Monster Bomber (DS) (gamespy)

- gamespy -

Some of Taito's most popular games are more than merely famous: they're iconic. Space Invaders. Arkanoid. Bubble Bobble. Puzzle Bubble. They're all undisputed arcade classics that excelled through simple design, charming graphics, and nicely tuned action. Monster Bomber is Taito's latest arcade-like puzzle/action game, and at first glance it shares quite a bit with the developer's past hits. Most of these similarities turn out to be superficial, however, as Monster Bomber's gameplay can't hold a candle to any of those aforementioned classics.

It seems everything is more complicated in Monster Bomber, right down to the token backstory. The premise is that Earth is under attack from hordes of menacing yet colorful space monsters, which mill around on the top screen, not unlike Taito's famous extraterrestrial invaders, moving slowly toward the wall at the bottom. If they break through it, it's game over. As Earth's last line of defense, it falls to you to operate a special cannon that shoots colored bubbles up from the bottom screen. Yeah, bubbles. Earth is doomed.

Bubble Bumble

To its credit, Monster Bomber takes decent advantage of the DS hardware. In addition to the dual-screen action, all input is handled via stylus. You just choose which colored bin to grab your next bubble from and then "roll" it up toward the upper screen. Aim well, and you'll have eliminated or weakened a bad guy. Nailing the swarming invaders with like-colored bubbles does the trick, but hit an enemy with the wrong color and it might just spawn another baddie. Who designed this crappy cannon, anyway?

The main twist (perhaps more of a complication) comes in the concept of power shots. If you grab and hold your chosen bubble in place for a second or two, it'll charge up, resulting in a stronger shot. Hitting a differently colored enemy with one of these will knock them backwards, and if the stunned monster bumps into enemies that actually match the shot's color, those enemies will all be eliminated, forming a combo. Got that? So basically, it behooves you to fire bubbles that match the second-closest enemy in the line of fire, not the first.

It can take a bit to wrap your brain around this. It's important, though, as these chain reactions are the main way to eliminate multiple enemies at once, which is hugely important when the monsters are constantly surging toward your vulnerable wall. Further, some levels have special requirements for victory, such as scoring, say, a trio of four-hit chains. This is problematic, since five-, six-, and whatever-hit chains don't count -- if the game wants four hits, you have to get exactly four hits. This can be tricky given the unreliable nature of chain occurrence, as well as needing the luck to get a decent cluster of four (no more, no less) enemies precisely one row behind the front of the monsters' ranks. Sure, a skilled shooter can try to influence events to bring this scenario about, but it's still highly circumstantial and feels too dependent on luck.

Peanut Butter and Tuna

If this all sounds a little complicated and stressful, yes, it can be. You'll feel increasingly manic as the hordes of baddies close in, and in a better game -- where dealing with this situation would remain fun -- that could be pretty enjoyable. But Monster Bomber's gameplay is too picky and arbitrary-feeling to really develop a flow, and it ends up feeling like a once-simple concept has gotten stretched to the point of distracting complication. If you want to play a game about colorful bubbles, try Puzzle Bubble. If you want one about crowd control, play Doom or something. If you want both in a single game, there's always Monster Bomber, but this is one case where two winning concepts don't go together quite as well as you might hope. This isn't one of Taito's great ones.