"Lots of mini games, that don't make a decent whole"

I hadn't played a bomberman game in ages, so I decided to give this one a go, since I'd bought a DS and didn't have many games for it. I'd played Wario Ware Inc. and the Mario Party games before, which seems to be the genre this game is emulating, and thus thought I'd at least enjoy it a little. It doesn't have the traditional adventure mode that I was used to with bomberman games, which I was slightly disappointed by, as the theme park didn't really serve much purpose but to send you from one puzzle to the next.

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Storyline (4/10)
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There isn't really much of one here, they go to an amusement park and have fun playing the mini games. Somewhere along the way the lone bombergirl gets kidnapped, and you go around picking up different bombs and outfits to go save her, whilst doing some slight puzzle solving along the way. It's not the most imaginative story ever, but it at least gives a reason for why you're at the park… although in some ways I think the game would have benefited without the storyline in some way.

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Gameplay (6/10)
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Moving around the island from zone to zone is easy enough, and the menus and emails function ok. But, as the game involves playing loads of different games, it's hard to comment on how well they work as a whole, as for some they're spot on, whilst others feel like they'd never been tested. Once you complete the minigames, you get tokens, which you need to collect enough of to open gates, to unlock more games to play, or you can find them hidden in chests.

Here's where the problems come in, in order to progress, you need to get enough tokens to open the gate; but in order to accumulate enough to progress you need to beat all the games that are there anyway, AND find all the hidden chests. It seems strange to have them as hidden chests, and have a gate system when you don't really have a choice about which games you do. Some of the games are easy enough, such as touching the right colour bomb, but others such as rolling the bombs along are hard, not because they involve skill, but because the mechanics of the game don't seem to function like they're supposed to. In this example, you're supposed to stop the bomb you're currently on just before it touches the next bomb, otherwise they collide and explode, wasting time, however, all too often nothing happens, and you have to keep nudging it towards the bomb, and then they touch and blow.

The equipment you get given is never really explained that well either. You get given a miner's helmet and ‘light' bombs, both of which illuminate dark places a little, but you're never told that you can use them in conjunction with each other to mark your circle of light larger, which I didn't find out until I equipped them both by accident. You also spend a lot of time walking around trying to find out what you're supposed to be doing to find the last token you need to open the next gate, after doing all the games and finding the chests, only to discover you had to speak to random NPC, whilst wearing a specific item.

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Graphics (6/10)
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Not much to comment on here, they're about SNES standard, which is pretty much standard for bomberman. They do their job well enough, but there's nothing here that's going to amaze you.

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Sound (5/10)
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In all honesty, I can't really remember any of the songs from the game, which could be good in that they didn't distract you from the game, but is probably bad in that they just were very memorable. Typing this out, I remembered one of the songs from Super Bomberman 3 for the SNES, which shows memorable songs can be achieved :D

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Summary (5/10)
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It's not Wario Ware, there's enough difference in the mini games to keep you occupied, but they don't really feel worth the stress of completing the dull and frustrating games. There's also a lot of guessing involved in working out how to get the next token after you've beaten all the minigames in the area and still don't have enough tokens to open the gate. All in all, it's not an awful game, but it nothing that will keep you entertained in the long term.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/07