Played on:
Xbox 360
When thinking of long-running franchises, most people will toss out names like Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda or even Mega Man. All of these games have had a long and rich history, entertaining gamers for over 20 years. However, one game may get left out of the list and has been out for as long as the original Mario Brothers game has been. That game is Bomberman.
Originally released in Japan and Europe in 1983, Bomberman was horribly simplistic at first. Some enemies moved around the stage and each level had a single powerup. Your job was to defeat all these enemies then escape through the door on the level before time ran out. In some versions, blowing up the actual door would spawn even more enemies, while running out of time would cause you to be killed by enemies you'll normally only see on the last level. However, grabbing stuff like the bomb powerup (drop an extra bomb) or the flame powerup (your bombs have a larger explosion) made life much easier. Over the past 20-plus years, though the series has evolved into a multiplayer phenomenon on the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and many many other systems, with the most recent release being on Xbox Live.
If you've played any of the past iterations of the Bomberman series, you'll at least be passingly familiar with this version. There are the traditional powerups, ranging from the bomb up and fire up to some more recent ones like skulls, max fire and the awesomely fun dangerous bomb. See, most bombs just blow up in the north, south, east and west directions, being stopped by walls, bricks and other bombs. The dangerous bomb, however, ignores all that. It instead blows up in a square. Couple it with max fire and you truly have a dangerous bomb.
“But Moose”, you may ask, “that sounds awfully overpowered! How can I beat anyone with a dangerous bomb?” Well, I'll tell you how – tons of different game modes. While there is the option to have players just die after one explosion and lose their powerups, it is equally as likely to have the powerups unable to be blown up by bombs and have the player drop them all on his death. Many times, I've had the dangerous bomb and had players all decide to go for me. Then blow up the bomb icon after so noone else would get it.
That gets to one of the best parts of this game, though – all the game modes. You have the classic “blow the crap out of your opponents mode” mode that Bomberman fans are familiar with. You can spice it up by adding various forms of revenge for players that die. Take, for example, Super Revenge – with this mode, dead players move around the edge of the map tossing bombs in. If they kill someone, they take their place in the game. You can also set it to Zombie, where players simply don't die – this is ideal for the Paint Bomb mode. Instead of worrying about being the last bomber standing, you'll have to worry about painting the most squares of the map by blowing them up. When you die, all your previously painted squares become unpainted. With all the various powerup configurations, no game really ends up being the same.
As if this wasn't enough fun, you can also play an offline mode against the computers. You and your friends can take up upwards of seven computer opponents at any given time, varying their difficulty in any of the already mentioned game modes (and a few that I didn't talk about). The nice thing about single-player mode is that you'll get a chance to unlock new costume pieces by collecting them as the game progresses. While the single-player game just ends up amounting to a bot match, it still warrants some play value – even more so if you can get some buddies together for some offline death-matching against the computer.
While things could have been cheapened and the game could have had cruddy graphics for the cost, even those were touched up some. The game animates smoothly with no hitches whatsoever. Even the sounds are nice – the bigger the dangerous bomb is, for example, the louder and more echoing the explosion is. While it isn't anything earth shattering graphically, it is a nice bonus for the overall game. However, Bomberman Live does falter in one area – lag can damn near ruin a game. While I'm not sure who caused the lag, anyone lagging in a game can cause players to jump around the map and place bombs that blow up late or prematurely, making it hard to strategize. While this isn't as much the fault of those that actually made the game, I can't help but wonder if there was some way to minimize these effects of lag on the game.
Overall, though, the game isn't really harmed by a laggy connection – it is still damned fun. If you've ever played a Bomberman game on any past system (you'll be hard pressed to find a gamer that hasn't), Bomberman Live is a damned solid pickup. The various game modes, customizability of Bomberman and the ability to play both online or offline with friends makes for a package that, at the price, can't be beat.
Bomberman Live is definitely 10 bucks well spent.
