Overall, this is a rip-off at full price. The gme wouldn't even be worth it at less than a quarter of the price.
Bomberman has been around for more than 20 years, and although the series is most definitely a classic video game franchise, it's been heading steadily downhill over the past decade. There have been a dozen or more games on platforms from the Nintendo 64 to the N-Gage, and the vast majority of them have been disappointing. But in what could be a stroke of pure marketing genius on the part of Hudson, a new game for the Xbox 360, called Bomberman: Act Zero, has been released, and it somehow makes all of the mediocre Bomberman games of the past 10 years seem fantastic by comparison. In fact, the only purpose Bomberman: Act Zero serves, and the only distinction it achieves, is to take the series to absolute rock bottom so there's nowhere left to go but up from here.
You can play on Xbox Live against up to seven other players in world battle mode, or you can play through as many of the 99 levels as possible with only one life and no continues in the single battle mode. You can't save your game. However the game isn't very challenging. But you do get challenged on if you can stan playing the game for the 99 levels.
In Bomberman: Act Zero you are dropped into a rectangular room that's full of both breakable and unbreakable blocks. You run around in this area dropping bombs, destroying blocks, and collecting power-ups, with the ultimate goal being to blow up your opponent. There isn't too much strategy involved in the game. You just have to try to corner your opponent so he has nowhere to run from your bomb or surround him with bombs so he gets caught in the cross fire. However it will be harder will multiple enemies trying to do the same with you. It has been like that forever. The formula works. But for some reason the creators said no, let's not use a game mechanic that works.
The new gameplay variation in Act Zero is called FPB, which stands for "first-person bomber." The thing is that the game isn't really first person though. You go directly behind the human with the camera view. These means you can't see whats going on and where are bombs and other players. Also there is a health bar. Because now it takes multiple hits to die, the game isn't as frantic as the original games and is less fun.
There is an option to play the game in standard mode, which gives you a top-down view of the entire map, which makes it able what's going on and doesn't make you to mess around with the camera all the time. In standard mode there's also no life bar. Instead, you die as soon as you get blasted. You can get special items that let you survive a blast, but for the most part the standard rules make the game a lot more like the original and more fun.
In both modes, you can collect a variety of power-ups to increase your offensive and defensive power. You can get speed boosts, items to increase the range and number of your bombs, and special items that allow you to walk through breakable bricks. There are less than a dozen power-ups though and makes it more simplistic like the early bomberman games.
The multiplayer game in Act Zero is horrible too. There isn't even an option for offline multiplayer. Bomberman will be more funn played together than with a friend being far away. The lack of it really lessens the value of he multiplayer. Thogh there is online multiplayer available for up to eight players. You can battle it out in either ranked or unranked matches, and there is a world leaderboard so you can see how you compare to all the other unfortunate people who were duped into purchasing this game. You can choose to play either standard or FPB mode online, although, not surprisingly, standard mode is by far the favored choice of players online. Unless you convince plenty of other people to purchase this game, though, you'll have a difficult time finding a game with a full eight players. At most you might find three other players to battle with. Even if you do find a battle, the fun won't last long. Just as the rest of Act Zero, the multiplayer battles feel completely thin on content. There are a few items to collect, but just about every battle ends up feeling exactly the same because the game is so shallow.
The sound and graphics are bad too. The music gets annoying and the sound effects aren't top-notch. The graphics are chunky and bland at times. The graphics at times can be comparable to an XBox Live game.
Overall, this is a rip-off at full price. You could probably have more fun with the original version. Overall, this is a horrible game. The game wouldn't even be worth it at less than a quarter of the price.