When it comes to the Dragonball movie coming out in April, I pretend to be in denial of the movie actually existing. I'm a big fan of DBZ and after seeing the trailer for this movie, I have no hope for this movie being any good. The only people I can see possibly enjoying this movie are people who hate the Dragonball series just so they can have the best laughter ever.
When you take a beloved franchise and change so much that it barely resembles anything people loved about it, it's going to get hated on very much. Such is the case for this week's Hall of Shame induction based on the Bomberman franchise.
Since when did Spawn wear metal armor?
Bomberman is an action puzzle game that has been around since the NES days. The goal is to plant bombs that explode in four different directions to kill your opponents. In order to kill them quickly, you have to collect power-ups to give you more speed, more bombs to plant, and extend the range of the explosion. Destroy all the other bombers and you win. This was the formula they've used since day 1, with a few tweaks in some games depending on the system. Act Zero completely changed the formula like Hudson Soft wanted to try something new. But sometimes, trying something new is just not worth it.
Right away the first problem with this game is the cover. Since the original Bomberman wasn't connecting with today's youth, they decided to create a new Bomberman that many people think looks like a bastardized clone of Master Chief. Personally, I think he looks more like a Todd MacFarlane reject. The story takes place in some sort of apocalyptic future where human beings are experimented on and turned into killer cyborgs called Bombermen. The Bombermen are kept in an underground prison where they're forced to kill each other in order to escape. Why do they need to escape? What kind of people are doing this to the Bombermen? None of this actually answered, but the less we need to know about the story, the better. Then there's the look of the bombs used for this game. Where in the original Bomberman games it would be the classic black orb with a rope sticking out of it (on a side note, does any bomb in real life actually look like that?), the bombs here look like those lamps at Spencers Gifts with the electricity flowing around. But even worse is the sound effects coming from the characters, who all sounds like they're trying to make robotic sounds while gargling on water. The disembodied voice is the worst of them, mostly because every time she says "you're alive", it sounds more like "your live."
So Bomberman now has a realistic look. But at least it still plays like Bomberman should right? Wrong. Apparently, not only did they change the look, they completely changed the gameplay, and wow was it horrible. The single player mode has 99 stages to go through where they all look exactly the same, and you only get one life to pass through all of them. You know what happens when you lose that one life? You go back to the very beginning...OF THE FIRST STAGE! No continues and no saving! If this was part of a survival mode I can understand, but this is the main single player mode. It's also the only kind of single player mode, which means the only way you can possibly have any fun in this game is to play the multiplayer mode. More on that in a bit.
Is this even a Bomberman game anymore?
The camera is also a complete abomination. If you choose having the entire map laid out for you like a Bomberman game should be, you can't see your Bomberman because he blends in with the awful metallic mazes. Another option is having the camera follow you around to give you a 3D perspective. This is called "FPB" for First Person Bomber, except it's not actually in the first person. In a game where you have to watch the entire map to strategize on what you're going to do, this kind of camera angle does not work, especially since you have to constantly change your view. Imagine trying to play a game of Chess, but you put your head in a position where you can only see half the board. Oh, and the game can only properly be viewed by having an HD widescreen TV, otherwise you're going to get a messy letterboxed piece of crap.
Then there's the multiplayer. Bomberman has usually been one of the best multiplayer games to play, but the multiplayer in this one is worthless. The game can only support eight players, which is disappointing compared to having ten players for Saturn Bomberman. The Xbox 360 is supposed to be way more powerful then the Saturn, and yet it's missing two players. Even more disappointing is that the eight players all have to be ONLINE. You can't do any kind of offline multiplayer whatsoever! Do you know any other console game (aside from MMOs) where the multiplayer is online only? Why the hell would you do something like that? That means if you can't find enough players online willing to play this, multiplayer won't be fun.
With the single player and the multiplayer both being so bad, this game had become absolutely unenjoyable. Not only is this the worst Bomberman game of all time, but it's one of the worst Xbox 360 games of all time. This game was so horrible that Hudson Soft, despite trying to make the game sound good at first, eventually admitted themselves that this game sucks and have never spoken of this again.
A shameful rant on the Dragonball movie
Since I've said all I can say about Bomberman: Act Zero, I'm going to spend the rest of this column ranting about the Dragonball movie coming out in April, if you can even call it Dragonball. I've had people tell me that I should wait until it comes out to judge it, and usually that's supposed to be the case, but not here. The Dragonball movie is going to suck.
First of all, the story barely follows the manga at all. Instead of taking place in a fantasy world with talking creatures and vehicles coming out of capsules, they make it take place in reality. So a lot of the small things that make the Dragonball universe are not going to apply. Second, none of the characters in the movie are going to look like their counterparts. The closet is Goku and that's only because he's the main character. Bulma doesn't have her blue hair, Roshi actually has hair, and Piccolo is not even green. Why the hell is he not green?! That's supposed to be one of his biggest trademarks to make him stand out from everyone else, but now he looks like a deformed human rather then a demon king. Third, this movie is adding unnecessary characters. Why are now adding high school cliches like the school bully and the hero's best friend?
If this all sounding very familiar to you, I think I know exactly the movie you're thinking of...
Think about all the reasons for Super Mario Bros. sucking, and then look at Dragonball. I swear it's like the same people that worked for the SMB movie are working on Dragonball. I can only help that the movie does so bad that no one speaks of it again in the future, just like Bomberman: Act Zero.
