Bomberman Act: Zero has cleverly tricked me into thinking it was a full fledged triple-A title with its price tag of $50, but after playing the game for five minutes I realized that this game is more like something you would pay 400 Microsoft Points for to download off of the Xbox Live Arcade.
Bomberman includes two single-player modes of play: FPB and Standard. The levels in both modes are simply variations of each other with a few COM opponents thrown in the mix. You have one life, no saves, and “Zero” continues so it’s back to stage one if you die at stage 107. There isn’t a story and not a drop of local multiplayer to its name.
FPB (First Person Bomber) has your avatar running around in third-person through a grimy and dark brown/green arena placing bombs on metal containers in hopes of killing the enemy. In this mode one-hit kills do not exist; instead power-ups and a health bar have replaced it. The camera system allows you to zoom in and out on your avatar along with tilting the camera which proves to be more of a distraction than it does an improvement. In Standard, the top down view is back along with one-hit kills. Here you “grind” through the same ugly environments racking up minutes that in turn add to your survival time.
The only fun that can truly be had with this game is on Xbox Live where up to eight people can play at time. Here you can create lobby’s, join a quick game, or create a custom game. You would think that common sense would tell one to include local multiplayer seeing that it could have been a great party game, but I guess I was wrong in assuming that.
As mentioned above the environments are bland and never changing. The developers have stripped away the comical look of Bomberman opting for a more androidish appeal which has worked out alright. The sound is rather horrible and will soon be turned off if you have near functioning ear drums. Sadly, you cannot turn off the horrible techno voice that says things like “You Are Dead” and “You Are Alive” at the end of every level.
The game controls fine even though you’ll want to completely zoom out in FPB. You use the thumbstick to navigate and the A button to place bombs on the containers. The Triggers zoom the camera in and out and the Bumpers above the Triggers rotate the camera.
Some retro remakes are good, some are not so good, and some are downright horrible. With repetitive levels, incredibly bland graphics and sound, and on top of it all zero local multiplayer, I declare this retro remake a DUD.
