All of these things are what make this game so bloody addictive. While the entirety of the game's primary campaign can be easily won over the course of a few hours, I kept wanting to go back any time I learned a new way of manipulating the ball to try out some new techniques and boost my score even higher. The game's catchy techno-beat tunes and pleasing graphical effects mean that repeated playthroughs are not unpleasant - there are even gimmicky boss battles between the major chapters to spice things up.

A little area of disappointment however is that the main campaign mode really is the game's main selling point; there is a secondary "Boss Rush" mode and some bonus content, but I was partly hoping to see some kind of multiplayer functionality as well. Heck, one of the boss battles even emulates a competitive show-down between you and another bumper which are trying to take each other out, so a variation of this might have been cool for some competitive multiplayer gameplay.

Of course, how far can you really go before something like this just turns into a glorified Pong? Those who suffer from motion sickness might also want to keep their barf bags handy, as the game's constant gradual camera movements as the ball moves across the playing field made even my indomitable constitution a little unhappy - and I hadn't even had my daily injection of slurpee yet!

Shatter is a fiendishly well-crafted game available from the Playstation Store for a little under ten bucks where you spend hours smashing blocks and absorbing vast amounts of neurologically-stimulating graphical flair and ambience. What more do you want? If you've read this far looking for an excuse not to get this thing, you'll be sorely disappointed. Just go buy it already and see for yourself how much fun gaming from the 70's can really be when given a new coat of paint.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you