Brawl Reviews

Brawl is a fairly easy game to describe. It basically takes the classic bomb-blasting formula of Bomberman and adds its own B-grade horror theme. Could this com

What's more fun than playing games with a bunch of psychos in an emporium? Choose from a cast of demented personalities and have a literal blast with the deadly explosions from your enemies' arsenal of bombs. Let's hope you don't quite go insane in this madhouse...

Whenever game developers draw inspiration from the classics, they better at least improve upon the established formulas. Thankfully, Brawl offers a few twists on Bomberman's gameplay dynamic but is it enough to make it stand out?

Alongside the single player mode there is a local and online multi-player option. Playing with others is great fun, although I encountered very long and often unsuccessful waits to join online battles – which I presume is caused by an insufficient player base. The game also offers a challenge mode where you blast waves of enemies to rack up a high score or more interestingly, act as a shepherd protecting your digital flock of sheep from enemy attacks for as long as possible. Admittedly, this is a bit of a gimmick but it’s fun to play once or twice.

Despite having a perfect soundtrack and wonderfully creepy voice-over, Brawl’s single-player misses the mark thanks to its insane difficulty. Over-powered characters also make the local versus multiplayer hit and miss, and add in the steep price point and Brawl fails to light the fuse. It’s particularly disappointing as Brawl is almost a second attempt of Basement Crawl, but Bloober Team simply haven’t learnt from their past mistakes.