Bomberman: Act Zero
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Bomberman: Act Zero is a 2006 action video game developed by Hudson Soft and published by Konami for the Xbox 360. Act Zero features more realistic graphics and a dark, dystopian future setting.
Story
Bomberman: Act Zero is a remake of the original Bomberman game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The main character is a Bomberman (or woman), who is created for the sole purpose of fighting. They are awakened and thrown into a battle where only the strongest will survive.
Gameplay
The game has 99 levels, and the player must defeat their rival in every level using bombs to progress to the next one. The camera plays a unique role in the game in that it has two options. It can be used either from the 2D perspective of previous Bomberman titles or a 3rd person mode where the camera follows behind the player. Act Zero also has an online multiplayer mode that can support up to 8 players worldwide. However, there is no local mode.
Why It Blew Up
- The main problem with the game is that it lacks the charm of the Bomberman franchise, due to the dark and grimy setting it employs and having nothing to do with past installments as it's meant to be a reboot of the series which is to be expected, however, in this case, it doesn't matter since Konami forced Hudson Soft to retool the series for western audiences by trying to cash-in onto the success of Gears of War and Call of Duty at the time with their art style, which contrasts the cutesy art-style of the original games and is a terrible idea for a Bomberman game in general, since the franchise was created in Japan and had an anime aesthetic, making the new edgy steampunk art style feel tacked on as a result.
- The graphics are terrible for 2006 standards, and even for an Xbox 360 game. The game looks like an early PlayStation 2 game, but the game was released for the Xbox 360. And because of terrible graphics, the game looks like someone would want to do bad graphics in a Bomberman game.
- Bomberman's redesign is atrocious and looks like someone captured him and decided to change him into a Cyborg, which is a bad idea to change a cute character into an atrocious-looking Robot. Because of how Bomberman has been redesigned, his redesign became one of the worst Video Game Character Redesigns of all time, especially since Bomberman was supposed to be a cute character, but unsurprisingly, he has given an atrocious look to the point someone would want Bomberman's redesign to never come back, in which that redesign never returned in the Bomberman franchise.
- Plus, his redesign fits more as a Tokusatsu hero than Bomberman and he barely even looks like him.
- While the music doesn't sound bad, it is not very memorable and is easy to forget, like Mario Party 9's music. Even if you hear the level victory theme many times after completing a level, the chances to remember the music are 20%, especially since the players can have other many things stuck in their heads and would not get the music from this game to their head to remember it.
- It does not have a save feature. While the game saves data relating to other stuff in the game, you must be however connected online to save. You must complete all 99 levels in one try. This means, that if you die anywhere in any of the levels, you have to start the game all over again, and from the entire beginning. There are also no continues at all. To add insult to injury, the ending is just a short cutscene that's not worth the hassle of completing the game legitimately. The game can also get hard for newer players, meaning newer players would have serious trouble completing the next levels.
- The gameplay is tedious and repetitive. Each stage uses the same graphics and textures, and the game becomes boring very fast if you complete 5 levels and notice that the next levels are the same. No matter which stage you play, the game will not be exciting and will be boring instead, just to make you feel bored while playing the game.
- For some reason, you cannot kick bombs at all, meaning once you place a bomb, you have to walk away from it and watch out for the explosion, as once it touches Bomberman, he's dead. In other Bomberman games, there is a power-up where you can kick bombs after collecting them, meaning you can escape from the explosion of the bombs quickly. However, Act Zero absolutely does not belong in that category. This is as if the creators forgot about that ability, or the character has weak legs to kick bombs at other players, even if a bomb is not placed next to another one.
- The loading times are long, and they are on par with Sonic '06, Mega Man X7 or Crazy Frog Racer 2's loading screens. No matter which loading screen is shown to your eyes, they will always have the same length, basically to bore you and waste more of your time. Because of this, the loading screens of Bomberman: Act Zero belong to a category named "video games with long loading screens".
- Speaking of the length, this game is not long. It can be beaten in 2 hours without dying, mainly if you are a talented player who rarely dies in a video game. The length is also barely like Ardennes Offensive's length. And even for an Xbox 360, the game is pretty short to complete, despite having 99 levels. Even SpongeBob HeroPants has a bit longer length than this game.
- Pathetic customization. All you can do in the customization is change the gender and armor color for your character, in any gender or color you wish. You can't even change your character's appearance at all, like having a bit different armor. Instead, you can only change the gender and armor color of your character, and nothing else.
- Not to mention, the female models have jiggle physics, for no reason, which is strange, as if something was bad in the body of the female models.
- Poor story. What it shows you is a scene where Bomberman gets created and then runs away from the explosions, and then suddenly stops and looks at the explosion. After that, the camera zooms in the way where we can see a bit of his head and body, and then the explosion actually reaches Bomberman, and then it shows the game's logo. And once the game's logo is shown, you are booted to the title screen. Even if the story tries to be good itself, it fails, meaning it won't be good at all, and is poor instead.
- Sluggish controls. You can sometimes do stupid things while trying to get away from a bomb to not get killed, like going in the wrong direction or making Bomberman not go anywhere, like if you would actually try to make him look into a block that is not destroyable, and because of this, the explosion would kill Bomberman easily, especially if you would place a bomb and not even escape from it.
- None of the characters appear from the original series in this game. The only character that appears in the game is just Bomberman, and that's it. The enemies are just some male and female robots that you have to do an obvious thing to them, which is defeat them. This is like the other characters from the original Bomberman series took a vacation or escaped from this game to not look terrible if they were redesigned, so only Bomberman appears in the game, along with some different robots that look like they don't belong in a Bomberman game at all.
