Bomberman Story DS

Tuesday, 08 January 2008 00:00

Bomberman has been around for years and has been on every format released in one for or another, this time, it's landed on the DS as Bomberman Story DS.

Instead of just pure gameplay where you go through levels and levels of blowing up ever increasing enemies, as the title suggests, there is actually a story to this one. With the main character known as 'Cheerful White', your quest is to restore peace in the universe in the all-new single-player RPG mode.

It's quite a difference from the early 80's when it was known as 'Eric and the Floaters' and no, it wasn't anything to do with a boy and things he left in the toilet. Then the game changed to a different angle, quite literally, as it moved to three dimensional view in which you had to try and manoever through and end up getting frustrated due to getting stuck somewhere. Then there was the top-down view such as in Saturn Bomberman which was the first time I played the format that we know today (I still have the SEGA Saturn version) and it's still popular.

In a twist of the Bomberman series, the RPG element sees you walking around and talking to people, incidentally, talking to people actually has an effect on the replies you give. The puzzle element of the game is when you need to do something in order to proceed, such as the 'Log Bridge' puzzle (as seen in the screenshots) where you have to throw bombs to turn the logs for them to line up and allow you to cross the river. They're quite easy enough to do and won't hold you up for long.

The real nugget of this shiney goodness is the multiplayer capabilities. Up to eight players can play wirelessly, with or without a card (single card download play) and up to four people over Wi-Fi. Bomberman is multiplayer heaven, it's the way the game is meant to be played (hence why Bomberman Live was released on XBLA) and not only that, it's compatible with Bomberman Land Touch! 2 using the Battle Pack 2 feature.

If you don't have the ability to go online with it or have friends to battle against, there's always the Battle Mode that allows you to go against AI opponents, so you can get in some practise for when you do play against friends.

7.8