As all the stages are essentially identical, I'm not exaggerating when I state that this happens to be the single biggest tedious waste of time, perhaps in the entire history of gaming. In fact, this transcends proper gaming conventions and enters a weird, strange purgatory of monotony and blandness. The FPB, or first-person bomber mode, is a simple gimmick, but it at least allows you to take damage from a life bar. Naturally, this is at the expense of being able to see the entire board; the camera floats behind you (making it third-person, not first-person), and you can't zoom out to see all of the arena. Constant camera panning is now part of the strategy, and the whole experience is cumbersome.

Now, this game mode would be a little more passable without the graphical "improvements" that make the floors and walls and blocks less easy to distinguish in the heat of battle, and if the view were top-down instead of a pseudo-3D view where far corners of the arenas are difficult to negotiate. And heaven forbid you have a 4:3 aspect ratio TV that's not HD; I tried this on a 21-inch and S-Video, and the screen couldn't be changed from 16:9, making an already difficult game nigh on impossible. No, this is for those gamers with an HDTV, component or VGA cables, and a surround sound setup, so you can hear the lackluster explosions from behind.

Don't Hate the Multiplayer, Hate the Game

Obviously, Hudson Soft created loads of new items, some specifically designed for the "cyberpunk" future they've reinvented, right? Wrong. The items are painfully few, and feature elements you're used to, but now encapsulated in an unappealing shell. You can pass bombs through walls, increase the number of bombs and their blast radius, and basically, there are around ten more variations on these power-ups. No crazy animals to ride. No roller skates. No watching from the side of the arena, throwing bombs on the surviving bombermen. Perhaps plugging in a second controller and testing out the multiplayer mode will help.


This is when a lackluster game becomes truly shocking; there's no split-screen multiplayer mode of any kind. To play with friends, they need to have their own Xbox 360, TV and be in their own home or attached via serial cable. To say this is an oversight is the understatement of the year; it's like Capcom releasing Street Fighter II without a second player being able to join; it sucks the life right out of the party. So why isn't this game getting zero stars? Partly because I'd be hunted down and killed, but mainly because the online mode is perfectly serviceable, if you like playing an ugly version of a classic game without any frills.

Bomberman: Act Zero isn't a bad core game, fundamentally. But the overhaul is terrible, the gameplay is dated, the features are few and you can't play against people you're sitting next to. This makes every other version of Bomberman better than this one, and Act Zero a candidate for worst Xbox 360 game ever.