Basement Crawl is a reasonably-priced, well-made game lacking the features to make it a must-have. It simply doesn’t offer enough as a multiplayer-only game to fully recommend as a purchase to anyone other than folks who are dying for Bomberman on the PS4.
Basement Crawl tries hard to recapture the magic of Bomberman but has a hard time with its horror theme, lack of a real tutorial, and online connectivity issues. Overall, Basement Crawl can be a fun game but it's hard to justify a purchase when half of the game just doesn't want to work.
This game is a masterpiece i think i have never played such a masterpiece .
Before i played this game i had small pp no life depression and no friend after i played this game i became an omega chad i just sleep with girls every day and night . This **** wont let me sleep normaly because im an omega chad . I became an omega chad because i played this masterpiece, i yhink god himself had made this game . Im so sad and depressed that i cant rate it more than 10
This game is rancid. It has awful online play where we cant even connect to a proper match and often disconnect. It is so dark that we cant even see which character is who. An awful game that should be removed from PS store.
With just two modes, generic levels, a grating aesthetic, and an interface that damages the play experience, Basement Crawl would lack anything to keep us around even if it functioned soundly.
What else is to be said about this game? I liked how it was trying to recreate Bomberman but made too many bad moves to do it.
I mean first the only game are online matches so you have no way of practicing before hand. The graphics are lame. Also what was the point of using a horror movie theme? Aside from the trailer I saw nothing that resembled survival horror.
I recommend "Bombing Bastard" on the Wii U. It doesn't have online multiplayer but it's a much better Bomberman then this.
Wanted to relive the fun I had with the original Bomberman. I tried but this game didn't do it.
I'm bucking the average and giving it a 3 - but don't spend money on this. Might be too generous ... sue me.
It's a bad Bomberman clone, that's all that it is. The SNES version of Bomberman is superior, far superior, to this. Stay away, far away. It's not worth your time, or money. You can find much better budget titles than this.
I wasn't expecting a AAA title with a $10 pricetag, but even my mildest expectations were left completely unfulfilled. This game feels like an early demo at best. There are literally no gameplay options whatsoever. Want to play longer than super quick 3 minute rounds? Tough luck. Would you rather play with a stock number of lives instead of time rounds? Sorry, kiddo. Hoping for more than 3 environments with only slight variations of each? You've come to the wrong place. The devs have made each battle play the exact one way they feel is best, and there's nothing you can do to change it.
The stripped down nature of this game is even more apparent in the complete lack of any AI-controlled bots. I appreciate the fact that the devs were trying to introduce a game that encourages local multiplayer (because nowadays that's becoming harder and harder to come by), but how can you expect players to want to play a bomberman clone only one on one? Not having a single player mode is one thing, but not allowing two players to take the field with two other computer players is unacceptable. I played multiple rounds head to head against my roommate but after about 30 minutes we gave up. The rounds are WAY too short and due to the random placement of your players in can sometimes take half the battle just getting close enough to the other player to do some damage. This might be somewhat forgiveable if playing online was effectively done, but after spending TWO HOURS trying to get into a game without a single successful attempt, the only thing I want now is a refund.
Even if I had been able to set up a game with multiple opponents, this still wouldn't overcome the fact that some of the controls and visuals are a mess. There are only 4 available characters to choose from, and their visual design combined with the zoomed out view of an already cluttered board can often make it very difficult to tell which way they are facing and/or if they are in the path of an impending explosion. On top of this, I noticed several instances where it would take multiple button presses for my character to throw bombs, particularly after spawning, and there were even times where one of my explosions would miss the opposing player entirely despite them being in direct path of the explosion (you can also see evidence of this in YouTube gameplay videos).
One other thing that really bothers me: the music, or rather the lack thereof. I was all for a dark and horror-themed atmosphere going into this, but you don't need near-silence in order to achieve this. Save for a few spooky sounds in the backround, there's practically no music at all. How did the devs not think this was going to be an issue? Especially for a game that strives so hard for fast, replayable matches, the lack of any catchy tunes at all ramps up the boredom threshold very quickly.
