Krypton Egg Review

I have a secret wish. I wanted to be able to lift one eyebrow like Dwayne (formerly “The Rock”) Johnson. Not so I could look cool &#8211- I will never look that cool &#8211- but so I can give that look at certain times&#8230- you know the “look”.

It’s a look I would reserve for anything calling itself “The Ultimate”. I mean, that’s putting yourself way out there. It’s one thing when others anoint you with the phrase, but you’ve really got to be able to back that up when you say it about yourself.

So imagine that I’m raising that eyebrow when I look at Krypton Egg, a game that calls itself The Ultimate Breakout. Have we really reached the peak of performance when it comes to Breakout games? Is this game really as good as it gets? Let’s see.

I doubt I need to go too deep into a description of Breakout games. We’ve all tried to keep a little ball alive and watched as it took out brick after brick. We’ve all felt that frustration of the last brick in the corner and our inability to get the ball to hit it. So let’s just see what we’ve got with this installment in the genre.

First off, I’ll say I was impressed with the game when I started it up. I liked that I was offered two types of controls, tilt or touch (I’ll get to them later), and I liked the way everything looked when it started up. There is a lot of color on the screen and I actually thought, I might just be looking at the ultimate Breakout game.

But things fell apart for me pretty quickly. Not that this game is bad, it’s just that I think it tries too hard. It seemed like block I hit sent a power up down to me. That sounds good, but I had no idea what most of them did and some were bad and caused me to miss the ball I was after. The images are just too small to be able to keep track of all of them. The game needs to offer about half of what it’s giving.

I was amazed at how many of the power ups were extra balls to try and keep aloft. I actually tried to count one time and got up to nine extra balls at once. Again, that’s just too much. It was no longer about keeping your ball going, it was about trying not to be overloaded with the visual display.

But I think that all of those visuals was really a decoy to take your mind off of what is truly the one thing that keeps this game away from being “ultimate”. There is no control from the paddle over the ball. I’m talking about that little thing we do by hitting the ball off the far end of the paddle to get it going at a different angle, or hitting it in the middle of the paddle to try and slow that angle down. Krypton Egg offers none of that. The angle that it hits your paddle is the angle that it will leave your paddle. This, to me, is unforgivable in a Breakout game.

Alright, back to review stuff. As mentioned, there are two types of controls. I started with touch, and I’ll stay with it. Tilt allows you to tilt your device back and forth and actually lets you pick the sensitivity, but it was just too hard to be precise. Touch gives you an area at the bottom of the screen for your finger and gives you very good control over the paddle.

I read about the “retro” music with the game, but ended up turning it down pretty quickly. Not bad, just didn’t want to keep it going.

The game is very ambitious in what it wants to be. I like that they tried to do a lot with the game, including boss battles from time to time.

But in the end, I think they may have tried to do a little too much of the flash and forgot about the basics. Breakout has always been, at it’s heart, a simple game. And that’s the way it works the best.

There is a lite version of the game so check it out. Maybe you’ll find it a little more “ultimate” than I did.

The Good

Lots of levels
Boss battles
Vibrant graphics

The Bad

Maybe TOO MUCH on the screen
No paddle control of ball