Wii Bomberman Blast

Forum member Tooms gives us his impressions of the latest Wii Bomberman game Bomberman Blast. Amongst other things. It's all yours Tooms!

First things first, I like Bomberman. When we get together with friends, Bomberman is always played. No matter what else. It seems to be universal. Even the Wife enjoys it.

Normally we play the Gamecube version. It always involves swearing and kicking and a lot of laughing. And picking on people. Bomberman is all about picking on people.

When I was a kid **beware – too much personal info alert** I used to go to a shop in my local town, that sold computer games. Do they still exist? Not GAME or Gamestation, but a one man band type thing. I used to frequent 2 others in my local larger town. In one of these is where I first played Street Fighter 2 arcade machine (and a man who could finish it as Zangief only using spinning pile drivers and getting a perfect on every level !!), and saw an Atari ST with graphics that were truly amazing.

Anyway my local shop had a Bomberman tournament. On a Super NES with the little multi adapter thingy that I so wanted to own but was never allowed! Anyway I liked Bomberman, I played and managed to kick my friends ass and I won the competition. I got a water bottle. YAY ME !!

Now it is 2008 and I have a Wii and Bomberman has finally been released onto the sleek white bundle of joy. So what is it like??

Well I turned it on and had a quick go the other day, but I played last night for a decent go, when I should have been re sealing the bath. Hmmm... not in the good books.

Moving on!!

The first thing you notice is it is very pretty. And there is no pointing. Nope. This is a wii game and the whole pointing aspect is taken away. You turn the remote sideways and play like a NES game. Very retro.

Then you notice how many options there are if you want to faff. You can register your name, and leave it at that. Or you can change your winning pose, your comments for wifi battle (4 of em, you write them yourself – YAAAAYYYY) and a whole bunch of other things.

Right then, sod that, name in, lets get a game. Then you notice how many different variations there are. Battle arena normal, everyday bomberman, and even that you can have normal sized or bigger. But then again, you can have 8 players at once. This is not the SNES version at all !!

And it is Bomberman. I like Bomberman. I loved Bomberman on the SNES, and this is almost exactly the same. It is still infuriatingly addictive and annoying at the same time. I really want to blow the others up. I don’t want to get blown up. And I love it.

So you can change how many battles you play, whether it is the first person to win so many games, or play for points. Change power ups, if they can be destroyed, whether there are viruses, everything.

And 8 players?? I am SO not used to 8 players. You can turn em off if you want. But where's the fun in that?

And even better, you can have 8 real people on one wii if you want, and if you have enough thingys. 4 Wiimotes and 4 Gamecube pads and you are there. That is a party I want to have.

There are some new power ups. Some of which you shake your remote to activate. I think the shield is my new favourite. If you ever played bomberman on the Gameboy, you will know you could get a power up that meant you could not get blown up. Made the game a bit easy:

“come towards me mister bad guy”, drop bomb, stand still, bomb blows up, I live, he doesn’t, – “murahahahahaha”!

There are different competitions. There is now one where if you get hit by a blast, a clock appears above your head, and you have 20 seconds to live !! What would you do in that time?? That’s right, try and find another player to pass it on to. Like a virus, touch another player, and the timer passes to them.

I had a lot of fun on that level playing. It makes it a bit interesting wondering if you should try blowing yourself up to pass it to another player. Hehehe

There is the king of the ring. Find a crown, carry if around, try not to get blown up. If you do, you lose the Crown and someone else can pick it up. Person wearing it at the end wins the round.

I can see a lot of people being picked on in that game !!

I think the biggest difference is the revenge. When you die, you can choose to have revenge. You get in a tiny flying saucer and haunt the edge of the screen. I expect you have all seen this. However new to me is, if you manage to kill someone, you swap and get back in the game and they get to try to wreak revenge. Love it.

There is a friend code *groan* - 12 numbers long. And you can just choose world wide or continental battles, either as a group or on your own. They all seem to be ranked when you play in the worldwide or continental. And you seem to be penalised if you keep disconnecting during a game. Quite heavily too it appears.

But yeah, friend rooms can be created, or join others. I had a quick look and no one seemed to be on in the worldwide room, it is not like Mariokart I guess where you can join in after just one game, but I will try leaving it connected at some point and see what pops up.

