Review: Bionicle Heroes (DS)
Guest reviewer: Mike Urwitz
Score: 80
I guess my lack of engagement with the Bionicle creed is down to my age (late 30s), but there's no doubting the fanaticism for Bionicle characters among 5 to 10 year old boys. There's also no doubting LEGO's commitment to pushing their plastic creations into every gaming sphere, including (now) the Nintendo DS and DS Lite.
Bionicle Heroes has a whole back story about fighting between the Toa and the Makuta, but all you really need to know is that you're 'everyman' having to take on all the bad guys, on your own, level by level and world by world (6 in all), in a typical first person shoot-em-up. If you've played Doom or Quake then you'll know exactly what to expect.
The hooks to draw you on here are the way you collect different 'masks', each giving you extra weapons and power. The different levels are well designed and for the Bionicle fan or hardened shoot-em-up expert alike there are at least a dozen hours of quality game play in Bionicle Heroes.
Each world is finished with a traditional 'boss' to defeat and once nice touch is that, armed with extra weaponry and power, you can go back to previous worlds and discover extra areas that you hadn't been able to get into before. I told you Bionicle Heroes would take a while to play....
I wasn't 100% convinced by the use of the dual screens (first person view / radar), nor was by the use of the stylus as the main means of control, though thankfully the DS Lite's d-pad works just as well most of the time.
Despite any reservations over control and the use of blocky LEGO to build all the artefacts and characters, Bionicle Heroes is patently a quality production, with masses of work behind its design, gameplay and sound. It won't disappoint if this is your sort of thing.