Bomberman Land Touch! (Nintendo DS) Review

As we join Bomberman and his various different Bomber-friends on a theme park like island filled with numerous mini-games challenges and special items for collection, we see straight away that this is by no means one of the most attractive games on the DS, by any means. But at least it gets the job done, with well-animated characters, bright-and-breezy backdrops and sufficiently creative level design. As for the soundtrack, it is unsurprisingly chirpy, with classic Bomberman themes included for good measure. Presentation-wise it definitely does the trick...

But it is the core gameplay that really shows off what Bomberman Land Touch has to offer. As some of you may be aware, Hudson has been working for a long time with Nintendo on the Mario Party series, which comprises of a plethora of mini-games. Therefore, when you find out the main one-player mode of this game focuses on short, sharp bursts of gaming action, you realise you are in experienced hands. Rather than take the tried, tested and failed route of making the game an action adventure outing, Hudson pits the player against the game's challenge of roaming around the large world, talking to the characters within and competing in the mini-games on offer (all nicely tied in with some sort of 'bomb' theme, as you would expect). And everything is controlled with the touch-screen alone to ensure the greatest of simplicity and accessibility all-round.

Once a game is successfully completed, you receive a token and you can only progress to other areas by passing through barriers that require you to have collected a specific number of tokens. This may seem quite restrictive, but as the game is not linear it means you will be able to open a couple of different paths at the same time and play through in your own way for the most part. Examples of mini-games on offer include rolling Bomberman along on top of different sized bombs by rotating the stylus around in the bomb and then stopping before you hit the next bomb in your path, which he subsequently jumps on to. Rinse and repeat until you hit the finish line. Others include drawing a trampoline under Bomberman to direct him upwards, between large bombs to reach the summit, as well as tapping which ever is highlighted on-screen and then blowing into the mic quickly to extinguish it before detonation.

It certainly does prove to be a lot of fun, even with the odd mini-game that fails to spark the fire of enjoyment. But what really adds to the game's overall high quality is the two multiplayer options available, the first being the ability to play any of the completed mini-games against up to three other friends with just one game card. The latter is the one where most time will no doubt be spent, because again using just one game card you can access classic Bomberman blasting action (back to the face-button controls for this, thankfully) for up to a total of eight players, with the arenas stretching to both screens. If you do not have enough friends available to fill up the eight places, though, worry not as computer bots can be drafted in at varying levels of difficulty to make up the numbers and increase the hectic fun.

Finally, wrapping off what is already a very tasty Bomberman package, Hudson has included Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection capabilities, meaning that up to four people can play against each other anywhere in the world. Sadly there are some lag issues when playing people outside of your continent, but if you hit the connection at the right time of day when the server is not too busy, then you can definitely have a good laugh. Being able to access the multiplayer battles against human opponents basically whenever you feel like it certainly helps to increase the longevity of the game as the mini-games will eventually grow tiresome after continuous play. All you can hope is that the continent-to-continent online lag is sorted for the next edition (which has just been released in Japan).