" This game is addicting when other living sources of intelligence are involved. "

   Title: Atomic Bomberman

   Format: PC Action / Puzzle

   Reviewing Monkey: Simi N.

   The Hype: Often touted as the best multiplayer game of the year, this side scroller does little to displease.

      What This Monkey Thought...

   Graphics: The graphics for this game are decent. Everything is two-dimensional even though 3-D was the standard when it came onto the scene. The sprites aren’t really special looking, but they do their job. Especially with the death animations there are tons if different ways to see your character (or your friends character’s) die. The backgrounds are all 2-D and are defaulted to the original Bomberman format. But there are loads of different schemes you can load up that change the layout, and rules of the levels. 3 out of 5

   Sound: The sound in this game is good. It certainly isn’t of the best quality, but the sheer variety in sounds makes it cool. Also if you have a subwoofer hooked up to your PC the explosions become awesome. The music in is your garden-variety video game techno-type of stuff, but you won’t ever really have time to think about the music while playing this game. 3 out of 5

   Game Play: Game play is awesome. Very simple all there are a total of six buttons you’ll ever use (counting directional arrows or a D-pad as four.) Basically this game can be picked up by anyone with an IQ above six. Although just because you can pick it up easily doesn’t mean you can master it easily. I still have trouble killing the all too intelligent computer players. 4 out of 5

   Level and Environment Designs: The default level design is standard Bomberman. Basically a rectangular space where you can blow up walls to make paths in a grid pattern. But the game also offers a plethora of different game schemes, which change not only the layout of the levels, but also the rule of gameplay. For example in one scheme everyone may not be allowed to get any pickups, while in others everyone may start out with every power-up in the game. And the ability to make your own schemes makes this game even cooler. 3 out of 5

   Multiplayer: This is the reason this game exists. While it is still fun to take on computer opponents with this game, taking on up to nine of your best friends are way cooler. If you have enough controllers, and enough friends, you can play this game all hours of the night and through to the next day. This game is addicting when other living sources of intelligence are involved. 5 out of 5

   Replayability: Well this game has no kind of linear story to play in one player mode. Playing by yourself just means that your would-be friends’ characters are controlled the computer. So no one will replay this game in order to complete some quest, but people will replay it in order to blow the crap out of stuff. 3 out of 5

   Story/Dramatics: Nothing to rate here

   Instructions and Learning Curve: You can pick this game up in 50 seconds up to two minutes. And if you can’t do that by yourself you can do it by reading the instructions (which are very simple). And if you still don’t get it, you move into the woods, climb a tree and start flinging feces at people because you’ve got to be at least as dumb as a monkey. You may not be great at the strategy part of it right off, but that comes with time. 4 out of 5

   Installation and Real System Requirements: Works well on the system it should and on better systems it works, well, better! 4 out of 5

   The Verdict:

       This game rules. It is chuck full of nasty blow-your-friends-to-bits gaming. And if you don’t have friends, don’t despair you can take on computer players (which are probably harder to beat than your friends anyway). 4

   The Good: Good gampeplay, fun sounds, great multiplayer, and neat editing program.

   The Bad: Sub-par sound, old school 2-D graphics.

   The Overall Ugly: Start a game, drop a bomb, blow someone up or get blown up, either way you’ll have a blast. (Ok, Ok, I do apologize for that one).

   What it's Worth: It’s definitely worth $30.00.