meds is a twist on the classic Breakout genre with a medication withdrawal theme. Take the red pill and I will show you how deep the game goes.
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You should all know how the Breakout genre plays. You control a paddle and must hit a ball to try to destroy all the blocks in order to complete the level. It is a classic genre that has stood the test of time, so instead of doing a straight copy, the developers gave ‘meds’ an injection of some mind altering drugs, span it around a few times and scared the hell out of it.
The core game is essentially the same as the Breakout genre but thanks to the drug induced state you are now kept sane via a drip which decreases over time. There are five stages to the drip, ‘Thorzine Shuffle’ which is the safe zone reflected in the game as a normal breakout style game. After this weird things start happening such as random backgrounds including fish and unicorns and falling items such as pizza. Midway through the drip you enter the ‘Coming Down’ zone which introduces game altering effects such as disappearing balls and blocks, sudden changes of ball direction, reversed controls and many more. You get to the ‘Cold Turkey’ zone when the drip is empty, this allows you to control the ball for a short amount of time, after which you must try to hit a frantic high paced ball flying across the screen.
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Pills are dropped from destroyed blocks which can help or hinder your progress as well as temporarily delaying the drip usage. The pills have medical or psychological style names which I thought was a nice touch. ‘Feeling of Anger’ will give you explosive balls, ‘Seeing Double’ gives multiple balls and ‘Sudden Overconfidence’ allows you to catch the ball. There are many different pills to collect, the variety is good with a mix of traditional breakout style and new inventive changes.
You never quite know what to expect while playing meds and it is this what keeps you interested and playing the game. One moment everything can be normal and then the next there are floating spacemen in the background with falling limbs obstructing your view. Occasional scare screens flash on the screen which will make you jump at times 🙂 The game is tough and fast paced, the drip will rarely last long enough for you to easily complete the level, this is intentional but it does make the game quite hard to play at times. Once the drip is empty you are put up against a very fast ball which is hard to hit with the paddle, missing it will result in a loss of life. You do have infinite continues and you will be using them a lot!
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Presentation is done fairly well with easy to navigate menus, there are cheat codes you can enter when you start a new game but I could never enter them fast enough to see what they do. Graphically the game is average but this is not a bad thing as it suits the psychedelic Monty Python feel to the game. Music is appropriate to the game and works very well with techno and metal tunes, I liked the Cold Turkey music in particular as it really suited the pace of that mode.
meds costs 80 :MSPoints: which is good value for money. There are 50 levels to play in single player mode and two modes for multiplayer which add to the value. I do urge everyone to at least try the trial version, I think you will either love it or hate it. Personally I love it, it is an interesting twist on the Breakout genre, it is fast paced, psychedelic and fun. More meds please!
More information on meds as well as the trial and full versions of the game can be found on the Marketplace.
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