Welcome to our review of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends, a game that was fun but still disappointing at the same time. Read our review to find out why!
Playing alone or with up to 3 friends in couch co-op mode, jump your bubble dragons through 100 levels to defeat the wicked magician Bonner and his henchmen. The popular dragons Bub and Bob are back! Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is the latest game in the legendary Bubble Bobble series from Taito.
Play alone or with up to 3 friends in couch co-op mode and jump your bubble dragons through 100 levels to defy the wicked magician Bonner and his henchmen. The bubbles don’t just let you trap your opponents, either – your dragons can also jump on them to reach higher platforms.
Collect E-X-T-E-N-D bubbles to activate and upgrade skills, such as lightning and bomb bubbles. Develop countless new strategies to travel through the worlds and take advantage of air currents.
The original Bubble Bobble arcade game from 1986 is also included, which captured the hearts of players around the world and still has fans humming its title melody today.
A celebration for fans and fun for the whole family!
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is in itself a fun arcade game, use the bubbles to envelop the enemies, they fly upwards and you pop the bubble to take them out. After a while, you get boss fights and you even get power-ups like longer reach for the bubbles or electricity shots. I think the game is rudimentary but fun regardless. It is slow-paced and despite playing it solo only, blaming the pandemic happening in the outside world for this, I do think it might be more fun in co-op mode.
But at the same time, the game also disappointed. When I think about Bubble Bobble, in my head I do not link it to a basic arcade game like this, but I think about the ball shooting, popping the same colors and clearing the field in time. It just did not mix in my head that this was based upon the original BB and not the one we all link in our heads.
Tetris, Columns, Lumines, Puyo Puyo, and even Bubble Bobble, the five titles that pop to mind when I think about the easy access puzzle games. At the same time linking those titles to each other and not to an arcade game. Despite being fun in itself, Bubble Bobble 4 Friends has its name against it, at least for me. I sound like a broken record here, but if you expect one thing and get something completely different, I do think I can be disappointed, no?
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends itself is not a bad game though, it must be said. I like the mechanics and my sole gripe with the actual game is that it might be too easy in the regular levels and the spike in difficulty when you get to the boss fights… It is a serious jump upwards. But yeah, in the end, Bubble Bobble 4 Friends may be too expensive for what it is. I would be a lot more comfortable rating this game at a lower price point. That being said, there’s a free DLC expansion coming to the game later so this will add a lot to the value of the game; but at this point, there simply isn’t enough content for its higher price.
In conclusion, Bubble Bobble 4 Friends disappointed me personally as I was expecting a completely different game. Blame me for linking a title to a specific genre, right?
