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The $9.99 series of titles from Take Two Interactive for the PlayStation have been less than spectacular so far, but with the release of the latest in the series, Ball Breakers, it seems that the line up could be making a nice turn around. Ball Breakers, developed by Lost Toys, centers around the premise that the galaxy’s worst criminals are sent to this facility where everything below the waist (that includes your legs and your, um, you can take a guess) is cut off and replaced by a floating ball that is then used as the maneuvering device. Apparently many of the people who undergo the operation don’t survive it, but if they do survive, it gives them a chance to free themselves from prison if they are able to come out victorious. Moving past the weird science fiction plot, Ball Breakers basically has you picking from a total of six different characters that all have unique attributes that help and hinder them in certain areas. Each of the characters also has their own attacking combinations and special moves. Once you have selected your character, it’s then off to the available arenas. At the start there is only one that can be selected, but as medals are collected, more and more arenas will open themselves up, giving out better rewards, but at the cost of an increased difficulty. Each of the arenas consists of around five separate stages that have a separate goal for each of them. Depending on how well you perform in the stage, one or more medals come forth.
There are a whole bunch of stages to work through, but there is not an entirely new concept for each of the stages each time. Some of the more common ideas are the racing, power ball, and race-the-gauntlet settings. There is, however, always a new design for the environment when there’s a new level, but there seems to be a common rock-stone-and-psychedelic-colors theme going. When it comes to the difficulty factor while progressing through the stages, I found that once I reached the Hospital (the third world), things started to ramp up quite a bit. It usually took me around eight or more tries in order to make it through a particular area, and had to often plan out a strategy before rushing in to accomplish the goal. But nevertheless, no matter how frustrating the situation seemed, I never got so flustered as to turn off the machine; I kept playing. Ball Breakers has an odd addictive quality to it that had the controller glued to my hand, even when it felt as if the game was becoming somewhat repetitive. Things seemed to have been a bit rushed with physics of controlling in Ball Breakers; the speed at which the characters move is rather sporadic, and changing directions is a slow process. Whenever I was in a race and needed to move along at a speedy pace, my character would move like a slug when prompted, but when I was normally playing, he would move like the wind. Definitely the best in the $9.99 line up so far; Ball Breakers is a fun little action title that’s inexpensive (making it an easy impulsive purchase), and incredibly addictive at the same time, which are two qualities that do not go hand-in-hand very often.
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