Gamernode: Reviews - Bionicle Heroes

Bionicle Heroes

• Bionicle Heroes
• Xbox 360
• Traveller's Tales
• Eidos Interactive

And it just repeats over and over again. What? Oh, I'm sorry, did I just jump into the action without letting you know what was going on? I guess I've been playing too much Bionicle Heroes, a game which suffers from a myriad of issues, including the beginning of the game just tossing you into the world with no indication of what in the hell to do. After playing the game for a bit, you'll wish you hadn't decided to even bothered figuring out what to do.

Even when keeping in mind that Heroes is quite clearly geared towards the younger crowd, it's hard to find anything positive about the game. As I said, the game immediately starts you out with a cinematic that explains what is ultimately a nonsensical and cheesy plot, and then throws you into the world hub. No messages on-screen, or signs of what to do; you're expected to find your way into the first level, where you'll find some short blurbs about the basic controls, and that's it. Missed them? Oh well; read the instruction manual or venture forth and realize that this is a brainless push-the-A-button-fest. Not exactly kid-friendly, or friendly at all, for that matter.

The only thing to be found in Heroes that is kid-friendly is the fairly simplistic control scheme. Three buttons allow you to cycle through your different masks (and effectively, characters), while the A button handles all of your shooting and the B button performs your character-specific power. The solo-analog stick format will be easy to pick up for the young ones, but anyone who has spent time with a dual-stick setup will have a difficult time adjusting.

Simple as the controls may be, the over-the-shoulder camera can make navigating this extremely linear world much more difficult than it should be. Since nearly one third of your screen is taken up by your character's body, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for you to see what's around you. Oftentimes you'll be forced to spin in circles or backtrack so that you can simply see what you're standing next to. In a game where picking up dropped Lego pieces constitutes a major portion of the gameplay, it was a fairly dumb decision to block the view of your immediate surroundings. It's nothing short of a pain in the ass to have to blindly spin in circles in hopes of retrieving all of the dropped Legos.

Those Lego pieces drop after having destroyed an enemy or random objects scattered throughout the game. As I said, mashing the A button is basically what the game boils down to, as you never have to aim at enemies. Instead, an absolutely horrendous auto-aim will lock onto a target and allow you to fire with ease. Well, it would be with ease if the auto-aim were somehow adjustable so that you could direct your character to attack the enemy standing four feet away from him, as opposed to the one in the far distance that poses no threat. Sometimes you'll even target those random inanimate objects which, while certainly worth destroying in non-combat situations, isn't exactly priority number one when you're under attack from lots of robotic spiders (are they even robots?).

Each of the game's characters has access to their own elemental power and weapon. The majority of these elemental powers are only useful in certain situations (such as a wall you can walk up), and the spots to make use of them feel slapped onto the levels. It's almost as if the developer designed the levels (which, once again, are extremely linear and uninspired) and then decided to cut little holes in it, thereby forcing you to use one of your powers to continue along in the level. These spots are always no-brainers in terms of what to do, as you only have one option and these 'puzzles' require nothing more than a press of the B button to conquer.

Weapons, on the other hand, are each useful in their own spot. Each is clearly inspired by some sort of actual weapon (rocket launcher, shotgun, sniper rifle) and are thus only worth using in the appropriate spot. However, due to the nature of the linear levels, you'll feel like you don't really have much of a choice in the matter, as you're always being forced to follow the exact path the developer intended you to.

Heroes is quite clearly not supposed to wow anyone in the technical department -- graphically, the game could pass off as an original Xbox title -- but it's far from ever impressing. Not a single detail ever warrants a second look, thanks to bland textures and utterly boring character designs.

To add insult to injury, the music is basically the same track played over and over again, with very little differentiation from one level to the next. The tunes are what you would expect to hear during the climax scene of a Saturday morning cartoon. But instead of playing for a minute or two and being over with, in Heroes that music does its best to keep up with the Energizer Bunny.

At its core, Bionicle Heroes is an extremely repetitive, mindless shooter that's very repetitive (surprise!) and has very little going for it. While you could often promote a mindless shooter as being mindless fun, this falls one step short -- it's just not fun. Do yourself a favor and stay far, far away. Even at a premium price, Lego Star Wars II is a much better game than Bionicle would be if you managed to find it at the bottom of the bargain bin...which is probably where this one belongs.

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