The problem with most breakout games is that they can be decidedly easy on the iPhone. When taking into consideration the small screen area in which you must navigate your paddle around in, it can be very hard to lose a ball due to poor timing. At least with early games on other platforms, if you didn't track where the ball was and follow it, you wouldn't have been so lucky. Developers have tried to alleviate this problem on the iPhone by introducing power ups, both good and bad - sometimes this can lead to a cheap death - either you'd collect a power up that made you lose your ball, or if you moved away, your ball would drop off the screen anyway.

Enter Reflexion, a game that promises to put the skill back into breakout, envisioned exclusively for the iPhone. We say this because the controls feel just right - direct, fast and fluid. They need to be too, as in this game you don't slide a paddle along the screen, you draw it. Anywhere. Yes, even in the middle of the blocks you're trying to bust, if you really want to. Or in a wall. Sometimes, you will need the paddle to become part of the wall too, because it's entirely possible that you'll play a level without having any sort of safety net.

In addition to paddle drawing, you can shake the iPhone to trigger a temporary slowdown effect - cleverly, this is tied to point scoring, so you can only earn the ability when you break some more blocks. On top of this, you will get a scattering of power ups in the level, but none feel cheap as you can remove the paddle from the screen by tapping. The abilities include multiple paddles, extra balls, extra lives, long paddles, short paddles, fire balls and more.

All of these don't make the game easy of course. Part of this is because the main arcade mode forces play to begin from level 1 once you die, not to restart from the last level. This may be frustrating for some, but in that case there's also a puzzle mode in which you get to pick and choose which puzzle you want to attempt. The different stars (gold, silver, bronze) indicate how many balls it took to complete the puzzle.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the game really does need to be seen in motion. Ball trails, glossy, shimmering bricks, explosive effects, slick animation and a grungy industrial look add heaps of style onto the game. In fact, we have no real qualms whatsoever about the presentation - sound effects are again, stylish, and so is the arcade feeling music. The only bump in the otherwise flawless design was the menu lag when selecting a puzzle - this didn't feel fast, only clunky. Save game and iPod music are both supported.

Overall, this is a gorgeous, challenging game. It's not a wholly original title of course, but we felt that the way that the gameplay was approached made a whole lot of sense on the iPhone, and it's the most unique breakout game we've so far played. For £1.19, it's a great value.

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