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Ricochet Infinity
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June 7, 2007 |
by Poh Tun Kai
Untitled Document
True to its name, Reflexive's Ricochet series has been a massive success since it was launched 6 years ago, taking ball-and-paddle brick-busting to new heights, and bringing gamers back again and again for more. Now, the latest word in futuristic breakout games is coming back with a vengeance, and Ricochet Infinity is accurately named indeed, from the looks of it.
 
The visual design is similar to older Ricochet games – on the surface. There are lots of visual enhancements, though. There’s an alien mascot in one corner of the UI to cheer you on when you’re winning, as well as some dazzling new vector art incorporated into the already devilish game levels. The music is standard light techno fare, upbeat and catchy without being intrusive.
As always, the colorful assortments of bricks, locks and keys, teleporters and other objects are combined in levels that resemble starships, giant beasts, and ever-shifting, ever-moving geometric patterns that really test your abilities in all sorts of ways. You’ll have to break every brick without losing your ball offscreen, in the classic tradition. And now, you’re not bound by just deflection angles of your paddle – and in the case of Ricochet, your spaceship is the paddle. Now, there’s a new way to steer your ball to get every last brick – Recall. The Recall control, mapped to the right-click button, steers the ball towards the paddle, and holding down Recall for varying periods of time will change the ball’s velocity by an increasing degree. It really does add a whole new twist to the game, and steering the ball (or balls, when you get multiple balls onscreen) is a whole new skill that can really even the odds for you in the harder levels.
Ricochet Infinity adds even more brick types and power-ups to the genre, with sliding, exploding and transforming objects that make every level more dynamic than the last. You can also choose from a wide range of colorful ship and ball skins, and which ship you take will make a difference with special power-ups that give different effects depending on your ship’s specialty.
The game levels are divided up between various alien worlds, which you can play through one by one starting with the Main Tournament Quest. Later, when you’ve finished that, another quest, the Delta Quadrant, will be unlocked with even more levels. And now, you can play an endless assortment of community-created levels by downloading and installing them directly within the game interface. We searched through literally hundreds of older levels from Ricochet Lost Worlds, sorting by user rating (very convenient) as well as number of downloads to gauge the popularity of the levels. With a dedicated fan base creating hundreds of new levels each month using the game’s level editor and scripting engine, you’ll never run out of new play experiences. The game also features Mouse Party for competitive and cooperative multiplayer modes on the same machine.
On the whole, it looks like Ricochet Infinity is going to be a real winner. Its unique Recall game mechanic gives the player even more control of the ball than ever, if they can learn how to use it, and the level downloading system is powerful and highly search-friendly. It’s on the top of our action games to look forward to this summer. Look for it at www.ricochetinfinity.com!
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