen to whatever music you want, you can.
Gameplay: The concept of Shatter is very easy to understand. You simply bounce the projectile off of the ship and hit the things in front of you. Those things will shatter into a whole bunch of pieces. You need to suck in all of the pieces that you can. If you release anything special, like extra lives, you'll need to suck those in as well! So really, the trick to Shatter is to learn how to suck in and blow the projectile away from you to keep it on the board and still suck in the objects that you want to collect. There are several different modes that you can choose to play in Shatter, but you'll have to unlock all but one first. Story Mode is the only option that you have when you first start the game. You'll need to play through it to unlock the rest of the modes. In Story Mode, you will have to clear board after board of objects with only a few lives. You can earn extra lives during the course of the game though! After you unlock Endless Mode and Endless Mode Co-op by completing the first board, Kinetic Harvest, in Story Mode, you can play them. Here you just keep fighting board after board for as long as you can survive. Obviously, the Endless Mode Co-op requires two players, but otherwise it is the same thing. You work together to clear the boards. After you have played the Endless Mode, you will unlock the Time Attack Mode (playing Endless Mode Co-op will unlock Timed Attack Co-op). Here you have a specific time limit to play in. There is also Bonus Mode and Boss Rush Mode that you can unlock to play as well.
Difficulty: So given that Shatter is a derivative of Pong, you might think that if you're a Pong master then you'll be awesome at Shatter. But that definitely isn't the case. The real difficulty isn't keeping the projectile on the board. As I said before, the real challenge is trying to collect all the things that you need to while keeping the projectile on the board. Since there are many levels of Shatter, they start out pretty easy and get progressively harder. There are ten stages of Shatter total with quite a few waves each, so there should be plenty difficult boards for you to play.
Game Mechanics: My one real complaint about Shatter is the controls. You use the arrow keys to move the paddle around and the Left and Right Mouse Buttons to suck and blow objects. Since the majority of people are right-handed, this means that you're going to be using your right hand to move the mouse and you left on the keys. Since you're using the arrow keys, you either have your left hand crossed over the keyboard or you move the keyboard to use the arrow keys. Either way, it's just not very comfortable. If you're like me and on a laptop, you can invert this system though and use the touch pad with your left hand and arrow keys on the right. It's a lot more comfortable than trying to rearrange your desktop to use your left hand to type on the arrow keys. It would have been really nice if you could choose what keys to use. When you play with two players, the Player Two controls the left side of the keyboard, so to me, it's better to be Player Two! With the exception of the controls, I have enjoyed playing Shatter. It's a great twist on a classic game!
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
Minimum System Requirements: Windows XP SP3 or Higher, 2.0 GHz+ single-core or dual core (any speed), 512 MB RAM, 250 MB free HD space, 128MB dedicated graphics processor with shader model 2 support, DirectX 9.0c compatible audio card, DirectX 9.0c   Test System: Windows XP SP3, 2.4 GHz processor, 3 GB RAM, 20 GB free HD space, 128MD nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, DirectX 9.0c
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