Dig Dug is fun and all, but after a while, you may regret your purchase...
Dig Dug is an easy game to pick up and play. You move around with either the D-pad or the Analog, and shoot with the A-button (can be re-asigned to X,Y,B,L,R). What you basicley do in Dig Dug is dig around the underground, using your little harpoon to blow up dragons and those other things. The game starts out easy, but can get quite hectic. Enemies can move through the dirt freely, not just left, right, up, and down like you do, and they also run faster than you. The closer the enemy is when you stick them with your harpoon, the faster they blow up, but regardless of how far you are from them, they blow up in three pumps. Now onto the badside of the gameplay. The game gets very old very fast and there is no co-op or 2-player mode. Another thing is that the enemies may be positioned in a way where it may look like there is one, but there is actually two, which can make you loose a precious life. Another thing that bothers me is the fact that your harpoon doesnt always work how you want it to. Sometimes you may want it hit the enemy in front of you and then you want to let go of that enemy and quickly hit another oncoming enemy, but you may have to wait a bit, if you let go of the A button to let go of your harpoon, it doesnt let go right away, if that makes any sense at all.
The graphics of the game look very nostalgic and nice, but something i didnt like was the fact that there is no full screen support. The game is presented in a way to make it feel like you are playing it at an arcade, which isnt that bad but i want a full screen option, or maybe a widescreen option, just anything but this arcade setup where we get a tall playing veiw and colorful art on the side (which isnt bad again but i want a fullscreen option. ANother bad thing is the fact that their are only two enemies, which makes the game feel repetitive.
The music in the game is very nice, catchy and the sound effects are good as well. They all flow together well to set a nice mood for the game. One thing that is kind of annoying though is that it seems like the fast paced "time is running out" theme plays at random. The game doesnt have many achievements worth while, and the lack of multiplayer is pretty bad and takes away from the replay value. So is Dig Dug worth the 400 points? No, not really, seeing that the game cannot be played for 10-20 minutes straight (it will get boring) and the trail version will do you pretty well. It is hard to recomend Dig Dug to anyone but a hardcore Namco fan, but if you do not believe me i would recomend one of those plug in and play games with dig dug on it, that way you can get your moneys worth. Overall dig dug is a pretty decent game that stays true to it's original game, but lacks some things that make it feel like the original. The achivements are easy to get and worth next to none (like 10 points),there is no multiplayer and there is hardley any replay value and you will just get bored fast. But if you havent played it you should, and rather than downloading the full game, get the trial version, and save those points to buy Geometry Wars.