Bomberman was a series a loved as a kid, and playing Bomberman on the PSX with my dad is one of the earliest gaming memories I have, I never really thought about buying any of the more recent Bomberman games, but I gave it a shot with Bomberman Ultra on the Playstation store, and before I continue this review, I just want to get it out of the way that the game has the regular PSN game price of £7.99. Now that a chunk of my conclusion is gone, let’s get on with the review.

As I said before, playing the old Bomberman games is one of my gaming memories, and Ultra, doesn’t take away from the original games too much, just adds to the fun factor with lots of single player options, online multiplayer and a character customisation option, which is pretty cool and has a huge range of clothing to unlock (so many damned hats!) Anyway, the first game I went into, I left all of the setting on default, and got my ass handed to me after about a minute, but after a few games, I had a winning streak going, and the fun really started to kick in, enabling all power ups, and putting eight players in the arena really looks great in HD, which I will be talking about in a little bit. For anybody who is unfamiliar with the Bomberman games, the objective is to wipe out the other bombers in an arena, it’s a free for all game, so there are no teams, and breakable blocks are placed around the stage, these can be blown up with your bombs allowing you to move around more freely. The new options in the game include more arena modes, Online multiplayer with another seven people (chaos) and lots of new maps each with their own modes.

Graphics wise the game is vibrant and bright, and the backgrounds look nice but aren’t too distracting from the main action in the centre of the screen, the game runs in 720p HD, and everything looks crisp, and from what I’ve played so far, I haven’t encountered any graphical glitches. Sometimes the tiles on the stage can look pretty repetitive if you are playing the same level multiple times, but this is only a minor issue, as there are fourteen different maps to choose from, and you can also turn on bomb shelters which break up the environment a bit more. The menus are clear and the character customisation screen is easy to read, except, when you unlock a new piece of gear it doesn’t mark which ones are new, so after a while I would imagine this would get quite annoying, but still, only a small issue, and I think that if I was to look into this game incredibly deeply, I could find lots of tiny complaints, but, Bomberman is too fun to whine about them too much, and thats what I love about it.

The music is reminiscent of the PSX era, catchy synth lines and trancy drums are what the soundtrack is about here, and although the menu music can get somewhat repetitive, the in game music is good. WARNING, REPETITIVE LISTENING TO THIS GAME’S SOUNDTRACK WILL CAUSE  UNCONTROLLABLE HUMMING AND TAPPING THE TUNES, You have been warned. The sound effects for the game are pretty crisp, and the voices are taken from the earlier games, which brought back some memories, and so all round the audio is probably one of the best parts in the game.

The online is pretty good, but can lag a little sometimes, it loads pretty quickly and the games are generally pretty well balanced. There are online leaderboards which are fairly standard to games like this, however, the good thing about Bomberman’s is that they load incredibly quickly and scrolling between the pages is very smooth.

To finish up this review, Bomberman Ultra is very reminiscent of the old games, but doesn’t subtract any of the fun or replay value, Bomberman is definitely a game worth picking up, even though I had a few personal complaints about it, they are merely personal. If you want to play for five minutes or an hour Bomberman really does stand out from some of the other Playstation store games, and, for me,  could even stand up to the likes of Super Stardust HD. Bomberman is back, and he scores high from me.

10/10

-Dean