Over the years, there have been more breakout clones than one can count. Some of them have been good, and some of them have been Drop Off. This game takes the basic paddle-style brick breaking game and somehow manages to eliminate most of the fun elements of the game leaving a shell of what should have been a very interesting puzzler. Instead of breaking bricks, you're going to get to break a variety of items ranging from fruit to pink lips. The game does throw boss fights into the mix, but even it can't manage to save this mediocre breakout clone.

Drop Off takes the simple paddle-style play control of Breakout and adds a few new twists to the mix. Instead of not having much control over the rebound of the ball, you can switch between two different rebound trajectories by pressing the "I" button on the controller. This toggles between a sharp rebound that will likely send the ball in a more vertical direction, and the "blunt" rebound, which will cause the ball to bounce off in a more horizontal direction. You'll have to decide which rebound will work better in certain situations.

The main object of the game is to either break all of the objects on screen or avoid making contact with any object as they fall from the top of the screen through the bottom row. You can break the object one at a time by hitting them with the blue ball but you can also strategically hit an object that's holding a cluster together and drop the entire group of objects. You'll have to make sure you get out of the way in time to avoid them as they fall or you'll lose a life. You also have a few "arrows" at your disposal that will allow you to send the falling object back up towards the top of the screen a bit before they begin falling again. This will at least buy you a little time in order to break enough objects to get through the barrage of falling items. At certain intervals in the game you'll also get to face off with a boss that will require you to not only avoid his attacks, but also keep the ball in play and shooting his way.

This whole concept might sound unique and enjoyable, but the game just never seems to really take off the way you'd expect it to. There's just no real variety between the levels, other than a different object falling your way, and even the boss fights can't seem to make things any more interesting. Arkanoid proved that a brekaout clone could be an outstanding game, but the developers of Drop Off just missed the mark with this one, as the game just doesn't hold up very well after the first few minutes of play. You might get 30 minutes of fun out of the game before it finally dawns on you that it's not going to get any better.

Visually the game is fairly simple in design. The backgrounds are all black, and even the falling objects themselves don't really offer up much in the way of detail. The bosses in the game are quite large and detailed, but their animations are very limited and don't do their actual movements justice. It's obvious from the moment you begin playing this game that there was little to no emphasis placed on the graphics in this game and it shows.

There is some interesting upbeat music in the game, but it just seems to grate on your nerves even after a short playing period. It's almost too over-the-top for the game and doesn't seem to fit in well with the type of action that's going on in the game. It also would have been nice to have a little more variety in the music and sound effects as after awhile, everything starts sounding the same. Much like the visuals, the sound effects and music in Drop Off didn't get much attention.

I've always been a fan of Breakout and Arkanoid, not to mention a small handful of the other successful clones out there, so I did try to like this game. It's difficult to put a finger on exactly what it is this game is missing, but suffice it to say, unless you're just a die-hard puzzle game fan, you're not likely to get much enjoyment out of this game. If you're perhaps someone who enjoyed this game back during the TurboGrafx-16 days, then by all means pick this one up, but for everyone else, save your Wii points for something else. This one's not worth the money for most people.