Review: Bombing Busters

Sanuk Games aims to capture the nostalgia fever that has taken grip in the game landscape in their latest entry on the Switch, Bombing Busters.  In the game you take on the persona of Bombing Bastard, a robot designed by Dr. Wallow.  Your purpose is to destroy all the critters so that Dr. Wallow can rule the galaxy.

The Tip and The Top

The game play is very similar to the early Bomberman games.  You start in a squared arena and you set bombs to take out your enemies.  In the story mode, you play through five different worlds, and each world has 6 different boards. 

Similar to Bomberman, Bombing Busters offers a wide range of power ups you can pick up after you blow up blocks with your bombs.  As you progress through the maze of each, you will find different power ups that will help you in your quest to beat each board.

At the end of each world there is a boss battle.  The boss battles are unique and challenging, however, the game does allow you to skip a boss and move on to the next world, if you have too much trouble with the boss.

The other mode available is the multiplayer mode, where up to four players can play against each other.  You also have the ability to add in AI robots and set the difficulty level for each AI robot.  You can select a board from any of the five different worlds; the ability to be able to play from any of the worlds without having to unlock the board in the single player mode is nice for players that are looking for a fun party game with their friends that do not want to spend time in the story mode. 

The Flip and The Flop

The game doesn’t do anything wrong, but outside of the boss battles, it just doesn’t offer anything new or fresh to the original Bomberman formula.  The enemies in each world are pretty much the same in each world.  In the multiplayer mode, all the robots look the same, except for the fact that you can pick different colors for each robot.  The colors do not provide enough contrast in the fast paced multiplayer game and you may find yourself lost, not knowing which character is yours before it’s too late.  It would have been a nice touch if players could do more customization of the robots in the multiplayer game to add enough contrast to distinguish each player’s robot.

Final Thoughts

Bombing Busters doesn’t do anything wrong, it just doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from the original Bomberman. For those of you that absolutely love the original Bomberman, this won’t be a problem; the original Bomberman is hard to find these days and this offers players an affordable alternative to Bomberman. 

Review copy provide by Sanuk Games