Arkanoid: Eternal Battle

Arkanoid: Eternal Battle is a modern return to Taito's block-breaking classic, which preserves the series' basic principle – using a paddle to bounce a ball and destroy bricks with power-ups that change the paddle's size, the ball's speed, or add special weapons and attacks aimed at opponents. Around this core, however, it built a significantly larger multiplayer structure than the series has had before: standard matches for one to four players on a split screen or online are complemented by a battle royale mode for up to twenty-five players, where the playing field gradually shrinks and those who can't keep up are eliminated.

The game was developed by the French studio Pastagames under license from the owner of the Taito brand and published by Microids on October 27, 2022, digitally simultaneously for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch, with physical versions for PlayStation and Switch following a few weeks later. Alongside battle royale and local versus mode, the game also offers two solo modes, Neo and Retro, which differ in rules and level appearance, so the player can choose between a more modern and a more faithful take on the block-breaking classic. Unlike earlier series installments, which were built mainly around a solo playthrough of levels against bricks, the focus here is clearly on competing against other players online, complemented by reworked graphics and effects that turn Arkanoid into more of an action multiplayer arena than the calm, meditative classic players know from the eighties and nineties.

Why play: Arkanoid: Eternal Battle will appeal mainly to those who want to experience the block-breaking genre as competitive online fun with friends or strangers, not as a solo meditative classic – the battle royale mode for twenty-five people pushes the series in a direction it has never gone before.