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BreakQuest (PSP Minis) on Playstation Portable Review.

An Arkanoid clone would be a perfect fit for the Playstation Portable. Sadly, despite some clever level design, BreakQuest is way too twitchy to be any fun.

[Updated score & review written on 20th December 2009]

No system is complete without clones of a classic gaming archetypes. PSP Minis plays the perfect host for a game like BreakQuest — a more than subtle nod towards the heritage of gaming’s classic Arkanoid. Sadly, BreakQuest gets it mostly wrong.

If the overpowering (and poorly controlled) level select wasn’t enough to put you off playing the actual game at all, the twitchy unresponsive nature of the controls will send you over the edge. You play as a small rocket powered paddle with the task of bouncing a ball around the screen to destroy various blocks. So far so familiar? It’s amazing that BreakQuest manages to feel so poor. The floaty nature of the rocket propelled paddle make returning the ball a near impossibility. You’ll constantly overcook or undercook the gas, making returning the ball tediously frustrating. Couple that with painstakingly long levels and you have a game that’s as much fun as stuffing envelopes.

It’s a shame really because the game has some really very neat ideas. The level design is pretty fantastic throughout, giving you a varied set of scenarios to break blocks in (pixel art cow and snail anyone?). The physics model is also pretty darn excellent, making the ball bounce realistically when it hits an object. Sadly, the control issues only exaggerate as the screen gets littered with more and more objects. The result? One broken PSP Go.

BreakQuest could have been the PSP’s definitive Arkanoid clone. As it happens, you’re best sticking with the PS3’s Shatter.

Beatshapers released an updated version of BreakQuest on the 11th December. For our thoughts on the updated version of the game, click here.