Bust-A-Move 4

Pros • Hours (millennia even) of addictive fun • Cute characters, graphics and sound • New Network Play feature	Cons • Non-PC like interface • Console port • Cute characters, graphics and sound
Bottom Line Despite porting flaws, Bust-A-Move 4 is a great game from the greatest series in the puzzle game genre. If the cute graphics, sounds and music don't drive you insane then you're bound to be hooked. Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move is arguable the most popular puzzle game of all time, and if you factor in the continuing success of the game as a series then there is no doubt whatsoever. Much of its ongoing success can be attributed to the basic gameplay, which lends itself well to small modifications. While Tetris takes radical departures and never matches up to its original and Bomberman sequels go completely off of the wall into an adventure dramas, Bust-A-Move keeps popping its bubbles in game after game of mind-numbing bliss.

7 years after the original Puzzle Bobble / Bust-A-Move release and 14 years after their first appearance in Bubble Bobble, Bub and Bob return in Bust-A-Move 4 with more levels and new variations of the ultimate puzzle game theme. These little pseudo dinosaurs are masters of bubbles who made the jump from platform games to puzzle games and never looked back. The series is incredibly popular and doesn't show any sign yet of running out of steam (if you are a fan, do yourself a favour and check out the excellent fanpage at bubandbob.com).

The object, in case you didn't already know, is to clear the screen of those pesky colourful bubbles. The basic method to accomplish this is to launch new bubbles onto the screen, aiming them into groups of three, at which point the grouped bubbles will burst and disappear. It sounds fairly simple and at first it is. Of course, this is an arcade game, so there are time limits and you are constantly forced to take action before more and more bubbles appear on your screen. Once any bubble gets as low as your launcher, it's game over for you. The action is accompanied by cutesy sound effects and even cutesier music, which you will either find incredibly endearing or incredibly hard to endure.

What's New?

As the years and sequels have gone by, new elements have been thrown into the game to make it more interesting. There are special bubbles, some of which are designed to make it easier (like stars that become the colour of any groups burst that are touching them), or more difficult (bubbles that never burst at all and must be dropped by bursting the bubbles above them). This 4th game in the series has it's own tasty veggies thrown into the stir-fry wok that is Bust-A-Move.

The most prominent new feature is the pulley. Some levels have the bubbles hanging from a two-sided pulley, adding a dangerous bit of strategy. Pop too many bubbles from one side of the pulley and the other may dip too low. Balance is the key to success on these levels. Another major addition is the chain reaction poppings that work only in two-player (or player vs. computer) modes. Chain reactions also require some foresight strategy and they can be quite evil for throwing bubbles into the other player's side of the screen. For single player modes, Bust-A-Move 4 contains a staggering amount (640 to be exact) of levels.

PC good or PC bad?

The PC version of Bust-A-Move 4 benefits greatly from network play, a feature that has prompted fans to create Internet competition leagues. It's also a great joy to use the keyboard for precise controls and this is the first version on the PC that is really playable.

Unfortunately, it's not all pretty bubbles and roses for the PC, because the game is still very tied to its arcade roots. The control configurations are horrid, giving players a dilemma: configure a gamepad and ditch wonderfully accurate keyboard controls? The z key defaults to what a console would have as an action button and x backs up to previous menus. These are very unintuitive, especially since for some reason the ESC key does the same as the z key in some menus (does this make sense to you? I would have mapped ESC to x and ENTER or SPACE to z). Even the high scores need to be scrolled through, which just feels silly when you have the entire alphabet in front of your fingers.

The graphics are cute and wonderful in style, but only adequate in PC implementation, meaning that pixels are larger and chunkier than necessary and the interface screens suffer from horribly slow fades between screens. This is definitely not a game that was designed with Windows or Direct X in mind, nor was the port given much thought or effort in regards to the interface.

Despite annoying nuances of this port, I do still recommend Bust-A-Move for the PC due to the accuracy of keyboard controls and the joy of network play. It doesn't quite match up to my favourite version (Bust-A-Move Pocket on the Neo Geo Pocket), but it's a reasonable second. Just remember to turn your sound down if your roommates and/or family members begin to go insane.

Info & Screenshots