Impressions of Blender Bros. GBA
Browsing the Game Boy Advance aisle can be a bit disheartening, the system has carried over the glut of licensed crap that plagued GB/GBC plus a number of titles are simply retrends of old 16 bit titles. That's why a piece of artwork caught my eye. A bizzarre little character not unlike what you expect from Treasure or Red. Hmm made by Hudson no less! *looks at back* Graphics aren't that great, but I'll give it a shot. A week later Blender Bros is completed and here's my review.
Your lead character is a space dog (yup that weird thing is a dog) who uses his ears as a means of attack. Blender has a variety of moves and is immensely playable. the easiest way to describe him is Dixie Kong from the DKC series. He has a spin attack with his ears and can glide slowly from jumps. In addition Blender can do high jumps, use his ears to find the general direction of goals, climb and hang with his ears, fly (with power up) and dash (with power up). Then there's the mini bros.
Essentially the now prequiste collecting portion of the game, you find Mag-like creatures scattered through various levels that endow you with new attacks, heal or shield you, or let you enter dark rooms, walk on water etc. Further and as you may guess these guys can be evolved to more powerful forms. This is done by using money left by enemies to buy CDs (yup CDs) of rock, reggae, or classical varieties and let your mini bro listen to them. If it likes a disc it evolves and it's power increases.
Onto the actual game, you travel to 7 planets with 20+ levels to take on. Play modes vary, stages feel like DKC but also have multiple planes to play on like VB Wario. Also scattered between platforming is mode 7 levels where you find keys to disarm a bomb at the end of the level, you can jump ala Mario Kart and do spin attacks in these levels. At the end of each planet is a Red style boss ranging from thin crocs with football helmets to a hippo with bat wings. Graphically most of the levels are decent looking though nothing amazing. Blender looks ugly in still pics but he and his enemies animate beautifully (the characters are CGI BTW). The sound effects are crisp and well done and musically the game reminds me of Bangaio wth booming heroic themes.
In addition to one player there is three multi player modes. There's a kart racer, a sidescrolling dash where you jump or avoid spiked balls, and a vertical race where you freefall or use your ears to drop to the bottom of the screen whle avoiding spiked balls.
Downfalls of the game. It's damn easy and way too amibitous. The levels simply lack length, it's as if they figured the target audience was ADT kids. no sooner are you in a zone enjoying classic platforming, then a level ends. The mini bros system is perfect for a Mario World size romp but here you can be hard pressed to use bros more than once. The developers put so time into offering so many varied play styles that they missed the design. Nonetheless, I can recommend Blender Bros unlike Hudson's other action platformer Pinobee. To give it a score, I'd say 7.5 of 10. Fun if short game and it sports a translation that surpasses Giga Wing 2 in corn and grammar flaws. *-neo
