Bomberman: Act Zero [X360]

Few multiplayer games are as deliciously playable and well-loved as Hudson Soft's Bomberman franchise. With a 20-year history, Bomberman games have made their way to almost every video game and computer system in existence, and now these lovable bomb-throwing loons are unleashed on the Xbox 360. So it's a great shame that Act Zero is not far off from the worst Bomberman game ever made.

You see, good Bomberman games ought to be deadly, strategic affairs, with players circling each other waiting for an opportunity or mistake to exploit. Bombs usually kill in one hit, glancing or direct, and have a large area of effect. This makes for intense, high-stress rounds, and the game's appealing, cutesy facade provides a neat foil for the extreme violence on display. One slip and pow, you're incinerated - conversely, trap an opponent with a clever move and you'll be rewarded with a shot of adrenaline-induced glee on par with the likes of Halo or Project Gotham. Bomberman has always been one of the best simple competitive multiplayer games around.

Which is one reason why the disastrous state of Act Zero is so disappointing. On the face of it, most of the Bomberman ingredients are there -- a maze to run around, bombs to drop, walls to destroy, and an admittedly scant selection of pickups to collect -- but it's put together with no sensitivity, no sense of what makes the classic Bomberman games such favorites. The results are depressing, and the most obvious problem is with the graphics.

Seeing that Bomberman is so fast paced and tactical, it's crucial that you can keep track of the location of the other players, all the time. Surely, then, the worst thing Hudson could do is saddle Act Zero with a muddy, indistinct 3D engine that's tough to see on a high-def TV let alone a standard set, right? Ditching the series' trademark anime-style characters and replacing them with generic, gritty brushed-metal-and-armor heroes would be a pretty daft move too, wouldn't it?

You know where this is going. Yes, Act Zero comes complete with an ill-advised 3D engine, and while it allows for flashy intro sequences and close-up victory shots, it just doesn't suit the game. There's a right way and wrong way to do 3D in this instance, and Act Zero has definitely picked the wrong way. Having to struggle to pick out the players from the board or the destroyable blocks from the plain floors just isn't workable. Yes, you can tap a button and have ugly arrows superimposed over the heads of the players, but that doesn't address the underlying issue -- the graphics are ugly, and the entire engine is unsuited to its purpose.

Get tired of that, and you might be tempted to try the alternative, memorably named FPB mode, which stands for First-Person Bomber. Despite the name, it's not first-person, and that's probably a good thing. Instead, it's a third-person affair with a camera that can be zoomed and rotated with a thumbstick. It doesn't zoom out anywhere near as far as the standard view (where you can view the entire map at once), restricting your vision quite a bit.