I recently got my hands on a review code for the Nintendo eShop game from the folks at Mode4, Bomblinger. It tells the tale of the Bomslinger who needs to get revenge against his enemies. His wife was killed in a fire in your house and you need to bring the banditos to justice and one of those happens to be your brother, the Gunslinger. Slap on that feedbag, it’s going be a bumpy ride up that dusty trail on the old west!
I’ve decided to take a different approach to this review as I streamed a playthrough of Bombslinger as well so that’s going to be included in the review too. This type of game is the type of game that you can get more out of by seeing a playthrough rather than just reading my thoughts. It plays just like the classic Bomberman games except you have much more movement and everything can be blown up. I recommend that you do blow everything up because you can gain experience points by doing that and that’s how you upgrade your equipment.
Equipment ranges from holding and throwing more bombs to having more hearts in battle and trust me you will want more hearts and bombs in battle. The bosses range from simple to crazy tough and the game doesn’t prepare you at all for the crazy tough boss battles. You can’t even prepare for them either because you don’t know which boss fight you’re going to get some of the time such as during the first stage, I thought I was going to get the Flamethrower bandito but I got the monster goat, which I didn’t even know existed during the first playthroughs. However, it felt like the game amped up the difficulty for no reason at times such as the Flamethrower bandito boss battle and some of the minor stage enemies and stage hazards.
Before you start, you’ll be able to select items from the inventory to make the gameplay slightly, and I mean SLIGHTLY easier but nothing really tells you what the items do. Some of them are self-explanatory like added health, added bombs, and a continue but some of the more obscure items had no explanation and that hurts the gameplay. The western music adds to the gameplay and since you’ll be replaying the game quite a few times, the music should be something that’s enjoyable. Bombslinger gets that western feel down straight from the title theme and the first level builds on it! The game has more than the solo mode, it also has the Battle mode where you can play with friends and show them who the best cow-poke is!
During the Adventure mode, there is a small shop you can stop in that allows you to buy items that is part 2D and part 3D which is a nice touch for the old school retro gameplay feel of Bombslinger. There are items that you can find in chests along the way but you’ll need soul power to use the items and killing enemies is one of the few ways to replenish that soul power. It’s one of the ways to get you to think about how you use your power ups in battle.
The controls are a little loose in certain spots like where you need to line up a double hit with a bomb or when you need to dodge a bullet coming from a crazed farmer. As I already mentioned the game doesn’t prepare you for certain boss fights and the difficulty level goes up too quickly in my opinion. One could say, like I did, that it increases in difficulty for no reason at times. You have no idea what some of the items do and that keeps the player from using them but the music is bad-ass! It’s these reasons that I’m giving Bombslinger for the Nintendo Switch eShop an 8/10. I would like to thank Mode4 for the review code.