Krypton Egg – The Ultimate Breakout
App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating:
By: Krypton Egg - The Ultimate Breakout
Version #: 1.0
Date Released: 2009-02-06
Developer: Chillingo Ltd
Price: 0.99
User Rating:The old fashioned Bricks game is by far one of my favorites. There is just something intriguing about having a little paddle and ball and using said ball to destroy bricks in some fancy design. My favorite part of games like this though, are the power ups! Multiple balls, wider paddle, slow ball, and especially the power up that allows the paddle to fire bullets. Well, if you are like me and love these kind of games, Chillingo Ltd. has come to the rescue with a new one called Krypton Egg.
Krypton Egg plays basically the same way any other Bricks or Breakout type game would. Once you open the game you can tweak a few things in the options menu. Background music, sound effects, orientation (landscape only, just switches sides), and even controls from drag to tilt. I’ll warn you now however that tilt controls are a bit harder to adapt to, so I just stuck to drag controls. Start a game and you are given a screen of multi-colored bricks, and a paddle. On the bottom of the screen is a dark gray rectangle below the paddle that allows you to place your finger there to control the paddle without your finger being in the way. This feature makes drag controls even more appealing to me. Tap the screen to start the game, and simply drag the paddle back and forth to keep the ball bouncing up and destroying bricks. Once all the bricks are destroyed, you move onto the next level. Each brick you hit has a chance to drop a power up, some are good and some are not so good. Krypton Egg is littered with power ups, there are a LOT! There are too many too list but they do range from wider/shorter paddle, multi-balls, one power up makes the ball a bit bigger (and it will get pretty big), and even a beer mug that will reverse the way the paddle moves in accordance with your finger. There are a lot more than that, but honestly I can’t remember them all because there are so many. Some of them I’m not even sure what they do exactly. Krypton Egg also comes with enemies though. Every few seconds a door at the top of the screen will open and a random enemy will appear, they don’t really do anything except bounce around the screen and if your ball or paddle hits them, they die. I’m not entirely sure of the point to the enemies, maybe to throw your ball off course, I’m not really sure. The only enemy you really have to worry about, is the bosses, which blink red. The only way to kill these is to hit your ball into them, if they touch your paddle, you will lose a life.
Krypton Egg comes with personal complaints too though. The bricks and the paddle, both are rather small at the beginning of each game. Granted, you can get power ups to increase the size of both of these, but it’s hard to keep track of your ball when there are as many power ups dropping every second. Krypton Egg is also played in landscape, which is fine, except that I don’t have long enough thumbs to be able to go all the way from one side of the screen to the other. This means I have to use both of my thumbs to play, which a lot of times means I lose the ball going from one side of the screen to the other quickly. My biggest complaint however is the lack of control of the ball. In most breaker games if you let the ball hit the corner of the paddle or more towards one side than the other, it will give you a little control over where it will end up. In this game however, it seemed like I had absolutely no control. Even hitting the ball with the exact corner of the paddle doesn’t mean the ball will change direction. This makes completing a level very difficult if you only have one brick left and can’t control the direction of the ball. I am hoping this is something that will be addressed in the near future with a update.
QUICK TAKE
Value: Medium
Would I Buy Again: Yes
Learning Curve: None-Very Easy
Who is it For: Everyone, it’s a game!
My Likes: Lots and lots of power ups!
My Dislikes: Lack of control over ball direction.
Final Statement: Krypton Egg is overall a good game. It’s fun and entertaining. It’s a great new version of an old-fashioned game. Few updates and this will easily compete with the best games of this type on iPhone.
Rating: 3 Stars
O U R T A K E . . .