Previously:
- The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Scoring Beyond 100,000
- The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Levels 1 to 3
- The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Levels 4 to 6
- The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Levels 7 to 9
- The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Levels 10 to 12
- The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Levels 13 to 15
This is it. Your game skills are finally tested. Welcome to the dreaded level “U”. This set of levels will be your defining moment.
Level 16
Let’s hope that the Y labeled brick gives you the ultimate controller of this level: Catch. However, that’s less than 20% chance of happening. Any of the following can also help. Multi allows faster clearing of the bricks and by the time one of the four balls reaches your paddle, the speed of the game would have slowed down. Gun allows you to remove the lower corner bricks and another one of those on the side. Removing the corner bricks gives you more room to control the ball. Don’t remove the three middle gray bricks. Long gives you two bounces to correct the ball’s movement before, if ever, you lose it. Long is also good in moving the ball from the left to the right corner. Without the above powers, your ultimate help is a skill to control the ball movement, once it reaches your paddle, from the left hand side to the right hand section. The ball doesn’t go wild if it touches the middle portion of the paddle.
Sometimes the ball takes care of clearing all the bricks if it moves in a 30 degree angle inside the U formation. The good news here is that after a certain number of touches with the paddle, about 30 hits, the ball slows down. That’s why we need those 20 Lives to survive this and the succeeding levels. After a number of hits with the paddle, the ball eventually moves at a slower, manageable pace.
Level 17
Don’t celebrate yet. This level looks deceptively easy. But it has a reputation of claiming what is left of your remaining Lives. The tendency to lose focus is predominant in this level. So be cautious and remain attentive to the ball’s movement. The ball will frequent the lowest portion of the figure. It will play with your paddle. This is part of the reason for the allowance of 20 Lives. Nothing in a form of special function is given. Like Level 13, your only mission is to survive.
Level 18
You may want to gather mental and physical energy before resuming. It’s good to realize that you have surpassed Levels 16 and 17 and you don’t want to lose what you have gained by playing carelessly. That normally happens when you’re overconfident and a bit tired. Okay then. By virtue of the eight specials generated in this level, it is relatively the easiest of this set of levels. Eight opportunities to gather power, including adding a Life or possibly Lives. Catch or Long are ideal powers to control the game. Be tempted to get Life if the remaining bricks locate close to the top-most gray brick. Wrap is also good in bouncing the ball in a more vertical approach as is ideal in this level, after that initial 30-degree launch.
Whew. Congratulations. We are finally halfway in completing a Cycle. See you guys tomorrow.
Next: Levels 19 to 21
Filed under: Mobile Phone | Tagged: Blackberry, Brickbreaker, Games
[...] The Ultimate Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Levels 16 to 18 [...]
[...] Blackberry BrickBreaker Guide: Level 16 bis 18 [...]
[...] Apparently there is a cheat. And here’s a guide to levels 16,17 & 18. Posted in books, career, job [...]
Well. I just lost 10 lives on level 18 after building to 12 despite difficulties in this game. Today is an example of things that regularly happen: balls bouncing at odd angles off the wall (that is, angles that have never been seen in this game before); balls actually going through my paddle to lose a life (I see them penetrate through the blue barrier & disappear to lose a life); ball path curving around my paddle after I move to intercept position (this happens regularly, especially when I get to 8+ lives); laser shots going through bricks without any apparent effect (I see them entering the brick from below, then leaving & continuing out of the playing field at the top); balls accelerating to a speed in which it is almost impossible to see (off the paddle, to the top of the playing field & out the bottom in less than 1/10 sec), ball paths curving around bricks (this happens especially when I have or 2 bricks left at that playing level); balls coming off the paddle at totally random angles to eliminate the final bricks before life pods can reach my paddle, and combinations of the above on a single play. All of these things just happened in the game that I just lost at ~13,000 points. So tell me, anyone out there – why is this a game that should even be pursued, when it appears that the game skews itself to force defeat?
@drbob1geo, sorry I find this funny.
I’ve been on these same crazy stuffs. Sometimes it’s the mobile connection. When I’m in the subway for example. The ball takes a different life of its own. Sometimes when my mental attention tends to slow down a bit. I tend to stretch my attentive energy when clearly I should be sleeping or taking a nap. One technique is to take a break or even sleep it over if you feel like you’re losing “lives” more than the usual average. Level 18 is difficult. I normally lose more lives at levels 16 to 18. Keep it up. The best scenario is to gather about 20 lives in preparation for this kind of moment. – Carlo
Carlo, thanks for the reply. It does tend to get humerous, but frustrating at the same time. Since the last post, I’ve played around a little & found the following: I exited level 16 on two seperate games with 14 and 15 lives respectively. The first time, I took a break & came back. I found that my phone had done a shutdown/restart. The second, I moved to level 17, launched the ball & the Blackberry shut down/restarted again in front of my eyes. Both games were lost. If you’d care to see, there was another game in which I ‘lost a life’ before the ball disappeared. In this case, I had just captured a Multi pod, so the result should have been four balls upward-oriented. Since loss of life stops the game, I was able to take a picture of the screen. The picture shows the Multi capture, the ball in the field of play, and the loss of life announcement. According to the ‘rules’, it is impossible for this situation to occur. If you wish to see the picture, I can e-mail it to you – but for me this is proof positive of the unfairness of this game. Oh, this ties in to one other thing I’ve observed – that the loss of life precedes the ball leaving the field of play. That has happened many times, and I’ve found that the ball will pass through the paddle if this happens.
Incidentally, my employer has given a Blackberry for me to use when travelling. On that machine, I’m presently passing 750,000 points. I noticed that on my ‘personal” Blackberry Curve, the ball moves 1.5-2.5 times faster in both cycles 1 and 2 that at any time on the ‘work’ phone. In fact, sometimes the ball moves so fast on my phone that the refresh rate cannot keep up with it – I see the ball in the upper half of the field of play, then it suddenly disappears and I’ve lost a life.
Brickbreaker must have variations from Berry to Berry, as in reviewing above levels 1 thru 7, I find that above has one more Y in L3 then my Berry, and in L7 I have one Y in a different location then noted herein.