What parents need to know
Super Bomberman R2 takes the classic concept of the Bomberman series started 40 years ago and adds many variations to bring it up to date.
A classic Bomberman game is played this way, each player embodies a character called Bomberman who moves in 2 dimensions on a chessboard. This chessboard is composed of destructible blocks, non-destructible blocks, maluses, bonuses and traps. Characters have the ability to place a bomb on this chessboard. This bomb will create a cruciform explosion after a few seconds, which can destroy the destructible blocks but also some traps, other characters, as well as oneself.
The whole game is then to place your bombs well to trap the opponents while avoiding all explosions. The game ends when only one Bomberman remains in the arena. He is then the winner of this round. You can accumulate bonuses in the arenas to increase the effects of the bombs, throw them through the streets, kick them, increase the number of bombs you carry, get a shield, protect yourself from a single explosion, etc.
Over the years, the Bomberman series has been released on all media, has known about fifty games and just as many trials, errors, and iterations. It is therefore yet another attempt to bring the Bomberman series up to date, which was nevertheless a must for evenings with friends in the 1990s, and which then fell into disuse with several failed opuses.
Details
Level of experience required
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Evaluation
It’s cartoon characters blowing themselves up with bombs, that’s all.
Nothing.
Very childish. You have to know how to read though.
At a high level, the game requires a lot of composure and dexterity, but most of the challenges offered by default are easy.
Only humans online, when you meet them, will give you a hard time.
No problem. Everything is included in the base game for now.
Local game modes
Story: An insignificant story mode that’s quiet enough to relax in between fierce battles. Unfortunately, it is quite long and is necessary to complete it if you want to unlock 3 characters for the other game modes.
Playable with 1 player locally.
Standard: The classic standard multiplayer mode of the Bomberman. An arena with 2 to 16 participants who try to eliminate each other on a checkerboard with bombs that explode in a cruciform way.
Playable from 1 to 4 players locally on Playstation 4 and 5.
Playable from 1 to 8 players locally on the rest of the consoles/computer.
Many options are present, as well as 7 arenas including the classic and the Power Zone.
On the other hand, there is no option to set the difficulty level of the opponents controlled by the console or computer, nor is there a way to choose the characters they play. Finally, it also lacks the team games present in some previous games of the franchise.
There aren’t all the options from 40 years of gaming, but these are the main ones that are missing.
Grand Prix: A 3v3 team game where you have to collect the most crystals in a small arena, and trap opponents to collect their crystals. The team that has accumulated the most crystals at the end of the time limit wins.
Playable with 1 player locally.
Battle 64: is the entire Super Bomberman R Online game built inside Super Bomberman R2. That is to say, it is a Battle Royale mode where 64 players compete in various arenas, which decrease over time.
Playable from 1 to 4 players locally on Playstation 4 and 5.
Playable from 1 to 8 players locally on the rest of the consoles/computer.
There’s a shop with lots of accessories, taunts, phrases, music, and characters to unlock. This is only done with virtual currency only fortunately. The vast majority of the content and characters come from Super Bomberman R 1 and Super Bomberman R Online.
It’s possible to customize each character and even each bombshell with whimsical and wacky accessories.
Online Game Modes
Apart from the story mode, the Grand Prix, Standard, Battle 64, and Castle modes are playable online as well.
However, they are playable with only 1 player per console.
For Battle 64 and Castle, the main interest comes from their online mode.
The game is cross-play, it is possible to play with players on Steam PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox Series and Xbox One, regardless of your platform.
Our opinion
Super Bomberman R2 is the best Bomberman available on current platforms (consoles/computer). It consolidates the work of the previous iterations (Super Bomberman R Online and Super Bomberman R1) and compiles it all with original game modes.
The Castle and Story modes are a bit fun at first, and get boring after a while for adults.
The Battle 64 and Standard modes are a lot of fun, and I’m having a blast restarting the game just to play in Battle 64 (Battle Royale) mode.
However, the game struggles to find many players at the time of looking for them, and ends up filling the arenas with another 63 bots in this mode, as it doesn’t want to make people wait too long. So it becomes a Turing test to try to guess whether you’re playing against human opponents or bots. Bots always have the same nicknames, the same ranks (Bronze 5), and take the same basic characters, including those who are disadvantaged.
In version 1.0, the game offered a rotation of these 4 game modes (Battle 64, Castle, Grand Prix, Standard) every hour.
That is, for example, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. you could only play online on Castle, then from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. you could only play Grand Prix, etc.
This is a good idea when you want your user base to play the same game modes together, instead of dividing it into 4.
This is unfortunately frustrating for players who don’t necessarily want to play the other game modes and have a limited amount of time to play. Especially since they didn’t know when their game mode would appear in the rotation since it was random and not indicated.
Faced with the flood of bad reviews on Steam because of this feature, Konami (the game’s publisher) patched the game to its version 1.2.2.
Thus, it is now possible to choose which game mode you want to play before each online game. Now the timer that counts the hours, only changes the options of the Standard mode, mainly 2 or 4 player games.
Unfortunately, the pool of users is therefore reduced and we mainly play with bots unless we synchronize
with humans on a Discord for example.
Super Bomberman R2 is a very fun game that I recommend mainly at a low price. Don’t expect much from it, but there’s plenty of fun to be had with the options, multiple characters (and their powers) and homages to the history of Konami’s portfolio included in this title.
Our rating : 16 / 20
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