New Software To Be Reviewed Review

Ricochet is, I think, the first game of Reflexive's ball games series. It is inspired from the ancient DXball, a game which I was playing in the computer's DOS, when Microsoft was just developing the '95 Windows, and DXball was not compatible with Windows.

Well, starting with Reflexive's new game you can play it on Windows 95+. It is a amazing game, challenging your skills in this domain and with great physics.

It has a lot of stages and levels (up to 200 I guess). The interesting thing is that the last level is not the hardest. You might expect that the first level is piece of cake and the last one is unsolvable, but it's not like this. Of course, in the first stage the game introduces you into the game, learning you all the bonuses, the kind of bricks, the ball types etc., but starting from stage 2 is a bit challenging, and when you reach stage 6-7 you see that harder than this it cannot get. In my opinion, if you pass the 7th stage, the rest isn't going to be a problem to you. The game's maximum difficulty is located somewhere in the middle, not at the end like most games.

Another interesting thing is that in a stage, you pass trough like 4-5 worlds, each world with specific background and unique bricks. Now this can represent a kind of a story line, of course if you have a high level of creativity and imagination, because for most people, this game is just this: you throw the ball into the bricks and stop the ball from falling of the screen. Well, someone told me that he thought that the game's achievement is to save the Univers by destroying the "brick ships". Anyway, I'm not in that category of people, for me the game is just what it is.

This game involves specific tactics in some levels, because sometimes the bricks are hiding behind a metal indestructible, or the bricks are so low that it its hard to stop the ball from falling down. But if you have the patience and the right skills, you may be able to finish the game at the "hard" option.

Another thing that makes the game worth playing is the fact that you can create your own levels. This is for when you finish all the included levels, and to prevent you from deleting the game, Reflexive gives you the option to make your own challenges.

The game includes also a scoring table, which separates the "easy", "medium" and "hard" scores. This thing is well thought, because is harder to score points on the "hard" option, and it has an "import scores" option, which allows you to see all the global players and their scores and compare yourself to them.