In this review, we collect the charabom’s in the GameCube game, Bomberman Jetters. We find out how well this action adventure game plays.
This game was released in 2004.
We have a small amount of experience with this series. We previously reviewed the game Super Bomberman and thought it was a pretty solid game. So, we thought we’d give this series another spin.
For the record, we have played a few other games in the series as well, but never got the chance do a full scale review of them. So, some of these comments will come from games we have yet to review so far.
The story is that Bomberman is relaxing on planet Bomber. Suddenly, an unknown space craft appears and is apparently on course to destroy the planet. It is up to Bomberman and his friends to disable the craft before it destroys the planet. You are joined by another character part way through as well. That’s, well, pretty much it as far as the game itself is concerned.
The game takes place in a 3D environment which has been the case for a while now. Like other Bomberman games, you have a number of powerups. These powerups include fire power, extra bombs, and speed. These are generally staple power ups for the series. Fire power power ups increase the blast radius of the bomb. The other power ups are self explanatory. The cap of each of these three main stats is five.
There are, of course, additional items. This includes the heart item. Small hearts fill one space while a large one fills four heart spaces. A yellow heart increases the maximum amount of health you can possess. Small one increases your health by one unit while a large one increases your health by four.
Another item pickup is a seemingly miscellaneous item. This can be a fan or a watering can. This item is used to combine with your bombs to create a special bomb. In order to get those special bombs, you need to find a jetters icon painted on the floor. Stand on it and a character will send a special craft to your location. Enter it and a bomb and the other item will be combined to create your special bomb in a device that turns rather, erm, x-rated? I couldn’t unsee that either. The special bombs aren’t really used much in the game outside of a boss battle or two, though.
Another aspect of this game is the Charabom’s. A Charabom is a special character that can add special abilities. One can offer a show stunning effect while a bomb is in water. Another can help protect you from damage. Other’s have other special abilities.
While they are useful in normal form, you can upgrade them as well. This is through fruit pickups. You can collect banana’s (increases the strength of a charabom by a little), strawberries (increases the strength a moderate amount), and a melon (increases the strength by a lot). It’s a set of power up items very similar to a Pac-Man game, really.
Fill up the charabom’s gauge and you’ll level it up. Levelling it up increases it’s ability. You might think that you have to carefully select which one you want to level up, but helping things along is the fact that you can only level them up to level 3. So, you can reach the cap pretty quickly if you concentrate your efforts on a single charabom. Really, this sort of thing isn’t anything new. We’ve seen this as far back as the SNES days with Lufia II – Rise of the Sinistrals.
The goal is to make it to the end of each area or defeat the boss. Standing in your way are a number of different enemies. One type will take away power ups and health while others will simply take away health.
Additionally, you’ll encounter different switches. Green switches must be stepped on. Yellow switches must be depressed by a bomb. Red switches need to be blasted to activate. These switches will activate things on the map, so chances are, you’ll need to activate most, if not, all the switches at one point or another.
There are also teeter totters, teleporters, moving platforms, and a range of other very standard obstacles you’ll encounter as well.
You can also collect special cards as well. These include the Jetter’s cards and lightening card. I never did figure out what they were for while playing, but I’m sure they are needed for something.
If you die, you’ll be sent back to the beginning of the area. There is no limit to how many times you can die as far as I can tell. You just lose progress if you do.
Generally, this is the main mode of play in this game.
For me, this clearly takes a lot of gameplay elements from the N64 title. The problem is, although elements are taken from those titles, a lot of the creative elements was simply set aside to just throw enemies and minor obstacles at you. The only real challenging part is not getting lost on some maps (a problem easily remedied by referring to the map in the pause menu). Otherwise, the challenge for me was to keep caring about this game.
At first, the gameplay is nice and simplistic. It’s very easy to get into this game because there isn’t a whole lot to really need to learn. After a while, though, it becomes largely more of the same after a while: blow up the enemies, move to the next area, blow up more enemies, move on to the next area. There really isn’t a lot in the way of variety as far as I’m concerned. some enemies can easily be dispatched by simply kicking a bomb from a distance just outside of your kicking range. A number of enemies will never even notice your presence.
Another major pitfall is what I like to refer to as Captain obvious messages throughout the game. You get really unhelpful comments like “This is a maze, so don’t get lost!” when you see that a maze is before you. Another example is finding the boss room and getting the warning message, “Warning! The area boss is near!” No kidding! I wouldn’t have known that from the change in music, the sealing of the doors, the boss health meter showing up, oh, and the giant enemy that is 3-8 times as tall as me standing before me. No, I needed a helpful message to tell me that I am about to encounter a boss on top of it all.
To be fair, a few messages are remotely helpful. They generally revolve around telling you which bombs you might want to use against bosses (though the fact that you got them just moments earlier might have been a subtle hint). For the most part, while some messages are useful, they make you feel like you, as a player, are an idiot and have never played games before. I found them to be, at times, insulting to my intelligence.
Eventually, I just grew bored of this game and just didn’t care if I died or not. So, I just let myself die part way through play and decided to move on. So much about it just feels really basic.
Generally speaking, the play is not only very basic, but seemingly stripped down. You are reduced to simple enemies and courses with very few surprises. The messages, while a few of them being helpful, generally insult your intelligence at times. In the end, you have a rather boring and repetitive game on your hands when you get into this one as far as I’m concerned. Not recommended.
Graphically, this might be a game I would expect for a launch title, not for a game that is so much later in the lifespan of the console. While the models are generally better than, say, many N64 games, they don’t get much better then that. The effects follow a similar trend in this game as well. It gets the job done, but it’s by no means something I’ve grown to expect for a title in this era. It’s very basic and simple even if nice and colourful. Passable, but nothing amazing.
Meanwhile, the audio is a real weakness in this game. The music succeeds in breaking up the noise and even setting an upbeat mood at times. Otherwise, it isn’t really all that inspiring or memorable. Sound effects are OK, but nothing huge. Voice acting, meanwhile, ranges to being decent to outright absurd. By absurd, I mean that in a nail on chalkboard kind of way. It wasn’t that great.
Overall, I was expecting something better out of a game like this. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed in this one. The innovation is barely there and only mildly progresses the formula by a minor nudge. The learning curve is shallow and makes this one an easy one to pick up and play. However, after a while, the messages just insult your intelligence half the time and leaves almost nothing left for you to figure out after. Graphics are dated and the audio is not all that memorable. So, a disappointing game that I would recommend skipping over.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Made it to the boss on area 3-4.
General gameplay: 15/25
Replay value: 5/10
Graphics: 6/10
Audio: 2/5
Overall rating: 56%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
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