Reviews from

in the past


Atari 50 turning me into a Breakout fan was not on my Bingo card for 2024, but y’know what, I welcome it.

I love breakout but the controls just didn't feel quite right in this one (a common issue). The visuals were cool though.

[Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration Reimagined]

Neo Breakout is the second Reimagined game from the 50th Anniversary collection and holy fuck, I'm so bad at Breakout...

This game is pretty much just Breakout but with an art style similar to the bit trip games, the main standout of this game is it's versus mode which is a mix between breakout and pong and I hate it because I'm terrible at it, not bad though.

Breakout type games are easy for me to like, and the versus mode feels like a genuinely good addition to the format

Another really novel addition included in Atari 50. I really like Breakout and this is a nice spin on it with some new stage gimmicks and pretty visuals.


Played as part of Atari 50.

Slogged through some of those final levels and I gotta say, for the most part this is a perfectly fine version of modern breakout (finally one in this collection with ricochet), but wow, do a random couple of levels have the most horrendous Breakout level design I've ever seen.

The biggest culprits here are those metal blocks that you can't destroy and the orange blocks which create more blocks if you hit them from the bottom or side. Both of these demand precision to avoid and create some levels where you're finicking back and forth with the paddle trying to pass the ball between two blocks next to one another, and you really just don't have the ability to manipulate the precise angle given how the paddle works here. For most levels this is fine but any level that demands precision is a nightmare to complete that feels more like trial and error than anything. You don't really run into many of these levels for a good while, but there's like 3 or 4 of them within the last 10 levels and it's just the worst shit ever.

The rest of this is fine though! It's just that those half-dozen actually miserable levels very much soured my experience of the other 40 or so, of--let's admit it--a competent but unremarkable brick breaker.

Versus mode isn't very good and forces you to use digital controls and always ends in a sweep one way or the other because of how much the scales get tipped against someone the second they start losing. It's not really worth playing.

A great re-imagining for a simple game, adding a few new stage abilities and effects, alongside being a cool audio-visual experience with great haptics.
The multiplayer battle mode though is easily my favorite thing about this. A smart fusion of Breakout and Pong before it, in tug-of-war-style matches.

(Atari 50)

A nice little modern breakout game. Retains a lot of the classic breakout feel while adding a bit of modern flair. Not particularly complex but a fun little game nonetheless

Another re-imagined classic as part of the Atari 50 experience. A more modern version of pong with some decent music and gameplay modifiers make this a fun part of the ocean of Breakout variants out there. Wonder how a variant of Breakout made by Tetsuya Mizuguchi would pan out.

I'm a sucker for Breakout... So wonderful