Hey all, I’m back with a dumpster fire for this week’s Retro Game Friday. It’s Bomberman Act Zero.
Plot: You play as a human test subject trapped in an underground facility who must become a Bomberman and fight through 99 levels in order to escape. That sounds more interesting than it actually is because the game barely does anything with this premise. Mostly, it exists to justify turning the normally colorful Bomberman world into a grim science fiction setting.
Gameplay: This is a 3D reimagining of the classic Bomberman formula where you run around arenas dropping bombs, destroying blocks, grabbing power-ups, and trying to blow up everyone else before they get you.
Unfortunately, Act Zero takes that simple and fun formula and makes almost everything worse. The enemy AI is unbalanced, the action quickly becomes repetitive and the single-player campaign expects you to fight through 99 stages without saving. If you die, you start over.
There’s also a mode called First Person Bomber despite the fact that it isn’t actually first person. Instead, the camera moves down behind your character making it much harder to see bombs and enemies around the arena. You also get a health bar instead of the traditional one-hit kills, which removes some of the tension that makes classic Bomberman so much fun.
The game did offer eight-player online multiplayer, but it inexplicably left out local multiplayer, which had always been one of the best parts of Bomberman.
The older Bomberman 64 was a significantly better attempt to move the series into 3D, and even that game had its problems.
Art: The graphics have aged poorly, but the bigger problem is the art direction. Hudson replaced Bomberman’s colorful cartoon style with generic armored characters, dark arenas, and a gritty futuristic look that feels completely wrong for the series.
Music: The music and sound effects are repetitive and forgettable, which doesn’t help when the gameplay itself already becomes monotonous.
Overall: Bomberman Act Zero is a textbook example of a reboot that misunderstood why people liked the original titles in the first place. It stripped away much of the charm and personality of Bomberman while adding almost nothing worthwhile in return.
Bomberman Act Zero is absolutely horrible and should be avoided at all costs, and there’s a reason it’s still remembered as one of the worst games of its era.