But like I said, loads of options.

Anyway, I love it. I cant wait to play it with humans rather than the computer. But I will. And I know I will keep coming back to it.

1000 points seems a bit steep, but with the options available, and the joy I know it will bring (as well as the annoyance), I reckon it is totally worth it.

2 Toomsy thumbs, well up !!

Need your fuse lit? Just don't strike a match too close to THE CELLAR DOOR. Tooms can probably explain why on the FORUM.

Don't Try This At Home

Inspired by David Blaine spending 60 hours upside down (although taking breaks every hour completely upright on his own two feet) and then completing the 'Dive of Death' (more of a jump with safety wires) I've decided to perform my own stunt this weekend. I'm going to play Rock Band for one whole hour non stop, although I will be taking regular breaks every 15 minutes for refreshments and a medical team will be on site to perform medical checks and to step in should anything go wrong during the stunt.

While for most people this would be more than enough stress to put my body through in one day, I have taken the decision to end this event with something I like to call the 'Walk of Death'. This will involve placing the controller down somewhere safe and walking completely unaided over to the sofa and sitting down. I'm currently trying to get ABC to screen it as a live 2 hour finale. Of course looking at the timings the whole thing will be over in approximately 1 hour and 30 seconds so I'll need to come up with something to fill the remaining 59 and a half minutes.

Bring it on Mr Blaine, beat that!

Any ideas will be more than welcome on the GAMEOV3R FORUM

The Force Unleashed

I have felt a tremor in The Force. There is unrest in Unleashed. Stormtroopers are using Anti Force Fields!! Anti Force Fields? It sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it? But is it really so odd and too far fetched to exist in the Star Wars universe? Some reviewers of The Force Unleashed think so and have gone so far as to say that this feature of the game is shoe horned in and goes against 30 years of Star Wars tradition. Are they right?

When Episode I came out, and subsequently II & III, Star Wars history became a bit flimsy to say the least. So does it matter that Lucas Arts have allowed this new addition to the Stormies armoury? After all these Anti Force Shields didn’t exist in Revenge of the Sith or A New Hope and, perhaps strangely, The Force Unleashed sits firmly between these episodes on the Star Wars time line.

When A New Hope took place there weren’t any Jedi left for the Imperials to worry about so no wonder Anti Force Shields weren’t being used. By the time Luke pulled his socks up and learnt to use his lightsaber and levitate stones properly the Imperials had probably forgotten that these shields had ever existed. Problem solved. Enjoy the game.

Not enough? It’s interesting, delving deeper into Star Wars lore, that Force negating creatures exist in the Star Wars universe. These creatures are called Ysalimari. They first appeared in the Timothy Zahn trilogy of books, a trilogy that followed on from Return of the Jedi. The Ysalimari render any Force user’s power useless and they were harnessed to great effect by Grand Admiral Thrawn, the sole surviving Grand Admiral of the Imperial Fleet, to great effect. Maybe Thrawn thought the creatures less cumbersome than an Anti Force Field generator or that they were better company. Perhaps it was just the fact that the Anti Force Generators were just so "last generation".

You think the chronology of Star Wars is difficult? Just try working out who’s on litter duty on the Gameov3r FORUM

You know the gates that you have to drive through in some of the Mario Kart Wii competitions? I just love the sound they make. There’s something very relaxing about parking alongside a gate, sitting back and letting the twinkly surreal sound fill your head. I’m pretty sure the final few bends of Rainbow Road, with the sparkly starry tunnel make a similar if not the same sound.

A couple of Sunday’s ago I did just this and used the sound as medication for the stress of trying to get a lap of Koopa Cape, through all the gates, in under a minute. I didn’t manage any better than a 1.01 and so pulled up by a gate to chill out before heading off to bed.

A little while later and I’m in bed trying to get off to sleep and all I can hear is the sound of the gate ringing in my ears and I start thinking about other game sounds that I really like. Kind of odd at 1am but I put it down to Sunday night insomnia again. So I stare at the ceiling and in my head put together my top five video game audio moments….

