My first and only experience with the Bomberman series prior to Super Bomberman R was the SNES title Super Bomberman. Not only was it a fantastic game that both my family and my gal’s family enjoyed long ago, back in those days it also came packaged with the Super Multitap which boosted the potential players on SNES from 2 to 5! It’s been a million 25 years since then, lots of time for improvement and change; is Super Bomberman R the bomb or a dud?
Well, if you read the title you probably already know the answer to that – it’s somewhere in between. My gal and I were both excited to dive into the game, and dive in we did: you begin the game with a decent amount of gems (in-game currency), characters and maps, and you can buy new characters, maps and accessories by playing the game and earning more gems. I purchased all the super awesome characters I could, like Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank (the PS4 exclusive character; Xbox gets Master Chief from the Halo series, Steam gets P-Body from PORTAL, Nintendo gets Max), Xavier Woods from the WWE, Vic Viper from Gradius and Pyramid Head from Silent Hill before even playing my first game! There’s no shortage of awesome characters, and if you’re a big Konami fan you’ll probably have a really hard time picking a favorite, but that works out since they all have special abilities that you can use in the game as well. For example, Ratchet shoots his gun which stuns enemies or destroys bombs, and Simon Belmont from Castlevania can whip bombs or enemies to bring them to him.
The standard battle mode is exactly as I remembered it: up to four players (8 on the Switch if four Switches are connected, although I was unable to test this) take a respective corner of the map and try to blow each other up, collecting powerups along the way that increase the size of their bomb’s explosions, their movement speed or the number of bombs they can place at once, as well as extra abilities like kicking or punching bombs. These players can be human, AI or a mix, and we particularly enjoyed playing the team battles so she and I could work together to try to take out the AI opponents. There are all sorts of modifiers for battle mode, including AI difficulty, and we quickly found our favorite setup. Perhaps my favorite addition since Super Bomberman are revenge carts; if you’re knocked out and the game isn’t over, you can move around the edges of the map tossing bombs. If you happen to knock out an enemy, not only do they get taken out, you replace them! This really makes things chaotic and keeps all the players in the game. Sadly, we grew tired of the maps rather quickly; you get 8 to begin with, but since we only liked a handful of them there wasn’t a great deal of replayability. For example, there was a slippery map that we never quite got the hang of, and another map – one with a raised wall in the middle – was a cool concept, but the yellow color used was painful to my fiance. To make matters worse, after (almost) every game you’re awarded with 150 gems. It doesn’t matter if you set the game to play as teams or battle royale, as first to 1 point or first to 3, or even whether you win or lose.
There’s also a story mode, which was an entirely new experience to me. I was pleasantly surprised by not only the ability to play co-op, but also the ability to play as any unlocked characters and the animated cutscenes before each planet. They were cheesy, sure, but in a good way. They were also clearly high quality, entertaining and I can definitely see kids loving the heck out of them. We played the first planet, which consisted of around 10 levels including 2 boss fights, and each level challenged us to either kill all the enemies or to press all the buttons scattered about each level. With two people it was very easy to accidentally blow each other up due to the camera angle, but overall it was a fun experience. The bosses were unique: one was like a 3 player Battle Mode round and the other was a totally different fight against a giant robot boss. In co-op you share a number of total lives, and once you run out the next death will eliminate a player. We died twice, once in one of the earlier levels while we were learning how it worked and once on the final boss of the planet, and both times we were offered to continue, but it would cost gems. The boss fight continue cost only 10, thank goodness, but the other would have cost 300! You do earn a fair amount of gems this way as well, and I have no doubt the additional planets have plenty more variety for us!
Grand Prix is where it’s at! The mode was added back in mid-November 2017 and it’s a two-round extravaganza in which two teams battle for supremacy. Each character really shines here as the special abilities come into play even more and various characters start with different powerups. For example, Ratchet can’t pick up the punch powerup, whereas some other characters start each game with it. There are three modes here – basic bomber, crystal and checkpoints. Basic bomber gives each player a maximum amount of lives and teams get a point for killing an opponent. Crystal has numerous crystals scattered across the levels and your team gets points for each crystal they have at the end of a round, but death makes a player drop half their crystals again! Finally, checkpoints (my favorite!) has players battling over 3 checkpoints on the map. You can play with teams of 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 and like Battle Mode you can use AI to fill in spots as needed, although they’re especially terrible in this mode. If you have at least one more human player to play with though, it’s a great deal of fun, and you’ll end up getting 300 gems here instead of 150 per match! I honestly almost missed this mode entirely as you have to return to the main menu to find it, but it’s easily my favorite part of the game!
The shop is the endgame of Super Bomberman R, but don’t worry, there are no loot boxes or real life money options. This is where you’ll get your new bombers, maps and even some optional accessories for your characters, and you’ll use the gems you get from playing to get them. Sadly, it takes a lot to buy everything. New maps cost 2,500 for the “special” versions of the original included maps (we tried the Labyrinth one and it did seem like a slight improvement), and 4,000 for entirely new maps (we tried one of these as well, a map where there are no obstacles whatsoever and everyone starts off fully powered up. We weren’t fans…). This means that it takes 17-27 battle mode games or 9-14 Grand Prix games to earn a new map, which is made even worse since there’s no ability to preview them before purchasing them. These maps are also only utilized in Battle Mode, as all of the maps come pre-unlocked in Grand Prix. Many of the bombers are only 10 gems, but 15 of them cost 1,000 each, and then the accessories start off at 500 and go up in price as you unlock additional versions of each. I love the idea of buying new bombers since there are so many to begin with, and the accessories are a great option since they don’t affect gameplay, but I really wish the maps didn’t take so much grinding to unlock.
Overall I think Super Bomberman R is a good game with a lot of fun potential for a party or even just sitting down with a friend or loved one. Just know that it’ll take a long while to unlock all the bombers and maps before you get the full experience. We’re both looking forward to playing the game more, and that alone says a great deal about how fun a game is! This is made even more true as there’s potential for Konami to add even more to the game; Grand Prix was added November 2017 along with new characters and even additional story mode content, and only a few weeks ago the checkpoints mode of Grand Prix was added along with new accessories and new characters.
As a final note, I did try the online matches three times, both with Grand Prix and Battle Mode, but after a couple minutes of attempting to matchmake I never found other players. I’m sure this mode would be a great deal of fun, but I was unable to review it.
Super Bomberman R is available for PS4 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Steam (Windows).
I received a free copy of this game in exchange for an honest review.