Hudson is best known for making two things: Bomberman and minigame collections. Bomberman Land is an inevitable combination of the two concepts, and it's a disappointing one.

Bomberman Land feels like a first generation title because it originally was. Many delays pushed it into 2008, and at this point it just seems dated. The minigame concept has been killed on the Wii with the deluge of releases in the genre.

The one-player mode is just too clunky. Cutscenes are unskippable, and text scrolls at an excruciatingly slow pace. However, the games themselves do offer a bit of fun. They're not stellar, but they are at least passable. It seems like the developers took this title as a sort of training of sorts for the next Mario Party title, as many of the challenges offer that same feel.

The other major selling point of this title is the inclusion of standard Bomberman mode. However, Hudson was outdone on this front by…well…Hudson. Bomberman '93, a TurboGrafx16 game available on the Virtual Console, does a similar if not better job with this, and it's just six bucks.

While Bomberman Land's budget price tag is somewhat redeeming, it just doesn't justify a purchase. Instead, download Bomberman '93 (or Bomberman Live on XBLA), or pick up the new, considerably better DS version.

Feb 11, 2008 | 1 comments
Graham Russell