Don’t Tug on Bomberman’s Cape…
Many games try and take inspiration from each other. Some are successful whilst some are not. Sometimes, it’s best to leave the original as it was and try not to copy the same formula in order to make a successful game yourself. The same can be said for QubicGames who have tried to take the same formula as Super Bomberman, mix it up a little and release their own game in Brawl. I’ll give them credit for attempting to do something with it, but when Super Bomberman R is so good itself, I think they should of left it alone.
The main premise of Brawl revolves around a number of characters who each have their own unique skill sets and story. You can play through the first 4 character’s mini-campaign and then unlock the rest to play at a later time. These characters are creatures, humans or things that you’d only really see in your nightmares. From a scary clown to a demon-type teddy bear (think of Danganronpa), it’s clear to see that horror was the topic that they were going for. Each of the stories are pretty similar to be fair, and I can’t really see a reason why you’d actually want to complete all the stories.
Before I go into what I thought about the games’ main gameplay system, I have to point that that there is no online play on offer here, which for me isn’t going to make me want to play Brawl any more than required for review. For games such as this, I think an online aspect is crucial to the longevity of the game, hence why I’m always going back and forth to Super Bomberman R to get some online games on, because that is the funnest part of the game.
On the battlefield, it’s OK if I’m honest, there isn’t much in the way of a challenge, which again really disappointed me. Each of the characters have their special move, which sounds good, but for the vast majority of the game, you are just planting bombs in order for you to get past some crates or kill some enemies. A lot of the levels are the same, kill this, do that and then get to the end. It did bore me quite quickly, and I really hoped that Brawl would have more to it in terms of depth, because if we had more games like Bomberman but with its own identity, there would be more games I’d be inclined to play.
On a good point for the game, it does look rather nice on the Nintendo Switch’s screen display, whether you dock it or not. It performs nicely and there are certainly no gripes on that aspect. However, the same can not be said of the voice acting. For all of the time, the voice acting just felt off and rather weird, and again, it’s not doing the game any favours at all. I wish I could speak more about the game but this is basically a much toned-down attempt which tries to mix up some gothic horror into it but ultimately fails.
