Psibo

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

.

Review:

Psibo, released on Wii U in 2016, is an Arcade-style game that combines elements of an Arcade-style Brick Breaker with Pong and even Space Invaders. As in typical Brick Breakers, players are using a paddle to bounce a ball at bricks on the opposite side (in this game hexagon-shaped by default) to break them. As in Pong, the opposing side is protected by another paddle, here controlled by an AI. And as for the Space Invaders part, balls that miss your paddle don’t take a life away from the player. Instead, they spawn an enemy that moves and fires like in Space Invaders, with these shots depleting your health whenever they hit your paddle.

It’s an interesting combination of elements that makes for something entirely new that doesn’t feel quite like any of the individual games it’s derived from. In theory, players who have a decent amount of skill at Pong needn’t necessarily engage with the other elements – after all, if you don’t miss your shots, you’ll never spawn enemies and eventually you’ll whittle down the blocks the enemy is protecting. However, in practice, the opposing paddle is by default a bit too competent, and getting past the thing will require having multiple balls zooming around the screen at a time. Players can toss another ball into the mix at any time by pressing the button again, but of course doing so raises the stakes that you’ll miss a ball.

The unfortunate problem with this game is that it ends up breaking an important part of the formula for each of the games it takes inspiration from. I already mentioned how the opposing AI player is overly-competent for a Pong-style game. In addition, unlike typical Brick Breakers, the angle the ball bounces at doesn’t seem to be influenced by where on your paddle it hits, making it extremely difficult to change its angle – you pretty much have to hit it with the side of your paddle to do so. And unlike Space Invaders, opposing enemies fire far too often, and when you’ve unintentionally created a half dozen or so their attacks result in an absolute hailstorm of bullets that’s nearly impossible to avoid if you intend to also be aiming to be hitting a ball at the same time.

As a result of this, the default difficulty here is going to be far, far too high for most players. Thankfully, players can independently change numerous settings, many of which can make the game easier. Unfortunately, none of those settings really affect the issues stated above – you can make spawning enemies slower but they still fire with extreme frequency, you can hobble the speed of the opposing paddle but can’t change the skill of its AI, and you can increase your own health and change the number of balls you can have onscreen at any given time, but you can’t improve your influence over the angle at which those balls will bounce.

The presentation here is simple but decent, featuring simple line art visuals against a black background with an optional 3D effect that shifts the viewing angle as you move around. This is backed by decent but repetitive energetic synthesized music in the background. This results in a fittingly nostalgic presentation, but it’s nothing extraordinary.

In the end, I like what Psibo was aiming for, but I really wish it would have done more to copy the gameplay of the games it’s trying to smash together. The missing elements of the classic retro Arcade games it’s combining make for the biggest flaws in the gameplay here, and result in a game that’s overly tough. For $5, it still may be worth a look for those who enjoy the early Atari era of videogames, but it doesn’t have the same sort of compelling quality that those games did back in the day.

tl;dr – Psibo is a Arcade-style game that mashes together elements of Arcade Brick Breakers, Pong, and Space Invaders, all with a simple retro-futuristic presentation. It’s a clever idea, but unfortunately it misses some important elements from each of the games it copies, resulting in an amalgamation that’s too challenging and just not as compelling as the games it is derived from. Fans of the Atari era may still find this interesting, but most are better off leaving it alone.

Grade: C

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}