Super Bomberman R falls short as a complete package. The single-player, while reaching for something a bit different with level design (and it achieves it), falls short with uninteresting bosses and slow enemies. The online play of the game is only good on a local level, while the actual online gaming experience is hindered by the lack of players and atrocious delay. Until Konami gets these things addressed, I can only say look backwards to the Turbografx or Saturn for the best Bomberman experience, as you simply won’t find it here.
Ah, Bomberman. We have some history together.
Having played this on the Turbografx and Sega Saturn, I have seen the best and worst of the series. Mostly the best, because quite frankly who wants to play the worst? More than likely no one. Maybe bitter Internet people who don’t enjoy anything. Anyway, after E3 I had the opportunity to dig into the latest release of the classic series, which is this time released on the Xbox One X. Has Konami and developer HexaDrive captured the magic that made the series great? Or have they dropped the bomb? Let’s talk.
First and foremost, the classic nature of the gameplay has been put into SBR beautifully, at least in structure. You still get the same type of maze play with the game, trying to figure out where you need to go, how you need to get there, all the while blowing up blocks that reveal power-ups and taking care of enemies. The power-ups help to improve your character’s chances of completing the level and progressing. The difference between the usual structure of the Bomberman series and R, is that it breaks out of the rectangular level structure, that the series is very known for maintaining, and tries to do some new and innovative designs to make the gameplay interesting. This includes putting together multi-tier levels and having multiple maps stuck together to extend and make the gameplay larger. It’s a bold shift from the usual and for the most part it works. Getting away from just basic hedge mazes (albeit ones you can blow up) was a shift in the Bomberman paradigm. Does that necessarily make it better? Not at all, but kudos for HexaDrive and Konami for taking the design in a different direction. It shows that they’re trying to bring a new experience with some old tools.
In addition, the devs also included multiple different characters to play as in the game, so you’re not just stuck with the usual suspects. In traditional Bomberman fashion, you do get a variety of different personalities with different abilities to play with in the game. That’s a nice continuation of traditional Bomberman play, as past characters included the likes of TG-16’s Bonk, as well as some Konami favorites from other series (see Silent Hill for details). Things like level design and characters are what makes Bomberman special and entertaining, but does that make it a good game? Not necessarily. In fact, those are probably the brightest spots of the game.
What hurts the single-player gameplay isn’t the shift in level design or the characters, rather it’s the slow pace that isn’t common with some of the best games in the series — specifically, Saturn Bomberman (best of the bunch, especially when you have the multi-tap for it). The speed of the single-player game is off, as in slow. Moving back and forth with the characters feels like an unexciting chore. Don’t get me wrong, you can speed things up with power-ups, but it won’t make the enemies smarter or exciting. Again, the level design is nice and different, but the things that populate the levels are just completely uncomplying and feel as if they are running in some sort of mud. Typically, Bomberman is chaotic and engaging with strategic movements driving the boat, and things gradually speed up as you progress. Super Bomberman R just feels slow and clunky, as the gameplay never really shifts into fifth gear. It’s odd and I don’t understand why this is the case, but it’s the case.
Now, the slow pace is only rivaled by the uncomplying characters/bosses featured in Super Bomberman R. The enemies, which range from frogs to minions, as well as other dark-bat-like foes, are clunky in movement and incredibly bad with A.I.. For example, they will more than likely run into your blast radius, as they follow particular paths that are easy to sync up to when dropping a bomb. Or, as another example, the first boss you run into has an easily identifiable pattern that makes it drudge on. It’s almost too easy at times to figure out patterns, which doesn’t make much of a challenge. Bad enemies combined with slow gameplay that feels like a chore, rather than a bunch of fun, brings down the single-player gameplay immensely.
The bad single-player experience hurts the gameplay overall, but it gets worse when you try to start multiplayer. There are several different modes of player with multiplayer, including the old classic of playing with friends, which is nice when you have the right amount of folks, but if you play online you’re in for a different beast. A beast that doesn’t show up, and if it does it is super slow. The multiplayer experience with SBR online is generally miss rather than hit. You have quick play and league games, which I haven’t experienced the latter (which is why this review was delayed) because no one showed up. I had spent a good majority of time just waiting for competitors, but it almost never populated, and the quick play started doing that this week. Both instances make me sad on the inside.
Anyway, I had more success with quick play, which did garnish a few matches, but there were other issues with gameplay in this mode, specially delay. There was about a half-second delay with regards to movement during gameplay. That sends the online experience back to the NFL 2K days of the Dreamcast (one-second delay in movement — 56K modems, though). That is absolutely unacceptable for this day and age. If Konami is serious about staying in the gaming business, outside of mobile and slots, then it has to do better than this with releases, especially ones that depend on online gaming to function like it’s 2018. It has to ensure there is no delay. Most people picking up this game are relying on the online gaming experience to make up any single-player shortfall, and having the experience simply get worse is just bad. This game cannot hold the hats of the pervious titles before it.
Overall, I think Super Bomberman R falls short as a complete package. The single-player, while reaching for something a bit different with level design (and it achieves it), falls short with uninteresting bosses and slow enemies. The online play of the game is only good on a local level, while the actual online gaming experience is hindered by the lack of players and atrocious delay. Until Konami gets these things addressed, I can only say look backwards to the Turbografx or Saturn for the best Bomberman experience, as you simply won’t find it here.
