Playtime: ~5 hours
Progress: beat entire level 3, as well as half of level 1 (started out on the wrong level…)
The Bust-A-Move series has essentially appeared on every console that has been made since it’s creation, from the 3DO to Arcade to mobile phones. For the first while, the versions were either exactly the same, and simply ported from console to console, or so extremely similar that they were essentially the same game anyway. In recent times, each Bust-A-Move game has made special use of the unique features of the system that it appears on. The PSP game featured single-console multiplayer, utilizing the huge screen as two smaller ones, the DS one had you shooting your coloured bubbles up with a slingshot, and the Wii one uses the tilt-sensitivity of the wiimote to control the arrow and shoot the bubbles, as well as the pointer functionality for a brand new “shooting mode”. The Wii game stays faithful to the Bust-A-Move series, and provides a very solid entry into their never-ending legacy of games.
For those of you unfamiliar with Bust-A-Move — WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE? THIS IS A VIDEOGAME SITE AND IF YOU CALL YOURSELF A GAMER, YOU HAVE PLAYED ONE OF THESE GAMES. Essentially, Bust-A-Move is a puzzle game that involves shooting coloured balls (or bubbles) from a central “cannon” with an aiming arrow at the bottom of the screen to pre-configured bubbles at the top of the screen that are slowly (or more quickly) coming toward you. You match up the colours in groups of three or more to make them disappear and you fail when a bubble reaches the bottom of the screen.
(older version of Bust-A-Move)
Most of the Wii game is simply good old Bust-A-Move (BAM) (which happens to be my favourite puzzle game) with newly made levels. There a puzzle mode and an endless mode that follow the classic BAM gameplay, but also a new Shooting mode that brings something entirely new to the BAM series.
(courtesy IGN)
In the shooting mode, different coloured bubbles come from all side of the screen and you have to use the + and – buttons (or left & right on the control pad) to change the colour of your cursor (being controlled through pointing) to the appropriate colour to shoot the matching bubbles. This mode features a “lock-on” feature which keeps all of the bubbles that your pointer passes over high-lighted so that you can shoot more than one bubble at once. Also, a really pretty trail follows your cursor and is fun to play with by itself.
This is the first Wii game to boast 8-player multiplayer (one player on each wiimote, plus one on each nunchuck), but I must say that you’ll be disappointed with the multiplayer aspect of this game. Instead of using the usual formula of everyone dealing with their own set of bubbles, everyone works off of the same set, competing to pop the most jewel-bubbles that they can within the time-limit. Even with two players this mode gets too crazy to keep track of, 8 players would be ludicrous. Accuracy also goes out the window because of a new item introduced in this Bust-A-Move game. The new item is a bubble with an “S” in it that, when activated, moves the bubbles you shoot around the screen until they find a fairly decent spot to be. Thus, it’s almost like auto-aim. So, skilled players can easily be schooled by n00bs that don’t even aim in this mode, and thus it is needlessly frustrating and generally superfluous.
Overall, this game is a great puzzle experience that I would suggest to anyone who likes puzzle games, likes BAM games, or has never played a BAM game before.
[taq_review]