Shatter Remastered Deluxe Review (cryocore)
I love Shatter. Probably the best Arkanoid-like ever made. And I think it is a must own title.
I however cannot recommend the "Remastered Deluxe" version as it is a hollow and misrepresented inferior game. The issues are immediate to anyone who's played and loves the original game.
The upgrade to 4K is nice, but the new graphics are actively worse, gone are the background atmospheric animations, all the items and bricks seem more simplistic, and lower polygon. The whole game feels sterile when compared to the original. This is a graphically simpler game, which is insane as Shatter is over a decade old now.
The options menu is limited, and there is no support for new rendering techniques. This is a game where Ray Tracing could have been a literal game changer, As would have been HDR. but this is a bare bones port with little to no consideration given to the platform it is being released on. A common complaint I have with PikPok PC games.
Mouse controls are tight and responsive, with no detectable mouse acceleration, and you're able to remap the silly default controls to use you mouses additional buttons. Controller support is also great, but this game is not one that should be played with a controller in my opinion.
The music mix is awesome, but so too is the original's. The difference in audio quality it subtle at best (to my very layperson ear(s)), and I cannot comment on the 5.1 mix as I am deaf in one ear, but I don't hear much if any of an upgrade in audio quality.
As for performance, its a rock solid 120 fps @4K. But the original also runs at 120fps even if it is officially limited to 1080p/1200p. You can however run the original at 4K with a simple config edit.
(C:\Users\**username**\Local Settings\Application Data\Sidhe\SH).
Simply change the resolution in the "application_parameters.xml" and you're playing at whatever resolution you like, although the menu doesn't dynamically scale. It's a shame PikPok (Sidhe) never updated the original with a basic patch to allow their config to naively support higher resolutions. An extremely simple update that would have been appreciated.
Even so the original looks and feels better.
Then new UI is an adapted touch screen interface, and not designed ground up for KB/Mouse or Controller, and it shows. It's not a huge deal, but demonstrates where the design was initially focused and pivoted very little to get this version on Steam.
This is a mobile port, not a PC remaster which is a shame because I really hoped PikPok would actually leverage the PC's capabilities here, but instead they seem to have done the bare minimum. If you own Shatter already don't bother this is not worth your time or money.
If you like brick breaker games, Shatter is great, but this is the inferior version. So unless you need native in-game options for 4K support stick with the original, not this slightly shinier but noticeably less artful rehash.
PikPok needs to do much better with their PC releases. Simply dumping their mobile games on PC with minimal work on UI and controls is frankly just not good enough. And the gall to name a game "Deluxe" because it is on PC and not mobile is bordering on outright dishonesty, and is at the very least disingenuous. You don't see Sony for instance labeling the PS5 version of God of War Ragnarok as the Deluxe version simply because it looks and run better on that hardware.
Refunded.