Let's not dance around the obvious. Shatter is part of the Arkanoid/ Breakout family tree. However I must say it is the best and most modernized Arkanoid-esque game I've ever played.
What sets this game apart? Well it's the fact that you can suck and blow (I'll explain). Your paddle you play as can shoot out a ball to break up bricks but can also suck and blow air to manipulate the trajectory of the ball. However blocks are often loosely floating around and the sucking and blowing mechanic does what you expect to both ball and block. The last on-field thing to suck (and blow) are shards shaped like cute little S's. You suck these in to add to your points total and fill up a "shardstorm" meter. Once filled you can shoot out a hail of bullets used to break up any blocks it hits, completely draining your meter. In addition to that, a shield you can be used to burn up loose blocks that get too close, which also drains your meter the more you use it. Don't worry though, blocks that go past your paddle just disintegrate and your paddle getting hit doesn't remove lives. It just knocks you around a bit preventing you from hitting your ball which is lost if it goes past you. Speaking of balls, you get your standard fare of ball types such as ones that go through bricks, hit harder etc. However unique to the sucking and blowing mechanic is a "maneuveraball" that basically turns crazy good when you suck or blow. It was a real delight to control this ball type to exactly where you wanted it to go.
So why should you play Shatter? Because there is a great game behind the highly praised soundtrack. What struck me about Shatter from the moment I began playing was that the default orientation of the screen has the paddle on the left side launching the ball towards the right. It may be a minor thing and you do play from the bottom but it added a refreshing quality to the game that made me wonder why I haven't seen this before in other games. On top of that there are also circular levels that, although my least favorite, are a really neat concept. I had that pleasantly refreshing moment again when the brick arrangements became super creative. It could have easily been case that different bricks with different requirements to destroy as in other Arkanoid successors was good enough. Not good enough for Shatter. Triangle blocks that launch like rockets and explode, pivot point bricks that once broken release all that's attached, as well as bricks that constantly blow or suck in a certain direction. With your classic bomb and multiple hit bricks, there were a lot of cool setups throughout the game. My favorite has to be breaking a central pivot with two others on each side holding a line of bricks acting like swing doors dropping a mess of bricks. That or hitting a rocket with bricks attached hitting another gang of bricks to great effect.
Yeah, yeah, I'll get to the soundtrack, hold on. The music wouldn't be much without its techno-centric art style to compliment it. It's all very electronic and fluid in nature with very thematic colors. It gives off this vague "futuristic" vibe that I liked. Along the same lines the sound design is also great. The blocks hit with a very satisfying glass/ice cracking sound with electro-babble going on the playing field and in the background. The combination of distinct sound effects and soundtrack are the memories that linger after playing the game. Alright, alright, if I haven't teased it enough, the soundtrack is AMAZING. It is a consistently great electronic/techno/trance soundtrack that never seems to repeat itself. A given theme world is played straight through by one song which not only creates a seamless experience but highlights the track itself. I will guarantee you will wonder how good some random game developer was able to get music this good into their game. With things exploding, shards being sucked and blown everywhere, and a blaring electronic soundtrack, Shatter makes for a very very fun game to play. The soundtrack pulled me back in to playing over and over again whenever a song from the game popped into my head. Credit to Sidhe Interactive for that.
However the game is not perfect and has two major hangups. Firstly the boss battles are just not as fun as the normal game. The bosses all have a creative way to get damaged but only about a third or (generously) a half were fun to fight. Mostly it was just dieing and spawning until eventually I broke through by mere attrition. Luckily I never ran out of continues to finish a fight (which I would curse endlessly had it ever happened). The other complaint I have is that near the back half of the game the difficulty came far too much from bricks constantly being too close to the paddle. This left my paddle often getting knocked around and the ball going past it. Even when I tried using the shield more often, it would be fruitless because there's just no predicting where the balls going to go when your half of the field is just filled with bricks. In addition using shields even for a moment drains the shardstorm meter preventing me from using that option when I needed it. The most frustrating example was when waves of bricks couldn't be pushed back on circular levels no matter what I did. At that point the soundtrack and art design was the only thing keeping me going. Speaking of flaws, I will always count impossible achievements as a negative and they are in full force here. Especially when they demand co-op achievements and playing through the entire game without using a single continue. I will also say that loading screens are a bummer because they don't have any music. I often felt shut off or let down when I went from a boss ass track to just silence.... Certainly killed my momentum more than I would have liked and it seems like an easy fix to boot.
While I certainly had a blast playing Shatter, I don't see anyone going back to play the game unless they want to hear the songs again. Listening or buying the soundtrack removes this need and so the game does not have significant replay value beyond that. With that said, the soundtrack is something I'll have in rotation for a long time and a great game while I was playing it. I wholly recommend this to anyone fiending for a smaller game with a big impact both visually and audibly. Mechanics, visuals, soundtrack, and gameplay innovations all tied together in a great but admittedly small package. This is definitely a game where the blemishes stand out much more by virtue of its quality in other areas, which is not a bad thing at all.