This Week in Defunct Games - May 18, 2012

What Is It? Yes, this is a Breakout clone starring Kirby. That may not sound like the recipe for a must-own Game Boy game, but Kirby's Block Ball is full of surprises. There's so much more happening in this game than your typical block breaking action game and just when you think you've seen it all, Kirby is ready to shock and delight you. If you've been waiting for a deep and engaging triple-A Virtual Console game, Kirby's Block Ball is it.

The game starts out like a lot of Breakout/Arkanoid-style games, with you controlling a small paddle hitting a ball (or, in this case, Kirby in the fetal position) at colored blocks. Your job is to destroy all of the blocks, if you miss a ball you'll lose a life. Simple, right? Not so fast! It turns out that there's a lot more at play in Kirby's Block Ball. With eleven levels and more than fifty puzzles to solve, there's more than enough variety. Throw in boss battles, incredible power-ups and secret mini-game bonus levels and you have a game you'll be playing for weeks to come.

Does It Still Hold Up? There's a surprising amount of depth to Kirby's Block Ball. On top of the standard gameplay, you can also give the paddle a little power and unleash regular sized Kirby. What's more, some levels will give you paddles on the left and right walls, as well as the ceiling. Other levels will have you changing block colors and battling enemies. Each of the game's 50+ stages introduces something new and fun. What's more, everything is wrapped together with an over world and story mode. Best of all, the game looks incredible. This is easily one of the best Game Boy games available on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console.

Is It Worth The Money? Kirby's Block Ball is every bit as surprising as Donkey Kong. Some may quibble over some outdated physics, but with so much content it's hard to be too critical. Each level is expertly crafted, full of hidden bonuses and interesting power-ups. Nintendo brought a lot of great ideas to the formula, making this the perfect evolution from Breakout. I hate to say it, but Kirby's Block Ball just made Alleyway obsolete!

What Is It? Myst is a game ... no wait, that's wrong. Myst is a series of slides that was presented as a "game" to suckers with too much money in the 1990s. Despite being the top selling PC game for years (a fluke, I assure you), Myst was not well received by critics or gamers. Even at the time, it set graphic adventure games back a dozen years and created a genre nobody actually wanted. And now you can play the PlayStation port on your PSP, PS3 and (eventually) PS Vita.

Myst is a painful experience that involves players being dropped in a completely foreign world with "mysteries" to uncover. Think: LOST directed by Terrence Malick. There's just one problem: None of the mysteries are worth solving. Worse yet, even if you do "solve" them, the resolution is so annoyingly pretentious that it makes you hate asking the question in the first place. The game masks its bad writing under a heavy layer of obscurity, that way only the chosen few will truly "get" what it's saying.

If the pretentiousness doesn't get you, the nonsensical puzzles will. Point and click adventures get a bad name for using "graphic adventure logic." That is, you'll solve a puzzle in a way that only makes sense in the confines of a video game, bearing no resemblance to the real world. But as frustrating as graphic adventure logic is, at least there's some thought put into it. Here we're presented with puzzles that make no sense to the story and, worst of all, devolve into frustrating guessing games. Being forced to guess the right order of light switches wasn't fun in the 1990s and certainly isn't fun in 2012.

Does It Still Hold Up? Believe it or not, this PlayStation port isn't half bad. Oh, the game is still abysmal and not worth suffering through, but the port itself seems solid enough. You're essentially moving a cursor around and clicking, so don't expect anything remotely fun to happen. The graphics aren't bad, a benefit to them being still images. A lot of the game revolves around moving the cursor around to find objects to interact with, the kind of thing you normally don't see on a home console.

Is It Worth The Money? If you're a fan of Myst and don't mind the pretentious writing and nonsensical puzzles, then this isn't a bad version to have. You can play it on the go, which might be cool? Look, the truth is you shouldn't buy Myst. Go play a real graphic adventure, not this non-game snoozefest. This is your chance to check out the first episode of The Walking Dead or play through Hector. It's time to put Myst out of its misery and admit that no gamer actually likes this garbage. Enough is enough!