alstroemeric.

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PSN, XBLA

I wanted to talk a little about Bomberman Live and Bomberman Ultra, considering they've consumed a large portion of my life since the middle of '07, and will continue to do so until I die.

I used to play Bomberman as a kid with my mother, which was great fun. Most memorable was Mega Bomberman on the Megadrive being my first experience with the series.

My two accounts - Megalixir 360 and three wonders - have seen fairly significant use in this game, along with a few other (now inactive) accounts which I used to play, thanks to having a free month of Xbox Gold upon account creation.

Come to think of it... Live's probably the reason my first 360 died, because I played Bomberman Live just that much. I wouldn't be at all surprised, considering it died from a GPU error.

Anyway, there I was, almost every night playing Live (often ruining my sleeping pattern because of the time zones) with as many people as I could, trying to get better. Eventually I gave up playing on Normal in December of '07, starting to frequent Bombing Run (full speed) with the regular Japanese "good rule" (ガチルール) settings; Kick, Punch, Glove, Full Fire, Fire. When it came to facing off against non-Japanese players, it came down to two things: brute force, or short-fusing.

Short-fusing is a term I invented (and by some miracle, caught on and is now actively used in Bomberman) which means "picking up a bomb with the glove just before it's about to explode". You might think this is a good idea, but with online lag, it's very intimidating and extremely frowned on by people who are frequent customers/regular players. In Bomberman Online, picking up a bomb would immediately throw it, so you're not even supposed to be running around carrying bombs to begin with.

Aside from this, a good portion of non-Japanese (and Japanese players, too) tend to make bomb chains which are predictable, in a fashion where all of the bombs are placed evenly. Here's what I mean:

This is incredibly effective but it's the most common thing seen out of most players, to the point where now I stick to bomb/kick/punch/fire, without glove. It's not that I don't want to play with glove; it's just that, from experience, people aren't willing to play the game "properly".

Japanese players tend to be less aggressive and more strategic, confusing you into killing yourself or confusing you by trying to be as unpredictable as possible. It's something that I can say, with 60,000+ games played, differentiates the mindset between western and eastern players. This isn't to say that Japanese players don't do even patterns, of course.

So, to cut a long story short, I continued to play off and on throughout '07 and '08, quitting for something like, 6 months or something, around late '08. I don't remember the exact history. Continued playing through '09, but the game had seriously depopulated within this time, and still continues to do so. Throughout this time I saw a bunch of American and Japanese players come and go, and I gained a reputation as being a strong western player (even on places like the Japanese 2channel Bomberman Live board), but I never considered myself the be-all end-all of players.

I changed gamertags to get away from the drama and reputation I had as Megalixir 360. I didn't claim to be the best, and I still don't, although I would be lying if I said I wasn't a skilled player. Nobody likes to lose, but the western mindset is generally "win first, priorities later" over the Japanese mindset, which is typically trying to win via technique. It's also true for many competitive games. You might find the Japanese method needlessly complicated - and well, yeah, it is, (but that's Japan for you) but the sense of victory through doing so is a greater accomplishment. It's just a game, so losing isn't as big of a deal as what most make it out to be.

What drove me to play was the winning mindset. Every single game, I tried to win. Nothing else mattered. And yes, it worked until I managed to get to a coherent level of play, but I didn't have any style. Then I started deciphering my opponent's tactics and came to realize that practically everyone has a certain "style" in which they play the game. I can usually detect this within 4-8 matches at present. A good portion of people don't try adjusting their style or approaching every situation as it comes to them, which is why they die and don't see why. Bomberman is like an overly complex puzzle game, if you dig deep enough.

There's a balance which needs to be taken into consideration here. Once you're fluent with the controls (ask yourself: is your opponent pulling off stuff that you can't? then you're not fluent.) you can start reading your enemy, over trying to survive. When it's no longer 1v1 but there's multiple people in the game, it's a whole different story, and most of the time survival is a bigger priority.

In terms of Japanese skill level, there's this player called "DATA EAST" who is, by far, the best player. Probably still is, but I haven't played with him in a long time. Honorable mentions include pizzaDEBU10, saziki, and levie, who are my favourites. There's a ton of others which I'd rather not list, but I'm willing to bet a large majority of them have moved on to something else, or quit.

Then there's the PSN version, called Bomberman Ultra. I can't say it's really an upgrade, even though it was advertised as basically Bomberman Live + expansion packs. The games look almost identical, but the graphics for the PS3 version are slightly better. There's a ton of bugs which were never patched, notably:

• the game randomly crashing, forcing you to turn off the PS3.
• inability to see who's using their mic.
• inablity to kick players.
• camera resets every round.
• game crashes occasionally if somebody leaves during a game
• no presets allowed, game creation takes longer.

None of these were patched. The scary thing is that I'm forgetting some of them. I'm fairly disappointed with both Sony for not pressing Hudson for a patch, and Hudson for not doing so. In general and from a technical standpoint though, the netcode is better. Kicking bombs is more fluent and there's no "rebounding" as seen in Live, but the inability to kick/punch bombs in some games is still present.

Still, I can't stand the PS3 dpad's dense feeling and lack of diagonals, and the awkwardly placed dual analogue sticks are nowhere near as precise as what I could execute through the 360's left analogue. Sadly, there's no way of using a 360 controller on a PS3 without using a laggy adapter, so I'm practically forced into using the PS3 dpad whether of choice.

I could just use the etokki/laugh's adapter which is PS2→PS3 and use my PS2 Saturn pad, but the camera angles reset every round, requiring you to have an R3 button in order to correct them. Basically, that isn't going to work either.

You also have a fair number of idiots on PSN, but that goes without saying as it's a free service. I can't help but thinking it'd be better if they upgraded it, and required monthly payments. It doesn't matter where they live, I've met rude players from both sides. On top of this, there's the inability to mute players without going into "Players Met", praying that the recent players are showing in the list, then muting everyone you've recently played with until the noise stops (because you don't who's speaking, etc), and this just makes for a really poor experience.

If I could use a 360 controller, I'd probably put up with it and play more. After all, being a free service means there's also more people.

At the moment I'm still casually playing through both games, trying to get better, trying to see what competition still lurks out there. There's still people which I can't beat. However, the majority of them have quit, so I'm really hoping Bomberman: Battlefest brings everyone back. Let's hope.

Permalink | 19:41