We've seen a good few re-imaginings of retro gaming phenomena recently, haven't we.  What with Monkey Island's return and, thinking back, Super Stardust HD and all that kind of downloadable goodness, you'd have thought that we've had it up to the eyeballs with such repolished re-releases.  For me, the test came with Shatter.  It's an HD re-imagining of those block-breaking games of yesteryear but it's no lazy direct translation of, say, Arkanoid.  It adds so much to the format that you might be persuaded to forget its retro gaming tag and I would encourage you to do so. 

Sure, you have a little ship on one edge of the arena and you launch a ball that breaks blocks, but you also have the ability to suck and blow.  Oh yes.  These actions divert your ball's course and also bring loose objects such as fragment (which charge your power bar) towards you.  If a loose block hits you, your ship falls out of play, but you don't lose a life unless your absence causes a ball to fall out of the arena.  Each world ends with a fiendish boss that tests your abilities as well as taxing your patience at times and with a few different gaming modes to explore (story, a survival version with a string of bosses and a bonus mode with three levels of bonus rounds (which ordinarily come after you defeat the boss of any given world) with the opportunity to score big) it really does make for a very fun game that even allows you to brush up on your trigonometry.

Graphically, it's quite lovely and the soundtrack is a fantastic electronic dance affair that I rather enjoyed though can see it's not going to be to everybody's taste and no, you can't play your own playlists on this game which is something which is sorely lacking in a great deal of releases, but the blistering synth lines, growling basses and some pretty interesting guitar work, arpeggios and cool chopped-up vocals, I was pretty pleased with what I was forced to listen to!  It's a great, fun game that is certainly worth the £4.79 you pay for it and though it lacks multiplayer, it makes for a good pass'n'play experience with two or more.