Maze Break

Genre: Arcade Brick Breaker

Players: 1

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Review:

Maze Break is an Arcade-style Brick Breaker released on Wii U in 2017. Rather than the usual way this game works, with player trying to break blocks by hitting a ball into them using a paddle while trying to keep the ball from falling into a pit, this game does away with the pit and instead gives players a time limit, along with more convoluted level geometry to try to work around.

While this game shares a lot in common with the Maze Breaker games on Nintendo 3DS, sharing the same developer and many of the same flaws, this isn’t quite a port of those games. What sets this apart from the 3DS games is that the maze in this game takes place on multiple consecutive screens that players must navigate the ball through, breaking the blocks within the time limit.

The presentation here is simple, but not bad, featuring colorful, simple 2D visuals and backed by an energetic synthesized soundtrack. There’s nothing here that’s truly memorable, but it works well enough for the game.

The control here varies somewhat. Sometimes, players control two paddles, one with each stick. At other times, they’ll control both simultaneously. There’s no consistency to this, and it seems odd that the game would arbitrarily go back and forth between these two control methods. Even worse, this game’s controls are extremely floaty, with your paddles traveling quite a bit after you stop moving the analog stick. Given the precision this genre tends to require, this sort of flaw is simply unacceptable.

What’s more, regardless of which method the game is using at any given time, the physics in this game are horrendous. Unlike decent Brick Breakers, the trajectory of the ball is not affected by where on a paddle it hits, but by the direction you’re moving when you hit it, meaning that to make any headway, you’ll need to try to slide the paddle over to the ball as it reaches you.

What’s more, all sense of consistent and predictable physics goes right out the window when the ball hits a block or the sides of the screen, with the ball bouncing in seemingly random direction, or even pushing its way through multiple blocks rather than bouncing off. Sometimes, the ball even changes directions in mid-air for no apparent reason!

Ultimately, while i can see the potential in an Arcade-style Brick Breaker that has you guiding a ball through multiple rooms in search of blocks to destroy, this game fails to live up to any potential that premise had thanks to its terrible controls and horrible physics. The result is a game that’s just not worth playing.

tl;dr – Maze Break is an Arcade-stye Brick Breaker where players are trying to break the blocks in a level within a limited amount of time. Unfortunately, the controls here are just plain awful and the physics are atrociously bad to the point where this game just is not fun to play. Do not get this game.

Grade: D-

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