[h1]FoxMania: The Quest To Review All Fox Games On Steam![/h1]
[i]Conditions for inclusion:
[list]
[*]The player character must be consistently a fox; the fox must not be merely a skin or a character option
[*]Must have 100% working Steam achievements
[*]Must not be a visual novel
[/list][/i]
[b]Game #10: Bomber Fox[/b]
What I expected: an indie interpretation of Bomberman with cool neon visuals.
What I got: a shovelware nightmare of tedium and frustration (but with, admittedly, cool neon visuals).
This game is incredible. It's like someone decided to make a Bomberman-style game, sat down and made a list of all the elements that make Bomberman fun, then specifically didn't include any of them.
Do you like blowing the smithereens out of your enemies? Well too bad, most (and I do mean [i]most[/i], as in, in the realm of 95%) of the enemies in the game have two or more hit points. You’ll mostly just be running around in a panic trying to dodge crowds of enemies while you whittle away their HP. Because [i]that’s[/i] fun.
Enemies with HP aren't inherently a bad thing in a Bomberman game, right? That only means you need to use cool combos to take them out, right? Well, too bad. This game has no combo system. Enemies get about half a second of invincibility frames after taking damage, so you just need to avoid them and bomb them again.
Well, that means you need to "git gud" and employ some strategy and crowd control techniques, right? Too bad, because enemies move erratically and randomly, most of them have no predictable patterns at all, so crowd control isn't really a thing. Most “strategies” you can employ come down to playing peek-a-boo around corners, which only makes the levels slow and boring. Plus, strategies are never guaranteed to work all the time, as enemies make random movements, some enemies blow up walls, and some enemies move through walls. In fact, roughly half the levels in the game randomly spawn enemies all over the board all the time, because [i]that's[/i] fun and fair.
There’s an upgrade system! That must add some variety and intrigue to the game, right? Nope, it only means the first 80% of the game is slow and boring as you’re too underpowered to play efficiently. Having trouble with a level, and want to come back with more upgrades? Too bad, you can’t. Only one new level is unlocked at a time, and levels pay out the same upgrade points no matter how they’re beaten, or what difficulty they’re cleared on. You can’t go back to earlier levels to get more, and you can’t get any from the bonus missions either. There’s no way to earn extra upgrades. In fact, there’s no scoring system at all, and no incentive to play skillfully or stylishly.
There’s a star system! You can 3-star a level, so there must be some kind of scoring system, right? Nope, that literally only depends on the difficulty level you beat. Beat a level on hard mode for 3 stars, that’s all.
Can you upgrade your HP, or the damage your bombs do? Nope, you can only upgrade your movement speed, bomb range, and number of bombs you can place (only up to 5). Upgrades are permanent, so if you picked a bad upgrade order (such as upgrading your bomb range without your movement speed, making it impossible to outrun your own bombs), you’re out of luck unless you want to restart the whole campaign. Your bombs will never do more damage. The only way to get more HP is to turn the difficulty down.
Are you a masochist, or an achievement hunter, and want to bang your head against the wall on Hard difficulty until you get it right? Too bad, the game actually [i]locks[/i] a difficulty level if you fail it three times, forcing you to beat it on a lower difficulty first. What a brilliant design choice! There’s literally no reason not to beat the whole game on Kids’ difficulty first, where you get 7 HP, to prevent difficulty modes from locking.
Miscellaneous other observations:
[list]
[*]There’s a cute introductory cutscene… and then nothing else. No other cutscenes, not even an ending. Beating the final level just drops you on the level select screen. The credits are just one page on the main menu.
[*]There’s no “quit” button mapped on the controller.
[*]The upgrade screen has an obnoxious audio glitch which occurs every time a level is beaten.
[*]The level select screen always loads with the last unlocked level. So if you’ve beaten the game on Kids’ mode and you’re going back to beat it on Hard, you’ll have to move the cursor from level 60 every time.
[*]Making AI for the multiplayer bots is too hard, so all you get are bots which move randomly, perform Bakuen Cross Attack (only true Bomberman fans will get that reference), are immune to their own bombs and contact damage from enemies, and usually will die at the same time during the bomb storm to render the match a draw. Oh, and if you’re going for 100% achievements, you’ll have to play 100 rounds of multiplayer against bots.
[*]When you beat a level, you’ll get to see the bomber fox perform some popular dances, including Gangnam Style, which I guess are animations the developer bought from the Unity store. No Flossing though, thankfully.
[/list]
Overall, I just… did not have fun with this game. The gameplay was not satisfying and not rewarding in the slightest. I suppose I had a little bit of fun when I was blasting rooms full of 1-HP enemies, as rarely as that occurred, or when I finally beat a difficult level by the skin of my teeth, but the fun was not nearly enough to make up for the frustration, the randomness, and the dull gameplay. For the record, though, I do rather like the visuals; it’s too bad there just isn’t a sharply-designed game or any interesting mechanics to go with them.
But at least you get to play as a fox, right? Foxes make everything better! Well too bad, because you’re just a humanoid protogen robot thing with a blank mask, no real resemblance to a fox besides a weird tail. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m reviewing this game as part of this series anymore. Probably because I just feel like ranting at this point.
(Achievement hunters: Just… don’t. Save yourself a 15-hour headache. You won’t have fun. There’s even an achievement for beating a co-op campaign which is not trivial to get by yourself.)
4 / 10.
