Capcom explodes. We die.

User Rating: 4.3 | Bombastic PS2
By Draqq_Zyxorian | Review Date:
At best, Bombastic is the sequel to the action-puzzler Devil Dice for the Playstation. At worst, who cares? Sure, there will be that dustcloud of time when you will be sucked into that steady vacuum of clearing assortments of geometrical objects - that unforgiving whirlwind of a once-steady pace blurring faster and faster and faster… until that ill-fated mistake. Game Over. You suck. But unlike those free afternoons willingly lost to the burning masses of Meteos, the resonating tetragons of Lumines, and, yes, even the brooding mines of Minesweeper, there is nothing in Bombastic to reel you back in. Like a hawker at a flea market, it will try luring you with a generic Story Mode, off-brand versions of Devil Dice, an annoyingly cute baby named Aqui, and more exploding dice than Pamela Anderson's "pair of ones". But you stop looking. You quit.

That is, if you can already withstand the learning curve. Puzzlers, by presumption of the genre, know that if they don't relieve the difficulty of learning the rules through extra lives, a slower speed, or something that flickers "E-A-S-Y", many players will give up. But Bombastic doesn't understand how to make a good first impression. Press Start at the title screen and BOOOMB!!! A complex tutorial. And worse, an over-enthusiastic English dubbing:

You play on a diagonally-planed grid with DICE!!! Move Aqui around on a die and match the faces of the dice by rolling two 2's together, three 3's together, AND SO ON!!! and they will IGNITE!!! After they EXPLODE!!!, they will ignite other dice with face equal to or one less than the number on the exploded die within a crossfire spread equal to that number causing a CHAIN REACTION!!! But don't get caught in the EXPLOSION!!! or let the dice that come out of lightning BOLTS!!! fill the plane, or you will DIE!!! And once you learn these RULES!!!, you should learn the B-B-B-B-B-B-BASIC TECHNIQUES!!!

So after being force-fed how opposite sides of a die sum up to SEVEN!!!, watching enough practice dice land on the face you WANT!!!, (finally) unplugging your ears, and then scouring through all the modes, you will realize that instead of a bang, you got a dud. Trial Mode is your basic heap of modes rolled into one: "reach the highest level" mode (Standard), "you only have three minutes" mode (Limited), and "beat your opponent" mode (Attack). Fortunately, the multiplayer modes save the game from boredom. Barely. On the one hand, the relentless see-sawing with your opponent is surprisingly engaging, especially in Wars Mode, which has you drain your opponent's health frantically by igniting dice. Attack Mode takes a different spin, forcing you to tag a certain number die by igniting, say, 4's and protecting your tags from your opponents, as you ask: Do I go for the quick but easily stolen 2's and 3's? Or should I invest my time on the arduous 5's and 6's? On the other hand, finding worthy opponents and worthy friends for co-op is more of a challenge due to the lack of online functionality and the steep learning curve. Moreover, though you can battle against AI-bots, any modicum of difference in skill level gets blown out of proportion. If you suck compared to the computer, you will lose. And continue to lose. Though you have the ability to adjust the speed of the AI-bots as a handicap, your fate is practically sealed before you set the challenge and light the fuse.

Bombastic tries to blast through its flaws by following an unfortunate trend in gaming. Apparently, the solution to lacking innovation and lagging sales is a Quest Mode. Need we recount the failures of recent classic adaptations in justifying a half-baked narrative? Frogger, Q*Bert, Pac-Man, Dr. Mario… sigh… So, with no need to reinvent Devil Dice, which isn't even a classic, by ways of a storyline, we have… five Aqui brothers (the pink one must be metrosexual) sneak out of bed on a Candyland journey to find their grandfather who lives in the clouds. Though they could have asked Mama and Papa to help them, they merrily roll their dice on a death-defying adventure of drawn-out puzzles across dangerous lands like The Land of Sweets lurking with perilous enemies like Miss Cling.

Perhaps the only saving grace for this saccharine atrocity is that the graphics finally stop fixating on dice and Aquis, and take the time to sugarcoat the level design with cel-shaded lollipops, primary colors, and all things kindergarten-cute. But after seeing the Aquis frolicking in harmonic meter with the sickly sweet J-Pop, you will begin to wish that you had never listened to your curiosity. The first world is a tutorial. Wait. Another one?! Yep, only this time you get English subtitles and Mr. Macho, a gym teacher that rips off Captain America (stars and all), who screams motivational Japanese-turned-English puns. Like an unfortunate translation of Leviticus, adding up the opposite sides of a die to seven apparently sends you to the heavens. Soon after, you are dragged through four worlds with four sections, ala Super Mario Bros. You trudge through puzzle after puzzle, blasting balloon-looking enemy after balloon-looking enemy, and even with five lives and infinite restarts, there will come a point when you never want to see another exploding die ever again. You quit.

Bombastic is a paragon for what not to do in puzzle games and real life. Besides the scant few unlockables modes that are just previous versions of Devil Dice, there is no reward system. Your only incentive is the rusting "achieve the highest score" mechanic, so after pressing Start at the title screen, you unwittingly strike a match against the pointless learning curve. A bombardment of cubic crap ignites. Tutorial. Useless multiplayer modes. "Quest Mode". J-Pop. Tutorial. "Sevens to the heavens." Pamela Anderson's pair of ones. And then Aqui EXPLODES OFF THE SCREEN!!! But you smirk. You bask in the glorious immolation of Aquis. You learn that burning babies end the suffering. And that's just wrong.

Other Helpful Reviews for Bombastic

Load Comments (0)