A Brick-Breaker and Shmup Mash-Up That Rewards the Persistent
There have been times during a brick-breaker game (Arkanoid, Breakout, Alleyway) where I’ve wanted to strap a gatling gun to my paddle. It’s always been the big flaw of the genre: when I’ve got one last block in a distant corner, I just can’t reach it with my randomly bouncing ball.
CyberBlocker Complete Edition feels like it sees me. The paddles in this brick-breaker aren’t just paddles: they are fully weaponised spaceships. You’re not just bouncing a ball to the upper reaches of the screen, you are following it up with some bullet-hell. If there’s one last brick, holding out against the rest, you can just snipe it.
R-Type: Arkanoid Edition
That’s not all. You don’t have one paddle/spaceship – you have two. The first is locked to the bottom of the screen and does most of the bouncing and shooting. The second is absolutely not locked to the bottom of the screen, and can move about the screen with the freedom of a shmup ship. You don’t control these two independently: they both move at least laterally together.
I will fully admit to being overwhelmed at the start of CyberBlocker Complete Edition. I felt like someone had put shoes on my hands and told me to walk. Nothing made any sense: if I played it like a brick-breaker, then I was constantly hitting the second paddle, scoring own goals with every other shot. If I played it like a shoot ’em up, I would smack my head against other frustrations. I had to move away from my targets because the ball was my lifeline, and far too many blocks were hidden behind invulnerable bricks.
My first game or two of CyberBlocker Complete Edition were miserable. I hated it. In the game’s main campaign, I would lose life after life. Pop-ups would patronise me by asking if I wanted to play on, even though I had exhausted the continues. I had all of the infuriations of a conventional brick-breaker – including the rogue brick in a faraway corner, mostly because my bullets wouldn’t reach it – but with a host of new ones.
Who Knew? It Was Mostly Human Error
As it turns out, I was playing it wrong. I shifted to the Standard Type-B ship, which was a slightly easier experience (but not the default one, natch) and used my powers whenever they became available, rather than storing them up. Suddenly, everything made sense.
Powers in CyberBlocker Complete Edition are the key to highscores and progression, and are readily available. Power pellets drop from the bricks and enemies you kill, and they cycle you through a list of special abilities (you can switch to a ‘classic’ version of this in the game’s menus, where the pills drop specific powers).
A few of these powers are utterly game-changing. The Disruption power is a multi-ball, with eight balls fanning out from your original ball. Making this a triggered power-up is genius, because you can wait until your ball is in a prime position – behind a boss, at the top of the screen – and only then multiply it. I’ve defeated bosses in seconds with eight trapped Disruption balls.
There’s a Shield power, which protects you from gutterballs; a Laser which carves through bricks, including those frustrating invulnerable ones; and a kind of size multiplier, making your bottom paddle extra wide. They combo nicely with each other, as you can trigger the multiball and then double the size of your paddle, keeping everything in play for much longer.
Practice Makes Perfect
Powers gave me the footholds I needed to start completing a run of levels. Then I could grasp some of CyberBlocker Complete Edition’s quirks. The second, spaceship paddle can be used to trap balls in the upper reaches of the level. If there is a single hole that is leaking balls, then plug it with the ship. A tap of the B button allows you to boost, which saved my ass on many occasions. And if you bring both paddles to the bottom of the screen, they combine to become a super-paddle, and this is a great state to be in for multiballs and small-screen situations, where the blocks are close to the paddle.
It was at this point that I ‘got’ CyberBlocker Complete Edition and started to have fun. For one, it’s incredibly fast – something that brick-breaker games rarely are – and I could rattle through levels quickly. Bosses and minibosses really added something to the genre, too. They each become a puzzle of whether you should focus on bullet or ball (or powers, as some are vulnerable to a quick lasering). I’m a huge fan of the powers system too, as saving a power is often the best bet. If you use it, it’s not present on the menu for the next cycle round.
Better as a Brick-Breaker Than a Shoot ’em up
CyberBlocker Complete Edition isn’t a perfect hybrid though. I couldn’t help feeling that the two genres don’t mash-up perfectly, and that caused a messiness. For one, the screen can become reasonably unintelligible. There’s just so much going on at once, with enemies blending with balls and power pellets. Multiballs are almost impossible to get a handle on.
I don’t like how the shooting feels in many instances. CyberBlocker Complete Edition knows that it mustn’t let you shoot everything, otherwise the levels would become trivial. So it creates deadzones on the far-left and -right of the screen where you can’t shoot, and this just feels rubbish. CyberBlocker Complete Edition also over-uses bricks that neutralise your bullets, with some that are invulnerable and others that come back after a period of time. But they’re enemies of fun: it’s not cool having blocks returning to the field of play.
I’m not sold on a couple of powers, either. There’s one that slows play down, which is great for surviving – you can anticipate the balls better – but is terrible for the game’s momentum. CyberBlocker Complete Edition wants you to play it speedily, rattling through levels with your powers, but this power contradicts that.
A Treat for Hardcore Fans of Both Genres
The positives outweigh the negatives. I’ve not even touched on the production quality, which I love. It feels like no-one told the artists and audio devs that they were making a brick-breaker. They’re all making a Japanese-style shoot ‘em up, with killer soundtrack, chromatic ships and robots, and overblown VFX. The gameplay is like 80% brick-breaker, but the presentation is 80% the other way.
Give CyberBlocker Complete Edition a chance. I’m fairly confident that it will feel ungainly on your first run, as the brick-breaker and shmup stuff fail to dovetail particularly well. But persist, prioritise the powers, and get some practice in. You won’t regret it: CyberBlocker Complete Edition becomes a genre mash-up that is a rush to play.
Important Links
CyberBlocker Complete Edition Blasts Onto Xbox, PlayStation, Switch And PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/cyberblocker-complete-edition-blasts-onto-xbox-playstation-switch-and-pc/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/cyberblocker-complete-edition/9P6M7QSFV2J7/0010
