My Bomberman Live Review

[20Five]

The newest XBLA release a Bomb or a Dud?

Based on my contemplation of calling in sick to work the Wednesday of the release of the latest installment on Xbox Live Arcade, I’d say my expectations for Bomberman Live were higher then usual.

Bomberman - frantically running around a 2-D maze with a cartoonish looking character collecting power-ups, avoiding explosions, and bombing your opponents into oblivion. Just the type of fast paced arcade action to blast its way onto XBLA, at least that’s what I was thinking when I read that it was finally coming this summer. Will this be another let down in the same vein as Worms, or will this conjure up fond memories of spending hour after hour bombing away with this videogame classic on SNES?

The first thing I noticed about Bomberman Live was the look and feel it gives off. The characters and menus instantly bring you back to the roots of this franchise. The character design, artwork and menus hint at fun-filled, pickup-and-go action. What you see is what you get.



Hudson did a wonderful job bringing this game to the next-gen platform. The visuals have been kicked up a notch for the 360, and it looks superb. Bright colors, crisp visuals, and solid animations all packed into fitting environments score big points for presentation. You feel like you’re controlling some sort of Saturday morning cartoon with all the big headed, over the top characters, madcap backdrops and huge explosions. For an XBLA game, Bomberman Live looks slick.

Fortunately the game play is also excellent and leaves little to be desired. The controls are easy to pick up and learn. Getting around the map, destroying blocks, and trying to kill enemies is fast, fun and furious. Games are generally quick, and despite the game’s straightforward nature, don’t come off too repetitive. A variety of randomly placed power-ups adds to the excitement and frantic action, and also adds a bit of depth and strategy. Many of the tried and true tricks and tactics still work now in this new version.


One note should be made about the game play here: This game is basically meant to be played multiplayer. Hudson dropped any form of single player campaign or puzzles seen in the past in favor of just being able to face off against AI controlled opponents. While not as exciting as facing off against your friends in a 4 player local match, or up to 7 others via Xbox Live, it still serves as a good way for newcomers to get acclimated to the franchise before testing their skills.




Along with the brushed up visuals we also get some sweet features and options. By collecting costume items during single player or unranked online matches you can build up a variety of items to customize your bomber with. This is pretty cool, and you will certainly see a wide array of crazy looking bombers after a few rounds on Xbox Live. There are even a couple interesting achievements involving the costumes, making them all the more reason collect and try on for size.

Customizing match settings is very straightforward so you won’t find yourself spending time in the menus, which is good because they aren’t much to speak of. On the positive note, load times are basically non-existent. Bomberman Live comes through for those of you with the Xbox Live Vision camera. The winner of the match gets a chance at the final results screen to brag, harass, or perhaps even bust out a victory dance, all in live video. Not exactly an essential feature, but certainly a nice touch.

Finding and joining games on Xbox live is quick and easy, but not without its standard faults. Occasionally lag, dropped players, and other problems will come up, but not to the point that you will find yourself frustrated.

One thing that you may become quickly annoyed by is the games sound. No game is perfect, and if Bomberman had a glaring weakness it has to be the sound. As far as I can tell this has been par for the course for most XBLA games, most likely due to the 50MB download size restriction they have established. At any rate, the music is what you’d expect, a few looping Techno beats filling in the background. The real problem is the announcer, who sounds like someone you knows annoying little sister. After spending about 15 minutes listening, it was time to load up the personal playlist.

Another problem you may notice if you spend enough time playing single player game is the AI wigging out occasionally. Even with the AI set to the hard difficulty from time to time you see an enemy bomber stuck and unable to move for some reason, making them a sitting duck.

All in all, Bomberman Live lives up to my high expectations in every way. The game play is back in all of its classic glory, and still stands up well. I recommend it to anyone looking for a solid arcade multiplayer fix. For 800 Microsoft Points (about ten bucks), its well worth the investment. This is a perfect example of how to carry a game over to XBLA. With some fun new features and options and a smooth new polish Bomberman Live easily blows away just about every other XBLA title out there. 9/10.

[Dire]

Awesome review. Will also definitely be picking this one up. One thing though - I don't believe there's a 50MB restriction on arcade games anymore (eg- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night).

[20Five]

[ QUOTE ]
Awesome review. Will also definitely be picking this one up. One thing though - I don't believe there's a 50MB restriction on arcade games anymore (eg- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night).

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the feedback Dire,

As far as CSotN goes, I'm almost positive they made a deal to let that one slide a bit due to the nature of the game and the size of content required for it. Im not sure if there are any other games that have been given a free pass.

Gula25 on xbox live if you wanna throw down bomberman style!

[4 High]

I believe they doubled the size restriction to 100MB

[20Five]

You're right, looks like they have increased the limit, but to 150 MB.

Maybe now we'll get less crappy half-assed arcade 'classic' remakes. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[ematz]

This game is awesome. The only complain I have is having every player "click A" after the match in a multi-match game. They should have an auto-countdown of like 5-10 seconds (currently I think its 30).

[Dire]

Very awesome game. But they need to fix the random positioning. When you enable random start points you still always start in the same relative positions, just rotated a random amount. Gets annoying always starting next to the same person.

[chuckleslovakian]

This really doesn't have to do with the game. But I feel like posting it anyways