Super Bust a Move PS2 Review

Welcome to Taito’s world of Bust-a-move. A world filled with lots of people.. well, twelve actually but with lots and LOTS of bubbles!

Graphics

Why do I give them a four do you say? My reasoning is that, well, they drew bubbles and backgrounds; many of which you will never see. You’ll be watching the angles of the bubbles and the character animations when you get a high scoring shot in. No, there are no guns, just a big arrow shooting out bubbles. Oh, and the characters – twelve 2D cel shaded style characters, which are all pretty ugly and basic. The graphics are okay in parts, but there are no nice shadow effects. You won’t be very implressed unless you’re one of those pop music loving people. Like my sister. And there is one of the strangest animations ever, made by one of the characters called ”Pukadon”, pronounced ”Puke-a-don”. And it sounds like that for a reason.

Gameplay

The simple gameplay makes up for any troubles in sound or graphics as graphics are not very important in a game of this genre. The simplistic style makes Super Bust-A-Move an easy game to pick up and play, as all you need to do is shoot three bubbles (or more) of the same colour together. Sound difficult? Then I think you may need some help. The basic principle really is easy, and this game isn’t even mine, it’s actually my mum’s! She loved this game so much when she played it with my cousin at Christmas, that she bought it off of him. It really is a great game, easy, simple, addictive and for anybody of any age. And with three game modes, (Story, CPU Battle and Two Player Battle) it has a lot to accomplish. The story has seven levels, each with five parts to it. That’s thirty five parts to a game. It can even take up to an hour to finish, and that is something most puzzle games fail to do. The CPU battle is just choosing a character, and starting a battle with the other characters. It’s exactly the same with two players, only you both choose a character, with each battle game is best out of three (or first to two). It also is a game for skill. You have to be able to judge angles right to be able to fit bubbles through small gaps, using the R1 and L1 buttons to fine tune your shot, and getting in that shot to finally defeat your best mate really is fun. It’s just so simple, yet still requires skill. It truly is the strangest of games.

Sound

The sound is fairly average to say the least. Odd sounds are made from certain characters including the infamous Pukadon. To make matters worse there are only four songs in the whole game, which is pretty disappointing for a game on a next-generation system. The background music lasts for a whole game, but is just repeated over and over, until they’re drilled into your mind until you are well and truly sick of them and you want the whole world to die. Well, maybe not that fair, but they still get pretty annoying. There really should be a wider selection of music available, not just ‘cutesy’ J-pop (Japanese pop music). You can always turn the music down..

Lifespan

It will last quite a large amount of time, especially for a puzzle game. The story mode has only two things to unlock (which is disappointing), one being the hidden characters, and the other being completely new levels for Story mode. This makes a hundred and forty different parts to one ‘world’ and another 140 added to the other 280 levels. It’s actually a huge amount of things to do, and it will take you so long to complete them, you’ll probably give up trying. In multiplayer, battle modes can last as long as you want, you could stay in one round of a battle for about 10 minutes, when one of you finally gives in from exhaustion; such is the frantic pace.

Overall

Pros:
– So much to do!
– Battle mode and Story mode are both decent.
– Great simplistic fun.

Cons:
– Graphics quite bad, not that you notice.
– The sound is terrible, it needs improvement!
– Not enough characters.
– Loading times?!
– Losing to your best mate is really, really annoying.
– This latest update in the series is just more of the same.

In summary it is such a simple game, and can last a good long time. It just needs some better graphical touches and some improvements to the songs. However Super Bust-A-Move has near unbeatable gameplay for a puzzle game. If you have not played Super Bust-A-Move before it is definitely worth giving it a try.

7 out of 10