Worst Game of 2006!

Bomberman you've had your highs and lows. You could have stopped when you were ahead, but you decided to make some more crapalicious titles. The all time worst Bomberman game has come out. It is called Bomberman: Act Zero and it has made every other Bomberman look like the most delicious pastry your mind can imagine.

Gameplay


The gameplay really is starting to wear off, and instead of charging a $59.99 at release, ($39.99 now) it's definitely apparent that they should have released it at as an arcade title. In Bomberman: Act Zero you have the same, and now feeling extremely shallow, gameplay that the original had. You run around a square room with your robot. There are blocks thrown around everywhere blocking your path. There are two types of blocks, the breakable and unbreakable blocks. To advance through the level you have to break through the breakable blocks with your bombs and run past the unbreakable. Your enemies are doing the same thing as you are doing and it is an all against all battle to the death. To kill the other guy, you have to place a bomb next to him and have the fire from the explosion hit him. The explosion can be blocked by the unbreakable blocks so if you place the bomb between an unbreakable on the top and bottom of it, the bomb's blast will go left and right. If there is nothing to block the bombs blast the blast will do a cross. So the main premise of the game is really the exact same, but porting over a game that came out twenty years ago seems a bit of a stretch if you have to pay sixty dollars for it. Hudson Soft knew this was a crappy game and they released it just to get the money.

The powerups are still here, including the speed boost and the bigger explosion powerup, so that part feels the same. What they really changed in the game is the camera angle and the speed. The characters run at a fairly slow speed, making it hard to trap your enemy. You can get speed boosts that are hidden in some blocks, but these are fairly rare. There are several camera angles and none of them really work because of the sloppy presentation. There's the standard Bomberman over the top view which looks really ugly because of the pixelated textures and shiny, dark, and far away environments. There's a first person view which is utterly useless, think about it, you have no idea where a bomb is going to be. Then there's the behind the character aerial view which makes it hard to see anything past your character and a little bit in front of you.

Artificial intelligence seems extremely robotic, (and since you are fighting robots, it works). The bad guy knows pretty much every combination of where to hide to be safe, so you'll have a hard time killing him. He'll hide in the perfect spot everytime and you are likely to make more mistakes than he does in a battle because he is the all knowing AI. Really, the only way to kill the guys in the game is to trap him between two bombs, but while this may sound fairly easy, its a huge challenge to actually do this.

The game's single player just really won't hold your attention for long at all. All it feels like is a cruddier version of the old ones, and since tries to duplicate a twenty year old game and makes a less fun experience, the gameplay is just horrid. So what do you do in the single player? Well the single player is pretty much the worst possible version of single player you could do on a Bomberman game. There are ninety-nine levels. You go through the levels trying to rid of all the enemies. There are no save points, no passwords, nothing. If you die you are greeted with a "Game Over" screen. Yes! If you are going to beat the game you have to do so with one life! Since the game is likely to try your patience after the first few minutes. Playing for hours in one sitting, only to probably die before making it to the end, is unheard of. I doubt anyone has had the patience to beat this game.

So how's the multiplayer you ask? Well, there is no offline multiplayer! I can really never remember playing a standard Bomberman game without playing the multiplayer modes with friends. The only multiplayer you can play with this is on Xbox Live, and how many people do you think are going to be playing the worst game of the year? The answer? Very few. This game is unplayable.

Graphics
The graphics look like a budget title Xbox game... only slightly worse. Every level has the exact same dark, pixelated, and boring textures that look could easily be fit on an Arcade title. There are two character models, the male and the female, and both of them look really blocky and unexciting.

The charming little bombermen characters are gone. No more little blue dude with the smiley face running around bombing other people. In this one you are giant robotic dudes that look evil and menacing. It almost feels like the makers were actually making a copy of Bomberman but decided they'd get more money if they just stuck the Bomberman label right on the package.
The old Bombermen: Teletubbies.
The new Bombermen: Star Wars droids.

Needless to say the style of the game has changed. Instead of being in a happy little room you are in a dark an evil looking room with loud techno music playing. If you don't think that changing the way the game looks has affected the way the game plays, think of it this way. What if Halo 3 featured a heroic chimpanzee fighting off gorillas with his banana guns in the African jungle. See, would the game really feel like a Halo game?

Sound
The soundtrack consists of some techno and some generic rock that loops constantly. There is no dialogue between characters and all you hear is a poorly done robotic and slow voice in between levels telling you that you won, lost, need to kill guys, or hurry up. Very forgettable music, and very few sound effects.

Should you get it?
I've played 400 Microsoft point Xbox Live Arcade titles that had the same amount of depth, if not more depth, than this. I've played free online games that have had more depth than this. I've seen tops of mountains that have had more depth than this. This game is so shallow for a 360 game and it has worse gameplay than the game its based off of that came out over 20 years ago. The sound and the graphics look like the game came out five years ago. There are no redeeming qualities about this game. Avoid this like a poisonous salamander.