It’s been several days since the Winter Uprising started, so far we’ve seen six of the event’s fourteen titles released. Needless to say Zombie Monkey Games‘ Break Limit is only our second title reviewed, which means we’ve fallen handly behind as per usual. Generally speaking, we are typically behind because “I” slack off, in the case of this week it seems to be because there is just so damn much good stuff coming out I just don’t want to put the controller down. Enough jibber jabber, lets see how Christopher Hill’s scrolling shmup stacks up to the Winter Uprising’s excellence initiative.

Gameplay

The second you jump into Break Limit, your immediate impression is that this game is based on the simple principles of shoot, dodge, collect, and don’t die. Seems straight  forward enough. You just take control of a ship in a two dimensionally scrolling environment populated by a plethora of obstacles, collectables, and the occasional enemy and do your best to live. By the time you’ve smeared yourself across the surface of an asteroid or two, you’ll probably have realized something here is amiss.

The controls are laid out in a fairly traditional twin-stick style with the only exception being the behavior of the right stick. Simply put, you can only aim in a 180 degree forward arc. Other than shooting, the only ability you need to concern yourself with is the limit break ability. As you collect the blue energy balls, the break limit ability will become available to you, when activated break limit will give you a huge burst of speed along with the added benefit of invulnerable shielding. The purpose of the break limit becomes pretty clear at this point, as it more or less has settled into your psyche as the only way to fly.

As I had mentioned before, something in the game feels a bit off towards the very beginning. More specifically the game seems to be uncomfortably challenging. Just to be clear, I fully expect the learning curve of a game like this to be pretty steep, what with needing to learn how the break limit works and the layout of the maps and all. But this simply felt brutal and not in a fun way. I continued to play, learning the maps seemed to help, understanding the mechanics of the break limit seemed to help and suddenly things began to get unexpectedly easier.

Admittedly I hadn’t been paying a tremendous amount of attention to what had been happening at the conclusion of various level attempts, likely because I was actively retrieving a tossed controller, so I had more or less completely missed that the game has a Beat Hazard style rank system. You see, as you fail again and again, you are actually gaining “experience” that, as you achieve rank ups, enhances the offensive and defensive capabilities of your spacecraft. Suddenly the game felt exactly how I was hoping it would feel right from the beginning. It seems that the difficulty curve was taking this progression into account, but had over exagurated the weakness of a fledgeling ship embarking on its first few voyages.

The points system that does double duty acting also as the mechanism for progressing through the ranks really becomes the central focus of the game. Even as you get high enough in the ranks to finish levels with more ease, you begin to get more interested in defining specific routes through levels that will yield the highest points. The break limit system becomes crucial to this as the multiplier that it provides begins to stack up the longer you maintain it. And of course the leaderboards in the game add that little bit of encouragement needed to take another trip through the level to try and edge that next guy’s score out.

The level designs are fairly good. There are multiple routes that can be taken that yield different rewards or punishments and tends give the game a pretty nice sense of exploration. The layout of things within the levels take on a fluid like characteristic enabling you to often find a groove for your ship to fall in that yields a nice amount of points and power ups. This does, however, become a little more difficult than it should be when the desired trails of goodies become obscured by destructible blocks that move on top of them. You can simply break limit through the blocks to maintain course, but it can become hard to keep track of where exactly the trails are.

Break Limit plays pretty well, I did take particular exception to the initial feel of the game as it felt as though I was going through some sort of hazing ritual. As the difficulty dynamics began to shift thanks to the rank system and a little learning, the gameplay experience greatly improved. The game offers a fair amount of playtime and its various path choices, difficulty settings, leader boards, and progression system give it some solid replay value. So all things considered Break Limit isn’t perfect but it is well constructed and ultimately an enjoyable game to play.

Audio/Video

The visual aspects of Break Limit are somewhat of a mixed bag filled with some cool art and questionable design decisions. To get the negatives out of the way first, the UI of the game has one noteworthy head-scratcher. The Break Limit bar is excellently placed in the top left of the screen and even has a nice zoom feature that makes it more prominent while active. One would therefore think this would be the obvious location for the shield status bar as well, instead the shield bar is placed in the lower right on the complete opposite side of the screen making it quite a challenge to keep track of.

In terms of visual communication the game also seems to falter a bit when it comes to weapons intensity. Throughout the levels you can pick up power ups that increase the destructive force of your weapons. The game simply ignores the power variance and uses the same base graphic to represent them. While this isn’t necessarily game breaking, it was a missed oportunity for a little extra pizazz.

The rest of the art in the game is pretty great. I particularly liked the ship and enemy ship designs as well as all the little effects that go with them. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of diversity within the levels themselves but the organizations of the assets worked well to keep things fresh with unique and different implementations waiting just on the other side of each direction choice.

Break Limit experiences a considerable bump in the audio department by unleashing upon its audience the awesomeness of Hyperduck jams. The music is quite excellent and truly captures the go fast feel of the game with its retro styling. The sound effects themselves do quite a good job as well, they avoid irritation which is always a good thing and offer up important information regarding picked up items which is sometimes the only information you have to go on. Break Limit picks up nice bonus points in this department.

Summary

My initial impressions of the game were somewhat negative, but as the dynamics of the game began to shift, thanks to the progression system, my overall appraisal of the game shifted as well. Break Limit is ultimately a really enjoyable experience, which is something that I fear may not show itself within the confines of its demo. One of the features that does imediately stand out is its outstanding music provided by Hyperduck which makes Break Limit an even easier game to recommend. If I was absolutely forced to choose between Hypership Out of Control and Break Limit, I’d probably go with Hypership, but at 80 Microsoft Points each, there is no reason to choose, pick them both up.

Update

Break Limit has received a patch that has addressed many of the complaints raised in this review and made the game considerably better.Not only does the game demo much more accurately but it is now a whole lot more accessible to new players. So if you demo’d the game previously and weren’t sold, be sure to give it another try, I think you’ll find it a much more polished experience.

Here is a complete list of changes.

- 6 New SFX for: Break Limit, Low Shields, Wasps Dying, Break Limit Start, Break Limit Stop, Getting hit.

- Difficulty: Novice is 8x easier, Adept is about as hard as Novice was, Expert is slightly easier and Master is exactly the same.

- UI: There is now a Completion % which is shown to tell you how far you have to go on the track. I’ve also moved the Shield (health) bar up next to the Break Meter so that it’s easier to keep tabs on your shields.

- Statistics: The Game End Screen now displays what you scored on your run, regardless of if it’s a new high score – and the completion % of when you died.

- Weapon Pickups: These are now more visible, featuring a light green rotating target reticule to highlight them, making them easier to spot and thus grab.

- Sound Balancing: I am admittedly not a pro at this, but I’ve spent some time trying to balance the sound effects a bit more.

- Instant Pickups: Grabbing a new weapon, or snagging a power orb will now instantly activate that weapon / give you the Break Limit instead of you having to sit through a delay for them to trigger. Originally you wouldn’t get the benefit till the moving text arrived and registered, this behavior has been removed.

- Thumb Stick Aim: Fixed a bug where if you were holding either of the fire straight buttons then the thumb stick firing would never register. I’ve reversed the check order so that the thumb stick fire occurs first, then the button firing.

- Break Limit Tutorial: I’ve added a very short (1 screen) Break Limit tutorial that is forced after game play starts. It displays once, saves that it’s been shown, and never again after that.

- Control Polish: I polished up the control image a bit so its clearer and looks nicer.

- Break Limit Warning: One of the new SFX plays when your Break Limit dips under 25%, so you have an audio cue that you’re about to run out.