Jetters is your basic light-hearted puzzle adventure game, featuring a cliché story, cute characters, and an addictive m
The story in Bomberman Jetters is nothing to get excited about. A group of evildoers, known as the Hige Hige Bandits, decide to fly an artificial comet, called Dark Star, directly towards the helpless Planet Bomber. Like usual, it’s up to White Bomber (and Max, another addition to the Bomberman series in the last few years) to save Planet Bomber from almost certain doom. Dark Star is broken down into four worlds (Flow World, Green World, Hot World, and UnderWorld), and each world is broken down into six stages. The first and second stages act as your standard bomberman levels, where you will find yourself traversing across large colourful worlds, destroying everything that moves, eventually reaching the exit. The third stage acts as a mini boss stage where you will fight an evil bomber with some sort of special ability coordinating with the element of the world. The fourth and fifth stages are much like the first two, except more difficult. The sixth and final stage is the main boss. After defeating the main boss, White Bomber shuts down one of the four engines (hence four worlds) of Dark Star.
The level designs are what one would expect, large maze-like landscapes, with millions of enemies scattered about. There are special objects for each world that when blown up often spill power-ups, hearts, or special items. There are many puzzles in each world that are all fairly simple and repetitive, but offer a nice pause from the constant explosions. In each given stage, there is usually a nice assortment of enemies, ranging from the typical dimwitted, pattern-ridden nitwits, to the Hige Hige Bandits, that if hurt by, will steal one of your power ups. There are also lots of hidden goodies to find, such as charabom, which are often necessary to advance to further stages, special cards, and heart vessels (increase life). Each world also has one bomb synthesis item, and one bomb synthesis location, where the bomb synthesis item is synthesised with White Bomberman’s standard firebombs to create a new bomb. Unfortunately, finding the synthesis item and synthesis location can sometimes be very hard, as they are not conveniently placed all the time. The new bombs are then used to defeat the main bosses and to exploit certain enemy weaknesses.
The charabom are cute little Pokemon-like creatures that function as special abilities for White Bomber like jumping gaps, crossing water, and increasing stats. While most abilities are automatic, a few can be used by pressing the B button, when the particular Charabom is equipped. Each carbon’s ability can be levelled up (there are three levels) by collecting fruit, which feed the equipped charabom. Along with the help of your charabom, you’ll also have White Bomberman’s old friend Max, whom unfortunately plays a very small part in Jetters. He can be switched too by pressing the Y button (pressing Y again will switch back to White Bomberman). Max is unable to use charabom and cannot charge up his normal bombs, which makes him almost useless. His one saving grace his ability to make hyper bombs, which take a lot longer to charge up than White Bomberman’s bombs, but are necessary in destroying certain blockades.
Bomberman has always been easy in the way of controls, and Jetters makes no intent in changing that. The control stick moves White Bomberman, while the shoulder buttons rotate the camera. After getting used to the camera controls, they become quite easy to use. Pressing the A button lays a bomb, and pressing the A button in front of a bomb will pick it up. If the A button is held after picking a bomb up, it begins to charge. Once charged it can be thrown, creating an explosion that does four times the damage as that of a normal bomb. Not only does it do more damage, but it also can blow up certain objects and comes in handy in a lot of puzzles. Pressing the Z button will bring up a menu where you can switch between Max and White Bomberman (this can also be done by pressing Y), switch charabom (this can also be done by pressing X), and switching bombs (this can be done by using the c-stick). The B button controls certain charabom’s abilities, and also allows Max to charge and throw his hyper bomb.
Although single player can be fun and entertaining, it is rather bland and doesn’t offer much replay value, except for back tracking to find all the hidden cards and charabom. Where Jetters really shines is in the multiplayer mode (surprise, surprise). There are four different modes to choose from: Standard Battle, Battle One-Two, Battle for Balloons, and Knockout Battle. Standard Battle is the normal Bomberman battles where you merely bomb your friends or computers in an attempt at being the last bomberman standing. There are eight different stages to choose from, all with have their own unique game play twists. Battle One-Two is where each player must step on nine different numbered squares (in order) without being hurt. This mode can only be played on one stage, but is an interesting enough twist on the classic bomberman formula to keep you playing for quite some time. Battle for Balloons is exactly plays like it sounds. There are a number of balloons floating around the arena waiting to be nabbed. Once nabbed, the balloons will follow you until either brought to a gate or blown up. Bringing balloons through the gate earns you points while dieing costs you points. The objective of the game is to get as many points as possible before the timer runs out. The final mode is Knockout Battle. In this mode, bombs cannot kill you; instead, they merely push you away from the explosion (only when you face the explosion). The idea is to strategically place bombs that will push your opponents off the arena. However, like Battle One-Two and Battle for Balloons, Knockout Battle can only be played in one arena, which limits its replay value.
The multiplayer also allows for a lot of customization. Aside from the different modes and stages, the items can all be chosen along with the probability of them occurring. Apart from the standard white, black, red, and blue Bombermen to chose from, there are also many unlockable characters that can be played as, each with their own unique killer shot (special move). Killer shots can only be performed once a player’s skill gauge is filled (its filled by laying bombs) and can only be used in Standard Battle.
Although the graphics in Jetters are nothing special, the cell shaded characters (no matter how overused cell shading has become in the last year) creates the anime style that is emphasized with the anime shorts before certain stages in story mode. Besides the cell shaded characters, the graphics are very colourful and cartoon-like, with even the most sinister of enemies looking as cute as the charabom.
The one glaring annoyance in Jetters is the sound effects. This annoyance comes from the one-liners that the preschooler announcer and Hige Hige Bandits endlessly repeat. For example, every time you pick up a piece of fruit, the announcer blurts out “Banana!” or “Strawberry!” depending on what kind of fruit you picked up. The Hige Hige Bandits, on the other hand, always make the same sound when they die, which sounds an awful lot like Eric Cartman yelling “Screw you guys!” Other than the annoying voice-overs, the game offers a basic soundtrack, which blends in nicely keeping up an appropriate volume amongst the rest of the sound effects.
When it all comes down to it, Jetters is your basic light-hearted puzzle adventure game, featuring a cliché story, cute characters, and an addictive multiplayer mode. What separates it from the rest is its startlingly low price of $19.99 ($29.99cad), which gives it a whole lot more bang for its buck.