After really having nothing to play for awhile on PSN, I noticed that shatter had a pretty decent rating from IGN entertainment, it's downloadable games editor, who it seems is a big Xbox lover, gave the game, which is exclusive to PSN, a 9.0. It looked fun from the video review, I had nothing to play, so I decided to give it a try. First let me say the price of this game is amazing. It is just $9.99 Australian, I have payed more money for Burnout Paradise DLC, and this is a full game that you recieve. Firstly, the presentation is amazing. The graphics and sound are top notch, the menus look great.

 But the main meat is the gameplay. You play as a ship, hitting a ball against bricks. Im sure you have played this type of brick breaking game before, where you use something (usually a paddle) to knock the ball against bricks so that they break, the ball comes back to you, and you have to make sure you get to it in time before it goes beyond your paddle. So you first launch one ball against the bricks. As each brick breaks, it releases a fragment. These fragments will float towards your ship, collecting them lets you do different things. Firstly, if you reach full power, you can launch a shard storm. This will shoot shards towards the bricks and break them, helping you get rid of the bricks easier. Also, you can sheidl yourself from flying bricks by pressing the square button, this uses power.

You can also push (blow) or pull (suck) the ball. Pulling the ball lets you collect fragments faster, but it also pulls the ball back quickly towards you, and pulls loose bricks towards you. Letting bircks pass your line or hit you loses a multiplier, which means less score. You can also push the ball, this helps you keep the ball away from your line and not lose any lives, but it also pushes fragments back, meaning you can't get them. Pushing the ball is useful in tight situations. Both methods can help you get that last brick that can sometimes be tough, as it lets you manouver the ball mid flight.

The game is made up on 10 levels, each with about 8 waves. The first 6 waves are normal waves that require you to destroy every brick on the field to advance without the ball crossing your line. If the ball crosses your line, you lose a life and when you run out of lives, game over, but you can continue. The second to last wave is a boss battle, which requires you to hit a boss in a certain area whilst dodging it's attacks. These battles are well thought out and can get hard and frustrating towards the end of the game. The last wave in each level is a bonus level. You have 3 balls and you have to try and keep them in. Each hit makes that particular ball faster, and harder to hit. You have to last as long as you can before they all cross you line. It's harder than it sounds really.

 The game is over a bit too quickly however, you can beat the story mode in about 2 hours. After that, you can try again for a high score, or try two other modes. One mode is bonus mode, which is just 3 levels of bonus mode from story mode, where you have to try and keep 3 balls in play for a long as possible. Then there is boss rush mode, where you need to defeat bosses all in a row. I have to say, there are trophies. However, all of them are easy, except for 3, which are insanely hard. So you will get all but those 3 trophies quickly.

 Overall: Fantastic presentation, fantastic gameplay, but replay value is a little low unless you like going for high scores or getting 3 hard trophies.

 8 out of 10