5. The very first time I heard the lightsaber in Super Star Wars on the SNES. Still great Star wars sound even now.

4. Another Star Wars one, the Imperial Storm Trooper’s blaster effect on SW Battlefield 2 on the PS2.

3. Conker spewing after binge drinking in Bad Fur Day.

2. The Mario Kart Wii Twinky Gate/Rainbow Road sound.

1. The hugely satisfying noise that the Xbox 360 makes when an Achievement is unlocked or a friend comes on-line.

I’m surprised, sitting here all this time later, I have slept many times since then, that I can remember any of this but there you go. Since then I’ve remembered Miner Willy getting squashed by the boot on the game over screen of Manic Miner, Mario going 2x after eating a mushroom, and there’s Yoshi’s Island DS and when you open and close the DS. Most of the sounds from the Wii menu buttons are very appealing too.

Before I go, I thought you might like to know that I found my DS. It was under my wife’s pillow. No one is owning up to putting it there so I can only conclude that my wife is having midnight games with Professor Layton…….

Hang on a minute!!

Play away on the Gameov3r FORUM.

Hidden Treasures

It's weird how you hold on to some games for ages and ages thinking, I'll play that one day. Of course the longer you hold on to them the more their value drops until they're barely worth trading anyway. When I bought my Xbox 360 way back in March of 2007 I got a bundle of games with it including Gears of War, PGR3 and Crackdown. Over those 18 months or so I've loaded up Crackdown maybe a couple of times and spent all of 5 minutes with it before switching it off again. Something wasn't clicking but I couldn't bring myself to sell it for some reason. I mean, the reviews were very positive so it must be good right?... and it is! About a week a go something made me load it up again and this time I found myself really enjoying it. Collecting the orbs to improve your jumping capabilities is highly addictive and scaling taller and taller buildings feels great. Some of the heights you can reach are dizzying. It's a shame there aren't any wind noises while you're up there though.

Being out at the weekend a comment from a review came back to me. It said after playing the game it made them look at real buildings for hand holds and ask themselves questions such as, could they make that jump from one roof to the next? Strangely I found myself doing exactly the same thing. I'm not sure if that's a sign of how good the game is or something that should worry me slightly really. Either way I'm off to rummage through my game cases for more hidden treasures that may still be lurking there... once I find a way to get down off this roof that is.

By the way, if you missed out on Crackdown it's certainly worth the £11 you can order a copy from HMV for now.

We're having a crackdown on the GAMEOV3R Forum, best visit while you still can...

'Stop Dragon My Heart Around'

You know I was just thinking this morning there are so few accessories available for gamers that love dragons. I mean surely it would be kind of nice to express your dragon love while pursuing your favourite hobby? With a gaping gap like that in the market I thought I was on to a winner, then I discovered someone had got there first and my hopes of making a fortune were dashed. Get a load of this!...



That tail sure does look uncomfortable though. You can order yours right here

Well you could, seems they're kind of popular right now and completely sold out.

Talk about dragons... and stuff on the GAMEOV3R Forum

Free Fuel Chaos

Electronic Arts brought Finsbury Park in north London to a stand still on Friday with a publicity stunt for the release of Mercenaries 2. £20000 of petrol was given away as lucky customers drove away with £40 worth of free fuel each and a big smile on their face.

Local residents weren't so cheerful however with some waiting up to 10 minutes just to get off their driveways! Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone said "Trying to recreate Venezuelan-style fuel riots on the streets of London is completely irresponsible and downright dangerous." You can view the riots queue here

Louise Marchant, from Electronic Arts, said the scenes mimicked aspects of the game, "It's set in Venezuela, you play a mercenary and fuel is used as a currency" which all sounds uncannily like north London to me.

Take 10 minutes out of your day and visit the GAMEOV3R Forum

Tiger Woods Wii Artwork

An interesting topic was raised by Buckle on the Gameov3r forums today regarding Wii game packaging. In particular the packaging for the Wii version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09. All other formats use the exact same artwork with the Wii version being decidedly less mature looking in my opinion.

You can see the cover shots above. Why would EA think it necessary to do this particularly for what is now such a well recognised series and does it bother you?

You can view the topic here or feel free to leave a comment.

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