Or: What 1-Player Mode Would Be Like If Those Cool-Ass Custom Parts You Got In The Game Actually Did Something Besides Looking Cool.
Okay, that's slightly misleading. Most of the custom parts you get during the course of this game (called Custom Battler Bomberman, appropriately enough) aren't as varied and miscellaneous as the ones you get in, say, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. Now that would've been awesome: I could've decked out Bomberman in pigtails and a dress for sheer cute factor and then given him Wolverine claws to slash people with. (Battle mode: Doin' It Wrong!)
But I digress.
Story
The bustling futuristic metropolis called Grid City has been invaded by a computer virus that manages to infect every major sector of the city's mainframe, disrupting normal operations and causing the mechanized army that protects the city to turn on the citizens. Grid City's only hope for survival now rests with a custom antivirus program named after a legendary warrior said to have once saved the planet...can this warrior rise again in cyberspace to erase the virus?
Gameplay
There are seven worlds in all to complete, comprising ten stages each. Most stages are divided into three sections that each have a specific "mission" you have to complete in order to advance. The mission objectives range from defeating enemies in a stage, to finding a Gate Key or a special kind of item in the soft blocks, to activating certain mechanisms in order to open a gate, to doing any of these three but with a time limit. At the halfway point in each world, you get a single "mission" to fight a deathmatch-style battle with some of the Mech Soldiers and/or defeating a miniboss, and the tenth stage in each world is, of course, the boss stage. You'll get your mission objectives (and, in the case of the minibosses and bosses, a hint about how to deal with them) in a scrolling marquee at the bottom of the top screen.
Once you finish a stage, you earn points and EXP based on your performance; this includes killing enemies, picking up items, and how much time is left on the timer. If you die, you can keep whatever EXP you earned, hooray. Your level determines how much EP (Equip Points) you have, which in turns affects what parts you can equip. Each custom part has a number value assigned to it, so the total value of the parts you've got equipped can't exceed your maximum EP.
The custom parts you collect from the stages do two things. The ones you get early on tend to just boost basic stats, such as the number of bombs Bomberman can lay down and so forth. The stats are fairly standard, with two exceptions – the Hack Spec basically affects how much you benefit from picking up a Life Pack (heart) or a Time Pack (the higher your Hack Spec, the more you get), and the Attack Spec is how strong your bomb flames are. This is different from the Fire Spec, because the Fire Spec merely dictates the length of the bomb flames, while the Attack Spec determines how much damage that inflicts on enemies (since health in this game is represented by a single health bar that slowly depletes as damage is taken). In addition to modding basic stats with custom parts, you can also pick up temporary power-ups while on a stage, with your stats returning to normal once you finish. Certain custom parts (or combination of parts) also give Bomberman things like remote control bombs (of course) and the ability to kick bombs (duh) once he's got them equipped. Some abilities, like Shield, are activated with the use of the Y button, while others, like Dash, are activated with the B button. Some parts give you an SP ability, which is activated with the Y button once you fill up a second meter that appears above your health meter.
There are some interesting abilities you can use, like hovering, tasering enemies(!), and shooting lasers to either taser enemies or destroy soft blocks(!!!), but for the most part I stuck with familiar territory. Once I gained enough EXP to wear the parts for remote bombs and enhanced Bomb Spec and Speed Spec, I was pretty much set to go for most instances, though there were some stages where I had to switch out the remote bombs for being able to throw bombs (no, you cannot throw remote bombs in this game) in order to get to a particular custom part. One of my favorite things about this game, though, has nothing to do with the custom parts and everything to do with the fact that you don't automatically take damage if you run into an enemy, excepting electrified or spiked bad guys. This makes it really easy to trap an enemy with bombs if you're fast enough and have a high enough Bomb Spec. :D
Like Story DS, I managed to finish a run-through of this game in less than 24 hours of game time: I started it late Saturday afternoon and finished it Sunday night. One of the info screens says that I'm only 66% done with the game, though, which probably refers to the rankings you earn at the end of each stage based on how fast you finished it and what your score was. I have no idea if I'm going to go back and try to get those high scores – you can apparently get parts to make you look like Cute Pink/Pretty Bomber and Bomberman Max if you get enough high scores on each stage, but I'm not the type of gamer that has to get every single thing in a game before declaring that I'm done with it. YMMV, of course.
Graphics
Cute and cartoony – I really liked them. The designers seemed to have had a lot of fun creating the computerized, digital look for the background and for the screens and such.
Music
Heavily digital/electronic, of course. Nothing really stood out for me, though.
Multiplayer
...uhhh I didn't check it out yet. :D;;
Verdict in a nutshell: Um...I had fun with it? I'm glad to see Hudson experimenting with single-player gameplay like this, though. I bet they could come up with something fun if they combined the custom parts system from this game with an RPG or platformer style of gameplay.
