Bomberman Touch - The Legend of Mystic Bomb

Throughout gaming history, there have been many popular men: Pac Man, Mega Man, Ms. Pac Man, Mega Man 2, Pac Man, Jr., Mega Man 3, and so on. Another of these is Bomberman; a little man who may actually be a robot with a white helmet who runs around mazes and blows stuff up. The franchise has been around forever, gracing pretty much every gaming system you can remember, and many you cannot (ZX Spectrum? Sharp MZ-700?). Recently, Bomberman could be found blasting himself free from the confines of your iPod. Now, he’s found his way to the iPhone/iPod touch. I guess when you’re Hudson Soft and you don’t have a lot of franchises to milk, you gotta milk the ones you do have for all they’re worth. And so…

Man and Bomberman
I’m not well-versed in the Bomberman lore. The iTunes App Store says the series has over 60 titles, of which I’ve played one. Well…two, now, if you include Bomberman Touch: The Legend of the Mystic Bomb. In the iPod version, you ran around the maze and dropped bombs, occasionally playing a mini-game to break up the action. Here on the iPhone, there’s a story. There are little cut scenes to watch and characters to meet and choices to make. I’m not sure how these enhance the gaming experience, or how much they’ve been used in the past. In this version, the story isn’t very interesting, or well-told, for that matter, and pretty much just gets in the way. In fact, everything you really need to know about what’s going on is already in the title. You’re a man, you have bombs, and there’s a legend about a mystic bomb. I think you’re smart enough to take it from there.

Arms and the Bomberman
Once the gameplay gets going, though, it’s old-school arcade action all the way. The point of Bomberman is to work your way through a maze in an effort to find the hidden exit. You do this by planting bombs, which explode in plus shapes to knock out the walls of the maze. Power-ups are often revealed, granting you larger explosions and such, which you’ll need to protect yourself from the myriad enemies along the way. In typical arcade fashion, they only have to touch you to kill you, while you have to blow them up. Plus, they are many, and you are one (or three, I guess). So, you’ll have to worry about avoiding/killing a good number of enemies as you develop your strategy for finding the exit and moving on to the next level. It’s not easy, and the task is exacerbated by a confounded timer that prevents you from just loitering about the maze.

Major Bombera
The design of Bomberman Touch is quite nice. The graphics are vivid and colorful, the sound is fantastic, and the mazes are vast. I guess that when you’ve been developing a franchise as long as Hudson has with Bomberman, you learn what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, the one thing that doesn’t work here is the one item that’s new to the iPhone: the controls. You drop a bomb by tapping the bomb button in the lower right corner of screen, so that’s simple enough. But you move Bomberman by placing a finger or thumb anywhere on the screen and dragging it in the direction you want to move. This seems simple enough, but is harder to execute that you’d think.

The system isn’t that precise, and you’ll often find yourself overshooting the opening through which you want to run. When being chased by a bad guy or trying to avoid a bomb explosion, that can prove terribly frustrating. Also, you’ll find yourself constantly having to move and reset your control finger/thumb to either get to the bomb button or to see what’s going on beneath your hand. Constantly picking up and resetting your control finger is roughly the equivalent of dropping your gamepad every few seconds. Although the widescreen display makes for some big and elaborate puzzles, I’d prefer to see this extra retail space sacrificed for the placement of a virtual d-pad that remains in the same spot throughout the game.

Bomberman Touch is already difficult enough without the faulty control system, so it can become terribly frustrating when you know what to do, but can’t seem to do it. And don’t even get me started on the Options menu, the button for which is placed so close to the gaming area that you’ll suddenly find yourself staring at the options screen three or four times per level. Almost as bad, when you finally complete a level, you know it’s only to move ahead to more of the same. The screens may look different, but the action is quite repetitious. This probably won’t bother fans of the franchise—this is what you want out of a Bomberman game, after all—but those coming in fresh will probably wonder how such a game managed to reach over 60 incarnations.

The Bomberman of Destiny
Bomberman Touch: The Legend of the Mystic Bomb is selling for $6.49 I think this price is a premium because of the name alone, and should actually go for $4.99. Most iPhone owners won’t actually finish all of the levels (even though there aren’t that many), but could still get their $5’s worth out of it. $8, and you’re pushing the cost/reward ratio. In fact, I think it’s more useful for simply showing off the iPhone as a gaming device for a few minutes than it is for sitting down to a prolonged gaming session.

ราคา  $6.49  (ฟรี)

ขนาดไฟล์  13.3 MB

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