Product: Bust’Em
Developer: Digital Concepts
Web Site: www.dig-concepts.com
Category: Game – Action / Arcade
Price: $16.99
Requirements:
Pocket PC version:
Any color Pocket PC and Pocket PC 2002 device
Except Casio BE-300, HP Jornada 525, and HP Jornada 54x

Desktop PC Version:
Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP
Pentium 2 – 300mhz minimum
3D Accelerated Video Board recommended for windowed play

Software:
Microsoft ActiveSync
Desktop Windows 95 / 98 / Me / 2000 / NT 4.x

Pocket PC OS:
Windows CE 3.x for Pocket PC
Pocket PC 2002

Color:
65K / 4096 Colors

Retro-gaming (classic games remembered from the past) is a very popular trend today. The biggest surprise is when someone takes a classic style of game and finds ways to improve it. That is the case with a new game from Douglas Beck called Bust’Em. His last game, Rocket Elite, was a fantastic game and has been very popular with Pocket PC owners. Now Douglas has combined the style of Arkanoids and Breakout with an infusion of new ideas to create a game that is highly addictive and original in it’s own way. Having developed action and puzzle games in the past, I found Bust’Em to have all the traits of a great game: fun, fast, addictive, graphically interesting, and lots of variety.

The gameplay is simple. You have a ball (or multiple balls), a paddle, and an area filled with blocks. The goal is to use the paddle to keep the ball in motion and hit the blocks with the balls to destroy the block. Some blocks contain power-ups that will fall when the block is hit. If you catch the power-up with your paddle, you will enable the power-up. There are both good and bad powers-ups, so be careful which ones you catch. As an example, one power-up will increase the size of your paddle, while another will decrease the size. Hint: Green ones are usually good and the red ones usually bad. The real fun of this game is the wide variety of power-ups. They make the game exciting and challenging. With over 20 power-ups, you will have a hard time deciding on which ones to pick up and which to let go. Make sure you study the Game Info screen to learn about all the power-ups.

As I mentioned earlier, Douglas has created some very innovative ways to improve on a classic game style. The best original features are particle effects and changing movement zone. In Bust’Em, when the blocks are destroyed, they disintegrate into a batch of particles that fall to the bottom of the level and accumulate in piles. In time, the piles will make the movement of your paddle difficult as the particles take up more and more of the space in the movement zone. The movement zone is an area defined by a line that can move up or down based on power-ups and time. Your paddle can move anywhere within the movement zone. The lower the line is, the less area you have to move the paddle. These two features combined make Bust’Em much more fun and challenging that previous ball/paddle/block style games.

The graphics in Bust’Em are very attractive with rich colors and great animations. They work every well in the game even when you have so many balls flying around that screen that you cannot possibly count them. The gaming engine in Bust’Em is called the 2Dream Game Engine. Developed by Douglas Beck, it is a platform, CPU performance, and resolution independent engine that is one of the best technology solutions I have seen for Pocket PC gaming.

An added bonus with Bust’Em is a level editor that will allow you to create your own levels and share them with friends. Competing with friends to create the best levels really enhances the longevity of the game. Bust’Em includes 100 levels, so that should keep you entertained for a long time.

Bust’Em is a very addictive, fast action game that features:
Great graphics with alpha channel, transparent, and particle effect
100 levels and over 20 power-ups
A level editor which allows you to build your own levels
Adjustable difficulty settings
Stylus or gamepad control
Configurable controls
Cheats (once you find them)
Pocket PC or Desktop PC versions
One-Button Screen Capture to take a picture of your game
Support for portrait and landscape screen orientations
Fast and efficient graphics engine capable of handling over 100 motion objects at a high FPS rate

I had a great time playing Bust’Em. However, I did find a couple of minor problems while playing. It is possible, although very unlikely and difficult to intentionally do, to cause the ball to bounce back and forth between two flat surfaces, such as two rows of indestructible blocks, so that the ball becomes stuck and the level cannot end. In this case, you will need to restart the game. The other strange situation is when there are a large number of objects in motion on the screen and you use the paddle to charge at the ball to make it move faster. In this case there is an extremely remote possibility that the ball will fly through the paddle. Most likely this is caused by the 2Dream engine losing track of the collision detection between the ball and paddle when it is calculating a large number of moving objects at the same time. The chance that you will run into either situation is extremely rare and I suspect that you could play for over 100 hours without running into any problems. Neither problem prevented me from really enjoying the game and Douglas Beck has informed me that he either has or will make changes to Bust’Em to prevent these problems from occurring. Future updates will be available from the web site.

This is a really well crafted product. The graphics are clean and crisp. The animations and sound effects fit the game well. Bust’Em is so addictive that the main problem you will have is draining your batteries. So plug in your AC Adapter and get ready for a great time. I can’t wait for the next game from Douglas Beck.

Rating: 4.75 out of 5 Stars.

--Harvey Lee
PocketPC Editor