COLOR BOMBS Review (Wii U eShop)

It can be disappointing to realize that you've just lost precious time that could've been spent in a better way. If you would like to avoid experiencing this feeling, we would recommend that you stay well away from COLOR BOMBS. This title is excessively simplistic in all ways, and while it may be available for dirt cheap you're getting exactly what you pay for.

Technically COLOR BOMBS features sixty levels, but this feels rather like a marketing gimmick. Levels are divided into Normal, Advanced and Timed, with twenty levels under each heading, but the only difference within each group is the number of color bombs on screen. Normal features a blank area, Advanced adds four circular barriers that the bombs can bounce off of, and Timed gives players an extremely generous amount of time to set off a disproportionately short chain reaction. If you're particularly lucky you'll see everything this game has to offer in under an hour.

The gameplay consists entirely of the player manoeuvring a black dot around the play area and pressing the "A" button once. Several dozen color bombs lazily move about the screen and bounce off of walls, and by pressing "A" the dot becomes set and any bombs that come into contact with it go off. In turn, any bombs that come into contact with these activated bombs will go off, with the goal being to set off a chain reaction that activates a certain number of color bombs. Sounds simple enough, right? It certainly is, painfully so.

The main problem with the basic gameplay is that it almost entirely removes the player from the experience. Yes, you can move the dot around, but you'll quickly realize that placement really matters very little and that passing or failing a stage is almost entirely the product of luck. What this means for the player is that you press one button and then watch to see if the game lets you win this time. That's it. There's no skill involved, nothing more you can do to influence success; you just press the button and watch.

Oddly enough, it's the earliest stages that are the most difficult to clear, as the lower number of bombs onscreen means that there's a much lower chance of success. It's no exaggeration to say that later stages are more difficult to fail than they are to pass, as each successive stage just adds a handful of color bombs and bumps up the minimum number you need to pass. Of course, this brings with it new problems, as the game somehow begins to struggle when there are too many color bombs on screen and the framerate chugs along at a glacial speed.

The only inoffensive things about COLOR BOMBS are its visuals and music, but these are only passable at best. The color bombs bouncing around screen are pleasing enough on the eyes and the level select screen has a cutely drawn sun & moon, but there's not a whole lot more to go on here. The sole background track is unobtrusive and ambient, which sounds like something that got rejected from Metroid Prime; while it doesn't take away from the experience, it doesn't really add much. Overall, the audio and visual presentation isn't bad, but it isn't notably good either.