What's most frustrating is that as a big Bomberman fan I was really looking forward to this, and there are glimpses of what I loved about that franchise at the heart of Basement Crawl. They really could have made a very popular game with very little competition out there at the moment. Instead, what we have here feels like an extremely rushed and poorly constructed demo that doesn't even make the cheap pricetag seem justifiable. Hopefully they listen to the responses from players and make some serious improvements through future patches and updates, because otherwise Bloober Team is going to have a very hard time convincing gamers to buy their next game.
The following review was posted by Rik one of our writers over at ****
It was not supposed to be like this.
When Bloober first announced Basement Crawl, it’s fair to say that I got very excited.
My first experience with Bomberman was in the late 90′s in a combination of booze and local multiplayer mayhem. It was absolutely insane.
For anyone that has never played Bomberman, the core gameplay here is that you’re a character and your goal is to kill all other characters. Essentially there are three ways to kill someone in Bomberman, by setting traps, by trapping someone in a corner or by deviously panicking someone into suicide. You all start off in different corners of a static map needing to bomb through brick to get to other players to build up the excitement and then there are the power ups and evil ups to keep you on your toes. There is a balance that’s hard to explain and it’s simply one of the best multiplayer games. Ever.
So… You’ll forgive me that when I saw the first video of Basement Crawl that I made an instant connection and the game went on my “day zero” buy list.
I also went vocal about this, explaining my thoughts to PS4 mates. For less than a tenner it was considered by all to be a fair bet to increase the number of PS4 titles owned…
The week leading up launch day, 26th Feb, was genuinely exciting. We had planned a session in the SimplyPSGaming community. Being fully aware of launch day issues we went in with an open mind. It was still a bit of a disaster to put it positively.
So, I found a news article the next day that suggested that feedback was welcomed, so I emailed the following based on launch night:-
I play in a community (simplypsgaming) and last night we had 7 of us trying to connect together to play.
Firstly, when it works it’s blinding and brilliant.
However I saw the following issues: -
- game would hang on the screen where it shows the controls
- game would start and clock would be counting down but there would be no players or blocks
- game would start and clock would be counting down but there would be no players spawning
- game appeared to have some invisible players that were playing and laying bombs but I couldn’t see.
Four of my friends found the following issues: -
- whether following an invite or browsing to a game, the players list would be empty – these guys would often be stuck on this empty waiting for game screen
- some would see the game crash
I didn’t think I got it too bad but overall the night was not considered a success.
Some things we discussed that would improve the game/interface…
- give the players colours (red/brown/yellow/green/blue/pink/white/black?) – when playing with people you know it would be handy to have a better feel for who you’re stalking and it makes it more personal. You could provide a key of colours vs players too. When playing with multiple friends it’s good to know who you can throw banter at over party chat. Having multiple versions of the same character with exactly the same colours ruins the personal revenge aspect for sure!
- have a private function where you can choose not to have randoms joining you. This was definitely annoying.
- what is global rank? Any chance of showing when you progress global rank – maybe a profile page?
I’m happy supporting the game so let me know if there is anything else you’d like feedback on or whether you need any assistance in testing any patches so we can start to play this game regularly in the community I’m in. :)
The canned response:-
Hi Rik,
thanks a lot for your feedback, we are currently working on solving these issues and adding new features to the game. Sorry about your problems.
Pozdrawiam/Regards
Aron Cender
Marketing Manager
Now, more than a month later, it’s a game that I can’t play. The lack of SP campaign, not living with other gamers and it being dropped by many players means that the hectic MP action is not delivered. On the rare occasions when there is a lobby that has more than one player, I am not able to connect.
In the meantime my understanding is that Sony are telling people to wait for the patch before they provide a refund.
Please fix it soon, Bloober!
SummaryEnter the basement, explore dark, sinister arenas and be at one with the insanity. Bomberman inspired mechanics bring party games to the next generation level. Staying alive won't be easy. The only way to survive is to become death itself, crushing all opponents. Fight with, or against your friends in a intensive, packed with action onli...