Bomberman (Nintendo DS)

With or without friends you can setup computer opponents on multiplayer.. a host of setting's allow you to really customise you're game. Revenge setting to Yes infact being one of the most influential settings.. upon death you control a sort of cannon that randomly fires(not too often mind) from the perimiter of the level.. whilst which horizontal or vertical line it shoots down. It spices things up for even 2 players left duelling it out. And ofcourse.. acts as intended - Revenge.

The cute personified character's force the odd smile from you even when you're playing the single player mode. Leading onto that.. the single player is fun.. it may look toned down and rather.. boring for the first 10 stages.. but it does change and become faster paced. The difficulty of the game actually is well set. Initially the enemies are easy and predictable and have certain movement patterns, but soon you're own actions can make you're play harder by inadvertedly getting you're own bomb thrown at you or making enemies appear ou to of nowhere... The level's do change though and show some of their own attributes that makes the game different and importantly refreshing. There's reportedly 100 level's spread across 10 stages (I'm at stage 3). Boss's come in large sizes - often taking as much advantage as you do of 2 fields of play.

Powerup's are there as they ever was in the past but with some differences. One problem which I found was that.. if you did die at a boss and used another life - and so happened to not have any powerup's spare to use.. it was almost literally impossible to beat the stage boss. To the point you may aswell load a saved game again. Only real gameplay fault I can mention that really is a minor thing

Overall I give Bomberman a 4 out of 5. It's obviously an evolved title from the rest.. more could have been changed.. more storyline - which doesnt really seem to be there actually.. infact we never needed one did we!?

A great pickup and play game, one I'd recommend when travelling especially. With the current range of DS games available in Europe at time of writing.. this belongs in the top 5 for sure.

Some of the items that you can collect are:

1) More bombs, so that you can drop more than 1 bomb at any one time. The more you have, the more chance you run the risk of nuking yourself.

2) More power. Increases the blast radius of your bombs

3) Trainers. Increases the speed of your character

4) Remote Control. Allows you to detonate your bombs yourself, *when* you want to, rather than the usual timer (around 3 seconds).

There are many many other items (some bad) that you can pick up.

It's an incalculable amount of fun, and the single-card multiplayer wireless play makes it very easy to jump straight in to and enjoy.

If you have a DS, this should be the game you buy to have fun.