Don't expect too much (Atomic Bomberman (PC))

Member Name: defiler

Product:	Atomic Bomberman (PC)
Date:	16/03/01 (330 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, fast-paced and fun.

Disadvantages: Not as good as earlier versions, some problems, large install for this type of game.

If you are wanting a cheap and fairly fun game, this is an option, however don't expect too much out of it.

Most people will have played some variation of bomberman at some time, whether on the game boy, NES, SNES, Megadrive, at the arcade or at one of the various other places it has appeared over the years.

The main advantage of this game is that it's cheap, the most you will have to pay for it is £5 and I've often seen offers to allow you to get it cheaper than this, or another game free if you buy it. For a £5 game it's fairly good.

The basic idea is that you control a man who has the ability to put down bombs (hence the name). Using these bombs you must blow holes in walls to allow you to get to the other people in the game and kill them. Each time you blow up a wall you have the chance to get a powerup which can aid you in what you do. The game is very fast paced (this version seems too fast really), requiring some quick thinking and reflexes.

The playing field varies, depending on which scheme you selected, schemes can alter various things about the playing field. The basic one consists of a mixture of destructable and indestructable walls, however various others may use slightly different arangements, alter where you start or various other factors that are meant to make the game more enjoyable. However the truth is that many of the features can be annoying and most people will end up going back to the most basic scheme and find this easily the most enjoyable.

You can play against either human or computer opponents, while human opponents are obviously the most fun to play against, if you don't have any available at the moment computer ones provide a reasonable opponent. Allowing 2-10 players, 4 is probably the most fun, after this the screen starts to get a bit crowded (and can slow down, even on fairly fast computers), below this and the game just doesn't seem as fun.

The po
werups are what make this game fun, while some may have only limited effects they still increase the amount of things you can do and make it easier for you to kill your opponents.
Extra Bombs - Like it sounds like, you can now drop extra bombs, normally you can only drop 1 at once however for every one of these powerups you pick up you can drop an extra one (up to a maximum of 10). However be careful, as it is easier to kill yourself when you are dropping bombs much faster.
Extra range - Normally bombs only have an explosion range of 2, however this powerup increases this by 1, making it easier to trap opponents (and yourself) in explosions. Be careful if this is very high.
Rollerscates - These make you go faster, again it's easier to kill yourself if moving very fast, although obviously has advantages in getting away from things.
Trigger bombs - My favourite powerup, these let you set off a bomb whenever you want making it very easy to kill opponents and avoid killing yourself.
Multiple bombs - This allows you to lay multiple bombs in a row, useful for trapping people if you have a lot of bombs, however if you only have 2 or 3 it doesn't really help you much.
Boxing glove - Allows you to punch bombs, making it easier to avoid being trapped and allowing you to trap opponents by sending bombs flying over walls.
Hand - Similar to the boxing glove, however you pick up bombs and throw it when you want, personally I don't like it much but others find it very useful.
Diseases - Obvious not a powerup, these give you some bad ability such as not being able to lay bombs or automatically laying bombs continuously. You can infect other players simply by running into them, unfortunatly as computer players sometimes don't find certain diseases annoying at all this can leave you at a big disadvantage at times.

Matches tend to be a limited time, when the time is up the screen starts to shrink with indestru
ctable blocks filling any empty areas. Get caught in one of these blocks and you die. After a while the shrinking stops and you have a limited amount of time in a much smaller space to kill any remaining opponents, fail and the game is a draw.

As well as this, Atomic bomberman allows a variety of different "schemes" of games that are meant to be fun, things such as 2 teams starting at opposite sides of a wall and having to punch bombs over the other side to kill them. Unfortunatly, most of these modes don't work that well and really aren't that fun, in fact you will probably only use 1 or 2 of these modes at all (out of around 65) and most of the time spend your time playing the basic original game (provided you play this at all).

One thing lacking from this game is the adventure mode that was for 1 or 2 players and pitted you against simple computer opponents. While this mode wasn't great on every single version of the game it was great fun on many of the others. While this isn't a bad thing as it means they have concentrated more on the multiplayer mode that was the most played anyway, I personally don't think they have made sufficient changes to justify this (in fact most of the changes I saw seemed to make the game less enjoyable to play).

Multiplayer allows up to 10 players (as previously stated), however you aren't really going to be able to fit that many on a single computer and therefore if you want a lot of players you need to take advantage of LAN or Modem play. As I'm not on a LAN I can't really comment on this mode, however over a Modem it did have difficulties. If I put more than 5 or 6 players on at once (only 2 human players the rest computer) it got extremely slow and nearly impossible to play without problems for me. Connecting was annoying, and often seemed to fail for no reason. However when it worked normally it was fun, however seemed to lack some of the enjoyment that
was found on consoles when you had your opponents sitting right next to you.

Graphics are an improvement on most of the old console games, animations of things such as you dying are great when you see them. The problem is the images seem too big and blocky at times and I really wanted the simple graphics that could be found in something like Super Bomberman on the SNES.

Music is OK but gets annoying after a while, sound effects are about as good as I expected from this type of game and are enjoyable enough, if not perfect.

Computer AI is reasonable, while sometimes they will do completely stupid things, for the most part they do act like they should and provide a decent challenge to almost anyone.

Overall, if you are wanting a reasonable arcade game to remind you of your old console games this is an option. However if I was you I would personally save your money, download a SNES or Megadrive emulator and play one of the old games on that, they seemed more fun and had a decent 1 play game included as well as good multiplayer.

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