Reviewed by Tiffany Craig
Since Bomberic 2 only gives us a bare outline of our setting, I’ve taken the liberty of making something up. You are an unfortunately named intrepid scientist who accidentally spilled a vile of green radioactive slime all over the lab. From the chemicals burst a rainbow of foul monsters that created 32 rooms of arbitrary missions that you must complete. Awaiting your exit is the deep Siberian winter and a full bottle of warming vodka, both preferable to rotting in a mystical world with your creations. Your fighting paraphernalia consists of enough bombs to equip the British Home Guard over 20 times. God speed, young Bomberic.
Bomberic 2 is an arcade adventure with small elements of timing strategy. Levels vary from finding keys, lasting for set times or killing a set amount of mutants. After you realize that the green goo didn’t make you immune to bombs, the game mechanics are fairly easy to figure out. Most of the monsters have set spawn points or have learned how to use portals which makes it simpler to know where to avoid them. At the end of the key finding levels, arrows will guide you to your exit in case you got lost. Helpful extra bonuses such as health, invincibility, holograms and crush are located under rubble and are easy to recognize. There isn’t any tedious relearning of key combos; your options are the standard keyboard or mouse sets. There also isn’t an alternative play mode to what comes out of the metaphorical Internet box, so no more scenarios to learn.
The game, however, is not at all easy. With a horrified gasp, you will realize you can’t take it with you. I’m not even talking about your car. In a game universe with progressive levels, those little hearts you’ve busted your cartoon rear to locate don’t carry over. Your lives as represented in the bottom right corner will return to a mere three, no matter how many you’ve picked up and retained during the previous level. Those bombs you bought don’t come with you either. If you collected enough gold at level three to get some super stellar amazing bombs of rampant death you only get them for level four. Level five comes around and you’re back to trying to get another set.
So you’re stuck at three lives, surrounded by evil helicopter-headed creations and you don’t have any extra weapons but you’re still making it through. Excellent, then you hit around level seven when the difficulty incline goes from a small mogul to a cliff face. That is where Bomberic becomes less an amusing diversion and more a keyboard smashing festival of frustration. Bomberic’s monsters get tougher and more plentiful and yet you are the same weak little man.
The lack of cohesion with lives and weapons in contrast with other arcade games is mind boggling considering the amount of effort they put into almost everything else. The production values are pretty on the mark with clear and bright graphics. Some of the landscape features are inspired and include little skulls, cacti and wonderfully done palm trees. Occasionally the same landscape obstacles can be difficult to decipher but are usually obvious. I didn’t have any trouble controlling the good doctor Bomberic, so the controls are responsive. The actual explosions are lacking a little, you’d maybe think that different bombs would at least appear to do different things, but the boom is still adequate. The music is mostly cheerful little synthesized marches or Nintendo-inspired melody. All things combined, the aesthetics are overwhelmingly pleasing.
A certain compulsion might keep people coming back after trying the demo or playing the first few levels. But it’s only the sort that makes people check their e-mail 100 times before going on vacation. You do it because leaving it at level nine is pitifully unfinished and you don’t want to miss something really good that might just be around the corner. Bomberic 2 really is a faithful effort, but compulsiveness won’t be enough to keep you coming back. Clear and bright graphics will not cancel out the giant leap from nicely challenging to vein poppingly frustrating. Sadly, Bomberic 2 has missed the expected arcade mark of fun this time around.
Special thanks to Sergey Stepovoy and Evis Games for providing the full version of this game.