Break Em All

Who doesn't like a good Breakout clone? I do. There's something kind of pure about such a simple game. And I have memories of playing SOME version of Breakout on everything from an old Tandy PC when I was a kid to Alleyway on Game Boy or who knows - Flash homebrew games in a web browser or whatever. 

I also enjoy digging through obscure shovelware from time to time. And Break Em All on DS is just that. Yet it has one glaring flaw for me: stylus controls. 

Are you kidding me? Who are the ad wizards that came up with this one? Who really thought that the ONLY way I'd want to play Breakout is with a stylus? This is just dumb. At least give us the OPTION to use the d-pad. Wow.

So I'll be honest, I didn't even really dig into this one. There's various modes, such as a boss rush and so on, but I'm not even interested because actually PLAYING the damn game feels like a chore. These sort of forced gimmick control schemes always bummed me out. I'm happy when games took advantage of the capabilities of hardware. But my goodness, don't force the gamer to play something familiar in an uncomfortable way. Hard pass.