I‘ll try to keep this short and sweet. I have been looking forward to playing Bubble Bobble on my Xbox 360 for a while now. Bubble Bobble NEO, a version I have not played yet, finally came out last week. It wasn’t the original version I played on Nintendo, but who cares? It’s still Bubble Bobble, and if you have read my posts in the past, I felt this was one of the few titles that was a must for Xbox Live Arcade. I wanted this game to come out, but I didn’t actually think it was ever going to happen. And when it finally did get released to my surprise, I didn’t even need to play the trial game. I bought it immediately.
I regret that decision now. I should have looked into the details of this game further. And if you’re a fan of Bub and Bob like I am, maybe more for nostalgia than anything, then let me save you the $12.50 or 800 points.
The first feature you’ll notice lacking in this game, you unfortunately won’t be able to play online, with your friends. Yes, a brand new Xbox Live Arcade game in 2009 came out without this feature. How can such an important feature not be included? When I played the original Bubble Bobble back in the early 90’s, I played it with my best friend. So I ended up telling that same friend to buy NEO so we could play and re-live the memories. Unfortunately, the impatient person that I am and also the kind of guy that doesn’t read directions, (who needs directions anyway? Psshh.) I did not know it was only local co-op. Meaning, my buddy and I had to be in front of the same TV if we wanted to play. Are you serious? Total bummer.
Second negative you will notice is the lack of any difficulty to this game. You can breeze right past the first 50 or so levels with little to no effort. Why was is much more difficult back in the day? I couldn’t be that much better of a gamer. However, once you get to certain levels, it becomes clear something was not designed properly. For example, Level 72.
That was not my video but that of someone else going through the exact same motions I went through. I am not the type of person that goes to look for a cheat or a way to beat a level, but this was one of those certain ‘beyond frustrating’ times when it was absolutely necessary. My girlfriend and I could not figure this one out on our own. We were stuck. In between 2 walls, unable to produce any bubbles to jump our way out. And it’s not just me, I guess a lot of people had trouble with this level with some even claiming it is ‘broken’. And not just on the 360 with NEO, gamers have had this same issue in Bubble Bobble Plus for the Wii. I assume NEO is just a port of that game.
We eventually managed to pass Level 72 and move on to beat the game. So it isn’t broken after all, but definitely not designed as well as it should be. It took a few hours to beat the full game the first time playing through. Mostly because we got stuck on that damn level for so long. But playing with my best friend the next day, after we already knew what to do, we blazed right through and beat it in almost an hour exactly. Now compare that to ‘Shadow Complex’ on XBLA which provided me with an awesome experience recently for about 6 1/2 hours of total gameplay, for only 1200 points. Only 400 points more than Bubble Bobble, which only gives you an hours worth of gameplay. What happened to the quality here?
To top it all off, the controls for Bub and Bob were extremely sluggish. There were many deaths due to slow response time. It would have been nice to be able to produce bubbles at a quicker pace, and to jump when I told them to jump. By the way, how about those default controls? Press B to jump and A for bubbles? It felt so awkward as most games use the A button as the jump feature. I thought every developer was aware of this? Good thing they allow you to change this in the settings.
Look, don’t get me wrong. I loved Bubble Bobble when I was a kid, but I guess some games of my past should stay in the past. Had this game been half the cost, I might not be as disappointed as I am. But at the same time, I expected more. Especially from such an awesome Taito classic.
Do yourself a favor and skip the purchase on this one. At least until it drops down in price. You will not get much game for your buck, as there is little to no replay value. 100 levels sounds like a lot, but not when some of the levels take as little as 10 seconds to beat.
The Gamer Report 