Bust-A-Move Bash!

For the uninitiated, there have been countless versions of Bust-a-Move over the years, and just like in previous installments, you shoot colored bubbles to pop matching colored bubbles and avoid the unseemly puzzle game fate of reaching the bottom line of death. Aiming your bubble gun with the Wii Remote feels fine, and once you find a comfortable position for your hand on your leg or lap, it's even weirdly intuitive. You tilt it subtly left and right to aim, and tap A or B to shoot; a dead zone of sorts exists on both extremes of the turning axis, though you'll rarely need to aim that sharply. Two variations of the "Gun" control scheme may be used instead, but neither works nearly as well.

[Click the image above to check out all Bust-a-Move Bash! screens.]

You'll spend most of your time in Puzzle mode, solving a somewhat insane 500 levels of different bubble setups. The difficulty can be increased by upping the numbers of colors you're dealing with, though there's not much of a payoff for doing besides the increased challenge. Once you pick which batch of 50 levels you want to tackle, the levels come at your relentlessly -- no quitting out to the main menu after making some progress, no wussing out (regardless of whether you want to or not). The obscene amount of puzzles is nice, but it feels repetitive after the first hundred or so. The less bubbles in a puzzle, the bigger they appear, and they're much sharper and nicer to look at when they're large; more complex stages can give you a bit of a headache.

Speaking of headaches, Bust-a-Move offers support for eight simultaneous players using a maniacal combination of Wii Remotes, Nunchuks, and Classic controllers -- whatever you have lying around. If you can round up the hardware and manpower for such a spectacle (like we did), it can be relatively chaotic fun. You play together in Endless mode. A massive colored wall of bubbles scrolls toward you, and everyone fires wildly to fend it off. Not many people will have the opportunity to try it, but it's a goofy little extra that goes a step further toward making Bash feel like a robust package. Unfortunately, there's no traditional versus multiplayer, only the crazy co-op; it's disappointing to see such a step backward in that regard, and this makes for an eyebrow-raising omission (especially with the inclusion of useless distractions like the utterly boring Shooting mode).

[Click the image above to check out all Bust-a-Move Bash! screens.

The cotton-candy music, colorful backgrounds, and childish characters (such as a tiger in sunglasses and sweatpants) can grate on the nerves, but it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone familiar with the series. That's probably a good way to look at Bust-a-Move Bash! -- no surprises. It's the puzzle game you know and (potentially) love on the Wii, and it's $40. Seems pricey, but at least you know what you're getting.

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