Game:

Bomberman: Act Zero (2006)

Duration: 13:02

2,620 views

10

I must say that the initial response to my first upload on the subject of this game was... I guess "better" than I would have expected. (My expectation was... "nothing" and single-digit views, honestly.) Actually, it was more along the lines of "what was Hudson thinking?" and "what were YOU thinking?" and some mild questions as to the state of my sanity. (Oh, you know, the usual. It made me seriously contemplate taking Bomberman Act:Zero home with me, so you can extrapolate from there what that might entail.)

The fact is, in spite of all its many obvious examples of shortsightedness and questionable taste in aesthetic... this is NOT a bad game. Bad without quotation marks, that is... which for me requires a lot more than what crimes against artificially-cultivated humanity this particular bomb is capable of delivering. Bear in mind that I'm also not calling it a good game, because it almost seems like it thinks it can rest on its name and curb appeal (or lack thereof) alone, and that is a non-quotation-bearing bad I'm willing to assign to its criticism column without any need for qualification.

On that note, I'd like to throw a little tidbit your way... the install size of the disc is a scant 389 MB. There are many XBLA titles on a whole order of magnitude bigger than that. "Installs" on the Xbox 360, as far as I know, they are just a case of basically copying the disc's contents to the hard drive so that it can load from there instead of reading the optical storage every time it needs something.

This is also why it's possible to install (almost) any game and why some are not particularly optimized for it or may even be made to run slower because of some other slick tricks that the developers had in mind that aren't exactly compatible with the technical paradigm shift they couldn't have predicted would come along later. So... yes. This is an incredibly small game.

But hey, if you ARE familiar with the Bomberman franchise, you ought to know that there are indeed lots of games to its name that are similarly light on features and rely almost entirely on its core gameplay mechanics. Some newcomers to the series are outright spoiled by the real gems of the series like Bomberman 64 (I've clearly just gone and dated myself here) and more story-driven titles, often with very different single-player and multiplayer experiences and will rush straight for the torches and pitchforks if they feel slighted by a fairly light game.

To that, I must simply say... know what you're getting into. A lot of the DS era Bomberman games were bite-sized, but also received bite-sized prices... although not always up front, but perhaps I'm a bit too lenient there, since looking into what a game has to offer before buying it is just common sense to me. (And still I bought this game?! Madness!)

So... what DO we have? Let's take a quick gander at the main menu... we have the "World Battle" online mode, which obviously we won't be looking at here, two versions of "Standard Battle"... which clearly states that this is for AI adversaries only... a leaderboard, an item that will bring up your Achievements if you should care to without caring to navigate the Home button menu, and the Cage... which we poked and prodded at its fleshy innards in our last peek...

Being light on content is, I feel, an adequate reason for the bulk of people's appraisals of a game's value... if a slightly quick and dismissive one. But hey, people spend a lot of money on games (not me, because I'm a frugal and terrible person a lot of the time), and the bottom line is often written in black and red ink.

What IS a textbook and fully justified reason to slam this game is the fact that it's a Bomberman game... with NO LOCAL MULTIPLAYER. On a console that charges its players to play online. Even if that's not a concern for you as it is a huge red flag for me. (That I won't stop bringing up, even though I DO apparently own the thing... I mean, what the heck?)

Oh boy then... aren't we in for a treat? You know the drill: I let the game make its case on its own first, then I swoop in on a second segment to deliver pent-up insights and appraisals of my own, whether you wanted them or not... but this game being what it is, I think it needs my "help" more than I need to explain what's going on.

It's standard Bomberman action: run around a maze, place bombs, destroy walls for items, and blow up anything that actually moves. I guess the one thing I should point out myself is that this game has ONLY versus play... no cutesy (or in this case, not) monsters of different attack patterns to fend off and find a portal to the next floor. It's... pretty basic. And true to its initial premise seen in the last video, I might add...which arguably makes the experience more horrific based on the escalating body count.

The formerly sheep seems to be trying on wolf's clothing now! (I wonder if that's why the white bomber color choice was the very last one in the Cage.)

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