3D Pong Extreme

3D Pong Extreme is a simple game that aims to provide players with a new perspective on a very old game.

Pong games have branched out over time, and lots of sub-genres have appeared. One of those is called brick braking. The player uses a paddle to redirect a ball so that it breaks some bricks that are either stationary or moving. It’s not a difficult concept, and we’ve seen some incredible games like this over time. This is not one of them.

Breaking pieces with a ball and paddle shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do, but that’s easier said than done. It’s not hard when you are dealing with a 2D environment, but things change dramatically when you move into the 3D real. The truth is that 3D Pong Extreme could have been a lot better with just a minor change that would make the gameplay much more accessible.

The game doesn’t have amazing graphics and the fact that the developers also happen to mention “beautiful OpenGL graphics” is a real shame. The graphics are simplistic and calling them beautiful is just wrong. The textures are awful, and the control is sub par.

Which brings us to the gameplay and the control scheme. Players move a paddle at the bottom of the cube and the ball move towards the ceiling. That’s all well, but you’re watching a representation of a 3D environment on a 2D screen, which means that you have no idea where the ball is going to land.

With a little bit of help, you can infer where it might be going to some accuracy, but the problem could have been solved just by implementing a simple shadow that shows where the ball is landing. Without that shadow, the players are mostly guessing where the ball is going to land, and they are going to be wrong half the time.

To make things worse, this is actually a shareware game and only the first level of this “beautiful OpenGL” game is available for free, but it should be more than enough to allow users to decide if they want the game.