Ball-To-Brick: Wizorb

Having nothing to do with Wizball or Wizkid, the latter of which I remember as one of the truly surreal games of my formative years, Wizorb is an Arkanoid style game with NES-styled graphics and a basic JRPG backdrop. It's been out on the indie segment of Xbox Live for a while, where I've played and enjoyed it, so I'm glad to see the PC release is happening sooner than I'd expected. November 7th to be precise, on Gamersgate. Paddle control should benefit from mouse control, although it could also make the game easier so hopefully there'll be at least a basic tweak to ball speed. Trailer below, the graphics and music of which are either 'charmingly retro' or 'a pungent throwback'.

I'm going to go with charmingly pungent. It's not quite the Puzzle Quest of brick-breakers, with the RPG elements being mostly cosmetic, but bopping monsters with a ball is more fun than breaking bricks I say. It's the Devil's Crush of brick-breakers, how's that? For me, having a quest and characters adds the carrot of a more meaningful structure to a genre which is usually lacking in that department. Some sort of tasty, tasty structural meta-carrot.