The game is short. But if you're a Breakout fan, you might get some enjoyment out of it.
In the late '90s, long after Atari's reign as the top video game company had passed, Atari was under the ownership of Hasbro. They decided to remake some of their own arcade games and modernize them on the Playstation. One of those games was Breakout.
Now, people probably didn't think it was a great idea, remaking Breakout in a Playstation-type adventure game. And most reviewers panned it. But personally, I think it was a pretty decent game.
The story is pretty much stock. You have the hero, which is a red Breakout paddle, and his friends, Breakout paddles of various sizes and colors, playing volleyball on a beach. The ball is knocked into the water, the red paddle goes and gets it, and when he comes back, an evil Breakout paddle has kidnapped his friends, including the pretty pink Breakout paddle, who serves as the damsel-in-distress of this game (almost as memorable as Princess Peach and Zelda). Then, the evil Breakout paddle kidnaps the hero and throws him in jail.
The first mission, fittingly, is breaking out of prison. You then go to a bunch of stereotypical locations like Egypt, a farm, a castle, a factory and outer space. The game certainly doesn't score any points for originality in its story or locales.
The gameplay is pretty good though. It's basically a 3D version of Breakout, with an elevated behind-the-paddle view that looks pretty cool and it's functional. It pretty much plays the same as the classic Breakout, but there's a bit more to it because there are power-ups and more obstacles. You aren't always bouncing the ball at a wall either. Sometimes you bounce the wall at living targets which are more tricky, such as chickens and knights.
One cool part, is that some levels have quite a bit of strategy to them. It's not simply clearing out all the blocks, in some of the later levels you have to actually hit certain parts of the wall to solve puzzles. While these can be frustrating at times, they're pretty creative and fun to pull off.
What isn't fun, however, is the non-Breakout missions. Not all levels have Breakout-based gameplay. There's a bit more variety, but unfortunately these other types of gameplay pretty much suck. For example, there are two chase missions where you're being chased by a wolf. It uses the classic chase camera popularized by Crash Bandicoot, where your character is running towards the screen so you can't see jack. But in Breakout it's even worse because the camera is zoomed in so tight that you literally don't even have a second to react. You have to pick up balls along the way that you can throw back at the wolf to slow him down. You just have to play the level over and over again until you know exactly what's going to happen. It's not fun. Luckily there's only two of these levels in the game, but that's two too many in my opinion.
But that's not even the worst type of mission in the game. The worst mission is in the Farm world. If you played Super Mario 64, you probably remember a level where you're fighting a big enemy, and the only way to kill him is to run into him, which pushes him off the platform into the water. Meanwhile, he's trying to push you off at the same time. Well, Breakout has a mission exactly like that, but it's 1000 times more frustrating. It's on a pretty small raft, and you're fighting like 100 ducks. Sometimes about 5 at a time, and after you knock one duck off the raft, another shows up. This is one of the most boring and difficult levels I've ever played. It sucks.
Luckily most missions in this game are not like that. At the end of each world, there's a boss fight. These are pretty good. It requires strategy, skill and reflexes. They're challenging but fun at the same time. They're all very different from each other as well. One of them is actually a shooter, which seemed very out of place but fun.
I think the most revealing thing about this game, though, is that the most fun level in the game is the last level. You've caught up with the evil Breakout paddle, and you're about to save the pink Breakout paddle girl. But in a last ditch effort, the evil Breakout paddle builds an electric barrier in the middle of the room, and you have to break it down by playing a level of the old-school Breakout. It's probably the best level in the whole game.
My biggest problem with Breakout is how short it is. I beat it the same day I bought it, and it only took about two hours if that. Most Playstation games weren't too long, but this was insanely short. There really isn't much in the way of replay value here. While it has a decent amount of variety, most of these levels are only fun once.
All in all, Breakout was a decent effort to modernize a classic arcade game. It's not a horrible game by any means, it just probably wasn't a very good idea to begin with. That said, I still had fun with it. It was cool seeing a modern twist on one of my favorite arcade games. It just seems like it didn't have much effort put into it. The story is generic, the game is short, and the minigames are crap. But if you're a Breakout fan, you might get some enjoyment out of it.