Bust-a-Move has never been the most graphically advanced game nor the most fast paced action game, however, for many years it has been one of my favorite games to play one on one versus friends, up there with games like Tetris.
The premise is simple. You start off with a collection of bubbles above you and a launcher to shot other bubbles at the ones already there. Once three bubbles of the same color are together, they pop. The goal is to remove all the bubbles from the screen. The catch is that every five shots or so, the bubbles move down a row and once they reach your launcher, you lose.
The problem was always that the game was never really well thought out. Once playing it was great, but the options, stats and characters were always very basic.
This latest attempt is a bit better, but is still missing a lot. It seems that it would be easy to improve on such a game, since there is no high tech graphics or sounds and the play is pretty repetitive.
They have added some new modes for single play and multi-player. There is even a multi-player co-op type game where you share the same launcher and see who can nock down the most bubbles. The see-saw game and one-shot game in the single player mode are a lot of fun. Something that the old versions were really lacking, some nice single player modes. See-saw makes it so that the play area tilts back and forth based on where you shoot your bubbles and if too many are on one side, it topples over. One-shot, gives you one bubble to shoot to clear the whole level, miss and your dead.
There are still a lot of problems though and some new ones. In multi-player, for some reason, you can no longer switch characters and the stats for wins and losses have been removed. So you must keep count yourself and must leave the game and re-enter to switch characters. Also, there are still no options to adjust. Sound, timers, speed, nothing at all. There are once again 4 hidden characters, but the difference between the characters is minimal. You can also level up your character to make him better.
The XBox Live was a nice feature as well, but there are not that many people playing and the interface is not very sophisticated.
The game is not expensive, under $30 Canadian, so if you don't have any versions and like the game, it is worth the buy. If you were never a fan, then pass on it again, there is nothing to draw in new fans. And don't count on the XBox Live for multi-player, since it is hard to find other players.
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