iPad Review: Block Breaker 3 Unlimited HD

If you thought you knew all that there is to Block Breaker, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. Introducing Block Breaker 3 Unlimited HD, where it puts a whole new spin on the game you thought you knew.

In Block Breaker 3 Unlimited HD, you are given three balls on each level and you must hit all or most of the blocks and hit the big star at the end before time runs out. Keep your ball bouncing and afloat on your bar without letting it fall into oblivion. Sounds easy enough, right? After all, you just have to tilt your iPad in the direction you want your bar to go.

Nah, it’s not that easy. There are power-ups galore and annoying barriers that won’t disappear until you get rid of all the blocks out of the way or somehow power up your ball to destroy said barriers. Because somehow, flaming balls just seem to destroy those annoying barriers. Those flaming balls appear when you are able to hit those arrows that make your ball go into super speed mode. Oh, right, they’re called speed boosts. Think those video games with all of those arrows pointing in one direction (like this: >>>>>) that allow you to go vroom!

With 100 levels, it seems like a game that you won’t able to put down. After all, you have to beat the different bosses that you meet and that’s no easy task if you’re trying to achieve the highest score possible on each level without messing up (I love to mess up, apparently). You can use in-game cash (that you purchase with real cash, it seems) to buy new power-ups, but those aren’t really necessary - I haven’t found a use for them (and I would like to spend my money on something more useful, you know). Instead, I just rely on what I find inside the game.

What is interesting are the different levels as each layout is different. You can have several rooms filled with blocks to destroy and sometimes, your level will contain not one, but two pads that you must control when you see them. Well, those two pads will be in different rooms (top and bottom), so if your ball goes from bottom to top, you control the top pad and vice versa.

Quite a few powerups can be found, such as your traditional “shield”, “larger pad”, “extra life”, and “multiple balls”. Some new ones that I discovered for the first time were “pad shooters”, “magnet”, and “exploding ball”. They have interesting abilities and while the first four are self-explanatory, here’s a quick rundown on the last three:
- pad shooters: little shooters appear on the edges of the pad and help to destroy the bricks
- magnet: let your ball get stuck on your pad so you can shoot whenever you want
- exploding ball: as your ball hits bricks, touch the screen and watch the ball create an explosion.

For all its fun and intriguing levels, I felt that the game was too sensitive to movement. I’d move the pad ever so slightly and the pad wouldn’t go wear I wanted it to go. Sometimes, the pad itself wouldn’t move when I tilted the iPad in the direction I wanted to go. I did, however, appreciate the option of seeing instructions for the game as I was playing - it was pretty interesting. After all, tilting the iPad is the only way to move the pad. And sometimes, the screen wouldn’t respond to my touches. Oh and the game lagged just a teeny bit. I didn’t appreciate that either. The graphics are nice, though, and I like watching the ball travel throughout the game. And for $0.99 it’s not really all that bad.

Interested in wanting to know more or purchasing the game? Go here.