Unfortunately, we won’t have many thoughts to break down if these stream issues don’t get resolved in short order. Torch subscribers can check out a VIP roundtable later as Bruce Hazelwood, Kevin Cattani and I break down our thoughts. Looks like it's back to the careers guidance office.SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN). But it's not as satisfying a line of work as you might think.
If the ball moved faster without power-ups and the levels were more suitable for the small screen (it's a conversion of a Windows PC game), Ricochet Lost Worlds could have been excellent.īut as it is, it's merely alright. Also, given the small playing area and location of destruction-proof blocks, you can easily find yourself spending several minutes with just one block left to get rid of, aimlessly bouncing the sphere around the screen. This may not sound like a huge fault after all, the sphere does bounce around quite smartly when ricocheting around the blocks at the top of the screen.īut it does mean that the paths that the sphere takes around the screen are a bit too repetitive.
This means that there are about eight axis the sphere moves along after bouncing off your paddle. It's less impressive in reality because the speed and smoothness of the sphere's movement is such that it looks as though the game's animation is of the stop-motion variety.Īlso, because your average mobile phone isn't possessed of massive computing power, the physics of the sphere are limited. It's the power-ups that are most entertaining and, before long, you'll find yourself with a safety net to catch spheres that you miss, laser guns fitted to your craft to shoot blocks down, and the ability to play with three or four spheres at once.
Rather, as you progress through the levels you discover new power-ups for your destructive delight as well as sneaky new types of block. The world you're on makes little difference to the gameplay though. The game is set on four different worlds, each of which is reminiscent of a lost or mythical society (an Atlantis-like Sunken City starts things off, before moving on to the centre of the earth, a Mayan-influenced lump of rock, and so-on). In Ricochet Lost Worlds the concept has been dragged kicking (if not screaming, then maybe grumbling slightly) into the 21st century. We've seen a brace of versions of the game in the past year or so (and some, like Block Breaker Deluxe, are better than others). If it all sounds very familiar, that's because it's an idea borrowed from Breakout, one of those games that, along with Space Invaders and Pong, is a bona fide classic. Hit a block with the sphere and it'll disintegrate, clearing the way for you to pound at the ones behind. And rather than go at them with a big gun, demolition ball, or high explosives, you have to make do with bouncing an ion sphere (a giant ball bearing to the rest of us) at them. In fact, if Ricochet Lost Worlds is anything to go by, you'll have to wait until we've discovered other worlds and the technology required to build a spaceship / hovercraft that sports a giant paddle on its front bumper.įor this unwieldy-looking craft will be the tool of your trade if you're a block basher in the sci-fi future, and you'll need to be at a zen-like one with it if you're to succeed.Īhead of you lie 80 levels that need to be cleared of the brick-like menaces to society. If mobile phone games are to be believed, then the art of bouncing a ball into a brick wall, destroying blocks as you go, is someday going to be very important.