Gaming mascots have long been a characteristic of a successful company. Mario for Nintendo, Crash for Sony and Sonic for Sega. Individual developers also have their own cutesy characters to pawn off in various platformers and what not. Hudsonsoft has Bomberman. While Bomberman is somewhat of a lesser known character in the gaming world, his games have sold millions of copies world wide. Bomberman has also ventured into many different genres and Fantasy Race is his first foray into the racing genre.
Much like his fellow mascots Bomberman's racing title is a battle racing game much like the classic Mario Kart. Characters from the Bomberman world race around magical and fantasy based tracks on rabbit like animals familiar to the 2D Bomberman past. Also familiar to the 2D classics are the bombs and various weapons that you hurl around at your fellow racers.
Besides the change from karts to animals this formula for a character based racing game has been over done to a point where there is little innovation. Bomberman Fantasy Race tries to overcome the somewhat shallow racing with a deeper experience in the rest of the game. Like most racing games the ultimate goal is to finish first in the races. Doing so in Bomberman Fantasy Race earns you points which you can purchase better and faster beasts to ride atop as well as purchase tickets which unlock new race tracks.
This reward system brings much needed depth to the battle racing genre and also gives you reason to play BFR by yourself. A much needed improvement over other games like it. But there is a downside. The multi-player experience is somewhat lacking seeing that Bomberman Fantasy Race is only a two player game. This limits the playability at parties and with more than one friend.
Bomberman Fantasy Race does a lot of things right but at the same time little problems keep it from being a top notch title. The racing engine itself is somewhat original and brings new physics into play such as a feeling of inertia. On the bad side, the engine has questionable collision detection and also has a high learning curve.
The balance in the game is also somewhat of a mixed bag. The AI plays the part of the dark side in the balance since the computer controlled players are non stop speed demons that are incredibly hard to nail with a quickly tossed bomb. However, BFR tries to balance the game with power-ups that freeze the computer players as well as a dash move which tires out your racing animal if not used sparingly. Yet the game is still extremely hard.
With the difficulty at such a high level this presents a problem in the audience Bomberman Fantasy Race is aimed at. The younger players. Since the game has a high learning curve younger players will probably feel aggravated as you have to fail quite a few times before learning the game. But once you finally learn BFM it starts to crawl out of the mediocre shell the you see at first.
I have to admit, I was discouraged at first while playing Bomberman Fantasy Race. The game was so hard that I could hardly win the first race. After failing for a while I started to feel the level of skill needed to play and began to really enjoy the techniques possible. But only at a high level of play.
Yet the little problems are enough to make Bomberman Fantasy Race a game which will probably only land in the hearts of fans of battle racers. If you nag at it for quite a while, Bomberman Fantasy Race could be one of those fun little games where you can pickup and play when you have free time. Otherwise the gameplay just doesn't add up to make it a must play title.
