Bomberman Act Zero - a mediocre attempt at redefining a classic

Author's Rating:

Pros: mildly entertaining for a short time

Cons: No saves, lackluster single player, hidden achievements. Very little longevity

The Bottom Line: 
Die-hards should be wary. For those new to the series, it's a fun casual game and begs to be released for Xbox Live Arcade.

Read on, dear reader....

•• Story ••
The attract mode of Bomberman talks about how you wake up in a cell with no recollection of how you got there. There is a futuristic war waging and the military is creating cybernetic machines, blah blah blah. Unless you watch this attract movie, you will never see the story because it isn't implemented into the game. The story they try to push off on us is incidental and becomes silly when you consider the premise of the game is to run around a maze-like grid trying to blow other players up. Note to developers: if your game does not warrant a story, please don't try to toss one in just for the heck of it. We gamers understand that not all games require a story. Thank you.

•• Gameplay ••
The gameplay of Bomberman Act Zero is amazingly simple. You are deposited onto a grid with with various blocks placed randomly to create a maze of sorts. You are armed with the ability to drop a bomb which will explode after a second or two and spread fire in various directions. These bombs not only hurt other players, but can also blow up some of the blocks, called soft blocks aiding you in moving about the map. Your opponents have the same ability and the object of the game is to be the last man standing.

The control are as simple as the game and anyone can pick up this game and go. You move your character with the left thumbstick and control the camera with the right. The triggers allow you to zoom the camera in and out, but I was annoyed by the limited camera controls. Not only was I unable to find a way to invert the controls, but the zooming was minimal and never gave me much of a view of the grid.

As you play along, there are power-ups that allow you to drop more bombs at once, increase the explosion size, speed up, slow down, remote detonate and other carnage goodies. These upgrades make the action fast and furious and require you to have a fair amount of strategy as you try to block in other opponents and blow them up.

The AI is fairly good. They get aggressive in higher levels,
and know where to go to dodge the bombs. There isn't a tremendous amount of AI scripting needed since it all boils down to geometric equations. Nevertheless, I didn't have any complaints about the way the computer played.

The single campaign is devised of 2 types. Standard, which allows you to see the entire map in an overhead view and FPB, which stand for First Person Battle. Standard mode is how the die-hard Bomberman fans will want to play, if they choose to play at all. I didn't like this view, because the dark themes and palettes used make the grid very difficult to make out. I found myself trapped a lot because I couldn't tell if what was blocking me was a soft block or something else.

First Person Battle mode is really a misnomer. The definition of first person is that I should see the game from the characters eyes. But in reality, the game is a 3rd person Battle as the camera is safely ensconced behind the character. This is the desired form of gameplay, but suffers from the camera and control maladies mentioned above.

My biggest gripe is that there is no save system.
The single player campaign is simply match after match against bots. 99 levels to be exact and you have exactly one life. If you die, you start all over. No save or checkpoints. If you are on level 99 and die, you start back at level 1. This undoubtedly will result in many a controller embedded in TV screens due to sheer maddening frustration.

•• Graphics ••
This is the most previous-gen of all next-gen games I've played. I saw nothing here that couldn't have easily been done on the PS2. This is a shame, really, but not surprising. The gameplay just does not lend itself to photo-realistic graphics.

The Bomberman model has been changed from a big-headed almost Japanese character to a futuristic cyborg. The models are decent but nothing wonderful. And since you only see them for a few seconds between rounds, it really doesn't matter.

The rest of the graphics are simply the grid which is the same thing every time and explosions which amount to the same thing every time with different colors.

•• Sound ••
The sound in the game is generic and uninspired. The music is an attempt at intense industrial and techno-metal but comes across as dull. This is why the custom soundtracks feature of Xbox was designed.

The effects are in the same vein consisting of essentially 3 files: Bomb explosion, power-up pickup, and death scream. There seems to be very little variation in any of these sounds. Again, uninspired.

•• Multiplayer ••
The Multiplayer picks up a little, but still doesn't offer a tremendous amount of long-term gameplay. There is only one type of game and that as usual, is last man standing. Blow up your opponents before they blow you up.

It should be noted that there is no System Link support, but it does support Xbox live up to 8 players. These matches are fairly lag free, which is to be expected since there is very little happening on the game that would tax network traffic. All the game needs to transmit are player locations, bomb locations, and the status of the grid. As a result, the gameplay performance is good.

The multiplayer fun comes from the other players. The people I went up against were very good at strategy, speed and trapping me in to corners so I would die. I must say I enjoyed the multiplayer experience, but I wanted to see a little more. How about some team games?

•• Achievements ••
I was very frustrated by the Achievement section. Not only are all but a few of them secret, I wasn't able to unlock a single one after a few nights of gameplay. I suppose I could look them up on the web, but the game needs to stand on its own merits and as far as achievements goes, it falls flat and doesn't act as a reward to the players as it should. Accidental achievements are a nice surprise but shouldn't make up the bulk of the reward.

•• Parents Should Know ••
This game is rated T for Teen and is mostly harmless. Aside from a few death screams, there is very little violence and no blood

•• Conclusion ••
In general, the game is fun, but Bomberman fans may be turned off by the style of art and revamped gameplay. For those new to the game, it is a fun casual game and makes me wonder why this game was not simply released for Xbox Live Arcade.

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