Developed by Studio Saizensen and published by United Games GmbH, Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! is an action game where your goal is to eliminate all enemies on the screen using your Bazooka. If you are a gaming veteran from the 90s, you would be familiar with the franchise because the very first Umihara Kawase launched on Super Famicom in 1994. The title later received many games in the franchise however the latest one is Umihara Kawase BaZooKa!. This is our review of the Nintendo Switch version of Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! in which we lure in some enemies and then explode them with our Bazooka.
There are two modes for you to play in the game. The main story mode is called the Challenge Mode where you complete level after level in four different worlds. Each world has 9 levels and a boss fight. The goal in each level is to defeat enemy waves using your Bazooka and other skills and collect enough coins to complete the level. Each of the worlds features a unique theme and all levels in that particular world follow the same theme of backgrounds and enemies. Each level also has a time limit however if you complete a level quickly, the time is added to the next level and you can have additional time for your next level.
Apart from the Challenge mode, you have the Battle Mode where you can play offline or online battles with your friends or players from around the world. The Battle Mode supports multiplayer with up to four players that can join in online or local multiplayer games. Apart from this, the game also supports an Online Leaderboard that can track your scores and you can later compare your rankings with players from around the world. Online mode is not very active at this point despite the game being out for more than a month now which shows that not many players are impressed with how the game plays out.
The biggest problem with Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! is its gameplay. At a time when players are used to sharp and crisp gameplay mechanics of titles like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and platformers like Spelunky 2 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! just falls short in everything. The core gameplay of the game includes you suing your Lure to catch and reel in enemies and other objects to load your Bazooka and fire them as an explosive grenade at your enemies to kill them. While this feels satisfying, moving around the platforming in the levels is a chore. Killing a few enemies with the same Bazooka gives you a bonus ball that will save your combo and resume it right from the previous attack. Ranking up combos is good fun in the game.
During the early levels of the game, enemies are few and they do not require many special techniques to kill them. During these levels, I had a lot of fun loading up my canon and shooting it everywhere however as the levels progressed and more enemies started to appear, the gameplay started to become a major problem as every enemy type in the game requires a special move in order to kill them and even if you use your Special Skill, you cannot get rid of these enemies. The movement is extremely clunky and if you hit an enemy, you start bouncing back in a weird bouncy wave which never ends. For me, this was the most annoying mechanic of the entire gameplay because sometimes this would bounce you in the middle of another wave of enemies and you will take another hit.
You get a limited number of lives before you are dead and must restart the level. However, progress in the entire chapter is not lost. Using Skill A and Skill B deals damage to smaller enemies while bigger enemies and enemies that require special moves to kill them simply ignore these attacks making them useless in most conditions however they do come in handy in VS mode where your enemy players will take damage from your skill attacks. You must have enough energy for these skill attacks as well. Since the game consists of many characters from the franchise, there is a slight advantage towards some characters in the game as well. In single-player, this is not such a big problem but in online matches, this could give players an unfair advantage over the others as the characters are not balanced.
Using the lure and moving around quickly could have been a great maneuver in the game but the clunky movement does not even allow this in the game. If you are jumping and want to change direction, you cannot do so, and thus if an enemy is coming in your way, you can do absolutely nothing to avoid it as your character will not even change the direction to use the lure on him. The game offers three playing styles for using the Lure and you can pick any one of them depending on your skill. It comes with a Beginner option as well so if you are new, this mode will help you get acquainted with the mechanics quickly.
One thing that I can vouch for is the technical performance of the game as the game ran really well on both the normal Nintendo Switch as well as the Nintendo Switch Lite. There were no framerate issues even with a full party match and the game did not give us any other bugs during our review phase as well. The game ran really well in both the docked mode as well as in handheld mode. This might be because of the fact that Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! is not a really demanding game when it comes to visuals and effects as well.
Final Verdict:
A lot of people might fall for the mere nostalgia this franchise offers but sadly the latest title fails to live up to the reputation. While this game is a tough bargain for the newcomers, even franchise veterans will stay away from the title because of its poor gameplay mechanics. The addition of local and online co-op makes the game somewhat fun as you can blow your friends in various ways however even that falls short after some time because of the broken gameplay mechanics. With the number of characters this game has, it certainly had potential however it just falls short when it comes to gameplay. If you really want to give it a try, the game costs $29.99 so it is not exactly on the cheaper side as well.
Final Score: 5.0/10
