Update: The game actually includes 100 stages instead of the 50 stages that I mentioned on my review. The extra 50 stages can be accessed by playing the game on hard mode. You’ll be playing through the same kind of stages and the same bosses as you did in regular mode just with the twist that you can’t access invincibility and that you’ll actually be challenged. I don’t like the fact that these extra 50 stages are hidden behind a mode that many won’t play. Full disclosure, I didn’t even know about these stages till an email came through about these extra 50 stages and I had to do some digging, I apologize for that, however I still think these level should have been available from the get go. With this being said, I still don’t think the content that’s in this game justifies the price of the game.
When you spend $40 on a game you expect that game to be full of content or to be of high quality, at least that’s what I expect. Yesterday I got the chance to review Bubble Bobble 4 Friends on the Nintendo Switch. I downloaded the game around noon and didn’t start playing it till almost 3 in the afternoon, by 4 I was rolling credits on the game. I cannot stress this enough, Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is light on content. The game offers around 50 stages, all of which can take you two to three minutes to clear. Bubble Bobble also includes a classic version of the game, but is that enough to justify the $40 price tag? Let’s find out.
I’m going to start by saying this, Bubble Bobble is a fun game. Like the title says you can play this game with up to four players, and I can genuinely see this title bringing tons of fun to people. However, you need to have those four players in the same room to enjoy that fun. Bubble Bobble does not come with any online options. In today’s day and age not having online play is downright criminal. Bubble Bobble does not offer anything other than the 50 stages and the arcade mode that’s packed into this game. That’s ridiculous. It’s a shame because I did enjoy the two hours that I spent with this game, but I’m also not craving to go back to it. The gameplay is very simple, your objective is to trap enemies into a bubble and then busting those bubbles using the spikes on the back of the frog-like character that you use. Every time that you clear a world you earn a new ability, my favorite one was the lighting bubble, allowing you to throw an electric bubble which then burst into a horizontal lightning strike that can take enemies down. Once you beat the last stage you will be introduced to a boss fight and, man let me talk about that for a second. In the game, you’ll fight 5 bosses, four out of these five bosses are basically the same. Same design just a different move set. I hated these bosses. I was expecting them to give me a challenge. I was expecting these final bosses to be tougher than the previous stages but that was not the case. To make matters worse, if you die three times the game gives you an invincibility option which just makes the game stupidly and ridiculously easy. I tried this option for the sake of this review and it took me about 30 seconds to beat a boss fight.
I started this review by asking if this game does enough to justify its $40 tag, and my quick answer is, no! The lack of content in this game is horrendous. If this game was cheaper then I would tell you to go ahead and play it. The gameplay in-between stages, except for those dang boss fights, is fun, but the game does not justify its price. If you do happen to buy this game, you’ll find yourself having fun for a good couple of hours but I can’t see it giving you more than that.