Bionicle Heroes

"A Fantastic Yet Overlooked Shooter"

When it comes to titles that are based on licenses, whether it be cartoons, toys, movies, deodorant (look for Right Guard Xtreme Racing this fall!) or anything else you can imagine, most of us have one reaction upon seeing these titles: Yuck! And with good reason, as quite frankly, most video game tie ins are, simply put, terrible. Yet this theory does not always hold, and every now and then, a surprisingly good game slips through the cracks - Bionicle Heroes is one such game.

I must admit, I know little of Bionicle, and I have little interest in it outside of the game, so Bionicle fans out there, pardon my ignorance to whatever terminology or familiar figures there are that must be mentioned.

Gameplay
So what is Bionicle Heroes? It's a First Person Shooter for the Nintendo DS, a system which seems like the perfect home for the genre, yet with the exception of a very small handful (Metroid Prime: Hunters and Goldeneye to name, well, practically all of them), has very little in the genre to offer. This is where Bionicle Heroes comes in.

You're set off into battle as a warrior, and you are given six zones to choose from, which you can progress through in any order. Each of these areas consists of five levels, four main levels and a boss level. You can freely do two, three or every level in a zone, and switch ones and do a few there. It's entirely up to you, and in this regard, many people may compare it to Mega Man.

Throughout these stages, half of which are themed with elements (fire, water and ice), you must collect Masks. These different masks make you take on the form of a different warrior, I suppose, thus giving you a different weapon to use. These weapons include a rapid fire gun, a gun that shoots bolts of lightning, and so on. However, there are three of each mask, and with each additional mask of that type you earn, your abilities are increased. For example, the first mask gives you the basic weapon, the second mask gives you an upgrade to that weapon, and the third mask (which you obtain from defeating a boss) will upgrade your weapon's strength once more, as well as give you special abilities. More specifically, the ice gun, once you obtain the third mask, becomes a sniper rifle with a high chance of freezing your enemies. The lightning gun will chain the lightning between foes, and allow you to slow your falling speed for a few seconds. So on and so forth, meaning that, much like games such as Metroid, in order to find all of the secrets in every level, you will need to revisit them once you have certain upgrades. This is all a welcome change from your beginning weapon, which is a simple pistol with unlimited ammo, that also doubles and allows you to reconstruct certain statues and elevators / bridges made of Lego pieces.

In addition to the masks you collect, you will also find Lego pieces that look like gears, which you collect, for a purpose that will be explained in a moment. Each level is full of secrets, hidden all around - some far more obvious than others, and the rewards are different for each one. Some might give you an Armor upgrade, while others are Runes, which you then use to translate Cheat Codes that you buy using the aforementioned gears. And there are quite a few cheats in the game as well, from simple ones such as Unlimited Ammo and Invincibility, to far more amusing ones, such as allowing you to fire farm animals from your gun or have confetti and balloons pop out of your foes upon defeating them.

Score: 9/10

Graphics
Another area in which Bionicle Heroes succeeds, and quite well. at that. All of the areas in the game are full 3D, as are your enemies and your weapons, and it looks great. You'll traverse a system of caves and streams beneath a starry night sky, enter a castle's gate and explore the depths of it for the mask you require, and so on. All of the areas look great, and while some of the visuals are still a bit amateurish, the areas where the game really shines truly look great.

The enemies are, as far as I can tell, constructed of Lego pieces, but it seems to work. Most of the world is empty of Legos save for certain parts, and even those parts, you don't often notice, so the fact that this is a Lego game rarely seems to be an issue. In fact, in some ways, the rigid shape of Lego monsters and characters works out well, making any blocky characters in the game seem just fine, as that is how they were intended to be.

Score: 8/10

Control
Here's the area where, I'm afraid, Bionicle Heroes loses some points - but it's really not major. You're presented with control options for both left and right hands, as well as for both touch screen and buttons (that is to say, you can use the D-Pad or ABXY to aim). The shoulder buttons fire and allow you to use certain special abilities (which one does which ought to change with your hand choice), and even if you're using the touch screen for aiming, it's not that difficult to use the special abilities. All of the weapons are selectable from the touch screen, or you can cycle through them with the Select button, with the touch screen controls here working out quite well.

Seems fine so far, right? Well, this is where Bionicle Heroes suffers, if only a little. When using the touch screen to aim, the Y axis moves just fine (up and down), but the X axis is a little less smooth (left and right) and takes some getting use to. The problem is that moving left and right, even on high sensitivity, can be a little awkward and unresponsive, with small motions being problematic at times. However, when you are exposed to the game for a long enough time (usually just an hour or two), you quickly adjust to the control scheme and it becomes second nature, so don't let this deter you.

Score: 7/10

Sound
While not really winning any awards, the sound in Bionicle Heroes is proficient. The music is well composed, though arguably not as good as the Gameboy Advance version of the game, and the sound effects fit well. Every sound is crisp and clear, from the firing of your gun to the explosion of your enemies, and nothing feels out of place or poorly done.

Score: 8/10

Difficulty
Another area for Bionicle Heroes where I must take off a point. Truth be told, it's really a coin toss for this game. Even with a lot of Armor upgrades, enemies in this game get progressively more powerful and in the end, can take you down VERY fast. The easy part, though, is that you have infinite lives and are not forced to restart the level; you respawn right in the same room where you died. There is a catch, though; those Lego gear pieces I mentioned earlier, which are essential to unlocking the game's cheats, are removed every time you die, and it's very easy to die several times in a matter of seconds, and thus lose thousands of them. And given that cheats can cost as little as 5,000 but as much as 200,000, you don't really want to lose these.

So, while the game is, in fact, rather difficult to get through without dying, the penalties for doing so are minimal - or rather, the severity of them is determined by your desire to unlock everything.

Score: 7/10

Replayability
Something which we all want games to have is replay; so how does Bionicle Heroes stack up? Pretty well, honestly. Every level is full of secrets for you to find, some of which I'm still unsure of how to grab, and there are roughly a dozen or more cheats to unlock. Each of these counts towards your total completion percentage, so just beating the 37 levels in the game will not net you 100% on your save file.

In addition, Bionicle Heroes supports four player Multi-card, so if you have friends with the game, you're free to battle. Unfortunately, I can not test this mode out, but it never hurts to have.

For me, the mere 100% completion alone has kept me coming back to the game for a while, so I have to rate it pretty high in this area.

Score: 9/10

Overall
It seemed to come out of nowhere and fade into obscurity just as quick, but don't let that deter you from picking up Bionicle Heroes and giving it an honest try. The game is a very satisfying FPS on a system which is starved for them, and if you're a fan of the genre, you should certainly look into it.

Score: 8/10*

*Score is rounded to the nearest whole number.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/07