Bomberman Generation

"This game is the bomb!!"

Oh boy, do I get the lamest review title of the year award. It sounded good at the time. Well, I don't own a Gamecube but this game makes me wish I did. My friend went on vacation so he let me borrow his Gamecube and all his games. Unfortunately the bastard doesn't have many games but since this game rules I'll forgive him. Yep, that's right, a Bomberman in the last 5 years that doesn't suck. There aren't many of those are there? Simply put, you'll have a blast. No pun intended. Ok fine... the pun was intended, now get off my back!

GAME DIFFICULTY - Well, being that it's a Bomberman game you probably wouldn't expect the difficulty level to be very high. You'd be right. Although there is a noticeable increase in puzzles, a good move in my opinion, most of them aren't very hard to figure out. Even if you don't know what you're doing, some of them are pretty easy to solve accidentally. Another interesting thing that some of these other reviewers, who I look at for inspiration, have noticed is that it seems the difficulty of the game decreases over time. Or at least the bosses do. Kind of interesting. Anyway, though I think it's a little bit harder then some of it's predecessors I still have to put it in the very easy to easy category.

GAMEPLAY - 8.5/10 - Though the game is pretty short, as you'd expect, what there is of the game is pretty darn fun. There are 6 worlds and 6 levels in each world. Many of these contain some stupid mini-boss for you to pulverize. There's that same blow up monsters, blow up stuff, blow up everything kind of technique that has made Bomberman what it is but there are more puzzles. There were actually a few that made me think but most were pretty easy. The good thing about puzzles though is that even when they're easy, if you figure it out it makes you feel a little bit smarter. Or maybe it somehow leads you into a traumatic state of depression, I don't know. And of course there are those lovely power-ups that can add to the range of your bombs, make you faster and whatnot. Overall the game is pretty linear (I love that word) and doesn't leave much room for exploration. An edition to the game are these Charabom creatures that even the most unobservant of people could notice play a role eerily similar to that of Pokemon. You find Charaboms throughout some of the different levels. Certain Charaboms give you certain abilities and you can fight other Charaboms and blah, blah, blah. Some people find this really cool but I didn't care for it all that much. A nice edition nonetheless. There are these lightning cards that you can find in the different stages. Remember the gold cards in Bomberman 64? Yep, like those. Most, if not all are pretty easy to find. Then there is *dun dun dun* Multiplayer!!! The first thing you'll notice here is the change back to the good old 2-D battle mode. Works for me! It's not much different then the way the 2-D battles used to be and that, in my opinion, is a good thing. Those were fun and this is too. There are a few different battle modes other than the regular one, and they're pretty interesting. I won't really go into detail about them because this section is getting long and I'm getting tired and no one on earth will ever read this anyway. If you're like me you'll try out the other modes a few times but spend most of your time with good old classic battle mode.

SOUND - 7/10 - The sound definitely goes well with the bright cartoonish graphics (which I'll get into later) and the style of game. There's a little bit of voice acting too and it sounds kind of childish. Some people won't be able to stand it. I didn't really care either way. The music is pretty upbeat. It's the kind that will either make you want to dance on a rainbow while it's raining lollipops, or bang your head on the t.v. screen repeatedly. A lot of the different levels seemed to have different music, though of similar styles, and since you go through each level pretty quickly you probably won't go insane. Hell, you might love it. It really didn't annoy me or cause me to mute it and some of it was pretty catchy. Whatever floats your boat.

STORYLINE - 5.5 - It isn't brilliant but at least they kind of tried. Some space ship is invaded by some guys. Sounds great so far right? Well (hold on to your hat!) on this space ship were the bomber elements!!! NOOOO!!! Um... what are the bomber elements exactly? Bah it probably tells you but I could care less. These bomber elements somehow get scattered all around the planet. You, yea that's right, you (ok actually Bomberman) have to recober the 6 Bomber Elements before the Hije Hije (sp?) bandits and some other guys do. Compared to the usual Bomberman plots this is brilliant. Kind of sad.

GRAPHICS - 8.5 - Yummy, cel-shaded graphics! Not everyone is a huge fan of these but I think it's awesome. The game is tremendously bright and colorful. Almost too bright. For some the cel-shading is an acquired taste. Others wish death upon it's creators. I personally think it looks freakin' beautiful. Some of the monster dudes look pretty cool too. Hrm... must stall... must make review longer. Ah screw it. That's pretty much it for the graphics department.

CONTROL - 8.5 - The important thing, as is always the case with controls, is that they didn't screw it up. I remember messing up once or twice early on, but I adjusted to the controls pretty quickly. There really aren't that many different things Bomberman can do anyway. He just pretty much pulls bomb out of his pocket (and how the hell does he do that!?) and kicks them around. It sounds so simple but yet it's so much fun. Kabooooooooom!!! Bwahahahahaha. Ok, I'm scaring myself now.

REPLAYABILITY - 9.5 - Tons of replayability here and, as you might expect, most of it comes from the battle modes. The change back to classic 2-D Bomberman was a good move, in my opinion. You'll have a blast (there's that pun again) even with just the normal battle mode. Especially with friends. There's nothing like spending some quality time with your buddies and bombing the !@#$ out of them too. And then there are the added battle modes to give even more variety. I didn't have as much fun with any of these as I did with the good old classic-style battles but a couple of them were definitely pretty interesting. But don't let it be said that without the battles the game loses all of its replayability. The actual game itself is really pretty fun. The difficulty is at a good balanced level. Average gamers will probably be challenged at a few parts of the game but not nearly to the point of frustration. It's just downright fun. And the fact that the game is pretty short makes it easy for you to play through the game several times. You can also add to your playing time by experimenting with the Charaboms and collecting the lightning cards.

TILT - 8.5 - The score I give for my tilt (which is basically my rating of my personal experience with the game) is actually the same as my true score for the game. Lucky for Bomberman Generation, GameFAQs hates decimals so I decided to be nice and round the score up. As I've said, this game is just good, bomb-crazy fun. In fact, when my friend comes back from vacation I don't think I'm going to give it back to him. I'll tell him some burglar took it. As to why the burglar took the Gamecube and not the PS2 which was in the same room... um, maybe he already had a PS2. Yea that's it. I'm currently trying out the different battle modes a little bit more. I've only briefly tried them out, so maybe I'll find out they're even better than I thought. Whether they are or not, classic Bomberman battle is all you need to have a lot of fun with this game.

BUY OR RENT - I have to say rent. I just have to. Not everybody is going to love this game like I do... and why, I'll never know. This really is the perfect game for renting. It will probably give you enough time to beat the game and try out the different battle modes, at least a few times. If you still have a craving for Generation's bombaliciousness then by all means buy it. And so ends another brilliant review. Goodbye.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/02, Updated 08/02/02