Drill Dozer serves up an interesting, memorable experience that any GBA owner will appreciate.
The games story is simple, yet effective, and delivers its point rather quickly. You find yourself in the roll of a young schoolgirl named Jill, while she may appear to have a normal life; it’s far from normal. She happens to be the daughter of Big Boss Doug, head of the Red Dozer gang, a band of good-hearted thieves. Well apparently one day while Jill was leaving school she received an important call via her backpack from Gearmo, the Red Dozers "resident grease monkey", telling her to come home quick. When she comes home to her horror she finds her father brutally beaten up and her precious Red Diamond has been stolen. Who could have done such an evil deed; this thought ran through her mind. Grutch, a seasoned Red Dozer thief who provides useful advice throughout the game for Jill, provided the answer to this pondering question. It happened to be the evil Skuller gang, a band of good for nothing thieves whose intentions are always for evil. Apparently they set a trap up for Jills dad and left him for dead and evilly ran off with her diamond. Who knows why Croog, the Skullers gang evil leader, would do such a thing? As quick as this question was asked Jill hopped into her Drill Dozer and would get the much needed answer in the form of revenge, she would get her diamond back, and teach those Skuller gang punks not to mess with the Red Dozers. And so begins your epic adventure.
The game play controls are rather easy to learn and shouldn't take to long. The L and R buttons are what you use to spin the drill on your Drill Dozer; L spins the drill to the left and R spin the drill to the right. A button is what you use to jump, left and right on the D-Pad is how you move, and down on D-Pad let you duck. If you happen to be ducking and press A you'll slide a few inches. When standing still and you press and hold the B button you can look around the area by pressing up or down on the D-Pad. In order to kill your enemies you have to drill into them, a same principal applies to obstacles like walls, blocks; you'll even sometimes have to drill screws out of enemies just to kill them. I know what your thinking, "I'll just press R down and kill everything. BORING!" But this isn't true, the game does a good job at making you spin the drill both left and right. You'll have to go through different pipes that require spinning it left or right, or solve that occasional puzzle that requires spinning it both ways. Now you can't just hold R or L down and expect your drill to spin forever, on screen a bar appears showing how much longer your drill will keep spinning.
While playing the game you'll notice different kinds of blocks, brick ones, metal ones, iron ones. Sometimes a wall will come down that regenerates itself, which means you'll have to find something to give you and your Drill Dozer that extra boost. Throughout the levels you have to find gears, there are 2 gears throughout each level that you must find in order to drill through walls faster and harder. Once you find a gear in order to shift into the second or third gear you press R or L then once you reach full the screen will say shift and you press R or L again. BAM! That simple, which leaves for addictive fast paced game play. However, once you finish a level you lose the gears, meaning in the next level you'll have to search for new ones. Perhaps the most memorable feature the game has to it is its boss fights. These boss fights are a throwback to some of the best classic boss fights from the Sega or SNES era of games.
While your progressing throughout some of the levels some blocks you can't drill through, which means you'll have to upgrade, and that requires cash. At an early point in the game Grutch will introduce you to the shopkeeper, he can sell you energy tanks (more life), drill upgrades, or maps which reveal bonus levels on each stage. Cash is very simple to find so you don't need to fret about looking for it all over the place. It appears on screen as small, medium, or big dollar bills. While this upgrading sounds like a great idea, it was all together unimpressive. Most of the time you'll spend your cash or energy tanks so you can survive the levels and besides, most upgrades and bonus stage maps are only available after you beat the game.
The graphics are nothing to gawk over but they look impressive enough to catch the appeal in your eyes. It’s got cutsy artistic appearances and the character and enemy models are look good. However when enemies or boss die its really nothing impressive, looks more held back then something that would have left my jaw dropping. The sound effects are rather good. Its got its pumping music which helps you sail along the levels and the little voice effects are rather nice, crisp, and clean. I never once turned the sound down; instead, I turned it up.
Unless your willing to go into the bonus levels, the game is very short, there are only six levels containing two parts each. Note this isn't including the bonus levels however, which are actually hard at some points. And once you beat the game you can have the chance at stealing treasure that can be found throughout the levels. You’re a thief after all and what’s better than stealing? Nothing! So that can add a few more hours to the fun.
You’re perhaps wondering about the rumble feature. At first I was afraid it might have been a annoying but instead after a short time I began to not even notice it. The rumbling occurs every time you spin your drill or you kill a boss. And it’s not like a GC controller rumble, its light and simple, real easy on the hands.
Overall, Drill Dozer was a blast to play. The people at Gamefreak did a fantastic job with the game, while it may have its negative factors; the positive outweighs it by a big margin. I was satisfied with Drill Dozer and I'm sure you would be to.