- The camera system during "First-Person Battles" is awful. Besides, the "First-Person Battle" isn't even first-person. It's a behind-the-player Third-Person perspective. Not to mention, because of that camera, avoiding bombs can be difficult, especially if you do not even know that the explosion is coming to Bomberman to kill him.
- There is no local multiplayer mode in Bomberman: Act Zero. The only multiplayer in this game is the online multiplayer, and that's it, meaning you have to be connected to the Internet. If you are not connected to the Internet, you cannot play multiplayer at all. Not to mention, the regular multiplayer, which is something that you can play with other people in your house, meaning Act Zero only has online multiplayer and you must have an Internet connection, otherwise, playing multiplayer is impossible.
- Poor collision detection that looks like it was taken from the NES games based on The Simpsons and thrown into an Xbox 360 Bomberman game. Because of this, the bomb can reach Bomberman and your opponents when it explodes, even though the flames probably wouldn't even touch them, which can be weird.
- For a Bomberman game, Act Zero does not even use the same formula. Instead, it uses a different one that no one would reuse for a new Bomberman game. The formula in Act Zero is pretty bad, especially since it goes on levels rather than just a simple battle with the AI that are not even levels at all.
- The announcer sounds mediocre. She sounds like she's bored out of her mind and would want to do something else rather than being an announcer for this game. And even if she tries to be at least decent enough, she's still a mediocre announcer, no matter what she says, like "You Win" or "Ready?". Although the developers made the announcer sound robotic, it still failed to make her decent enough.
- For no reason, the Louies cannot be used as power-ups in this game at all. These are some of the things that appear in the Bomberman series. Also, this is very similar to the inability to jump on enemies in Sonic '06.
- Konami's decision to use the Bomberman brand for this game is baffling. The grimdark futuristic aesthetic is completely at odds with the Bomberman franchise. And even if Konami tried that decision, the grimdark futuristic aesthetic is not good for a Bomberman game.
- Not to mention, it is the reason why Bomberman was redesigned so badly.
- Unbalanced AI. The enemies will do everything to avoid bombs, basically just to hide from them. Also, sometimes the enemies don't even realize that there's a bomb that has a long explosion that will reach and kill them. The enemies can even stand in the way where the flame can reach them if the bomb explodes, and they won't even move at all, just stand and wait until the flame will reach and kill them.
- The game suffers from numerous bugs & glitches that happen occasionally but are game-breaking, such as characters falling through terrain, a constant input delay that happens for no reason, a few sound bugs, and even some game-breaking glitches that can hamper one's experience with the game, making this the glitchiest Bomberman game to date.
- Lack of replay value, as aside from the story and online modes of the game, there isn't much to do and the amount of content available in this game is quite lacking in general with literally no variety at all since all of the modes are pretty much the same and aren't that fun to play as mentioned above, and since the only feature in the game is customization, it makes the game feel underdeveloped and shallow when compared to most games in the series.
- Bland sound effects, as some of them are low-quality and feel very stock with the explosions being the worst example, they sound weak and have very little energy, and the overall sound quality of the game as a whole is quite bad due to the volume being very low for the most part and a few sound bugs that happen often that ruin it completely.
- Aside from the announcer, the voice acting itself is generally bad as all of the bombers have the same scream and they sound quite fake (despite being robots), and the use of auto-tone to replicate the voice of a robot is misused, which is a downgrade from Bomberman Jetters which had great voice acting and managed to handle Bomberman's voice very well.
- The opening intro is long and tedious, as it contains way too much text and is around 8 to 10 minutes long in total, and it doesn't do a good job of explaining the game's story despite it being a reboot of the Bomberman franchise due to an extreme overuse of exposition and the lack of a narrator, making gamers rather confused with the intro itself. Not to mention that it's unskippable and the player is forced to watch it as a whole, which makes the intro overall uninteresting.
- Overall, this game almost tarnished Konami's reputation and was a contributing factor to Hudson Soft being closed down in 2012 due to the negative reception and poor sales that led to the Bomberman franchise decaying in popularity and being relegated to mobile games during the early 2010s until the release of Super Bomberman R, due to Konami trying to reboot the franchise for western audiences and their executive meddling ruining interfering with the game, which angered fans and caused them to ignore this game's existence and never acknowledge it as a Bomberman game, likely because it ruined the series and Hudson Soft had regretted ever making the game in it's glory and reverted to the art style of the older games, which shows that the game was only made as a cash-grab and nothing else.
Redeeming Qualities
- Despite being forgettable, the music is good, especially the level victory theme, as expected from a Bomberman game.
- The idea of making a Bomberman game with darker tone was decent, though it was poorly executed.
- Howewer it isn't the first time a Bomberman game is dark, as both Bomberman Hero and especially Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! had dark tone that worked well.
Reception
Ratings
Aggregate score
- Metacritic - 34/100[1]
Review scores
- GameSpot - 2.9/10[2]
Critical reception
Bomberman: Act Zero received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and fans of the Bomberman series. Most of the criticism was about the loading times, collision detection, soundtrack being forgettable, use of the same textures and graphics for every stage, gameplay, lack of a save feature, A.I., and the series' unwelcome shift to a darker and more futuristic setting. On Metacritic, it has a critic score of 34/100, based on 41 critic reviews, while Metacritic's users gave the game 2.1/10, based on 48 ratings. GameSpot gave the game 2.9/10.
This also listing ranked 96 out of 100 of the Tat's Shitties games.
Due to its flaws, it is not only considered to be the worst Bomberman game, but also one of the worst video games ever made.
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