OK, I want you to put an image in your heads, kids. Take your hands off the keyboards for a few seconds and just close your eyes. Now, I want you to imagine this old guy running a local ice cream shop. He's a nice old fella, talking to you about the good ol' days of baseball as he preps you a vanilla waffle cone. Now, you got that image set, right? Now, imagine the same old guy with a green mohawk and nose piercings, trying to sell you some blacklighting. Scary, huh? That's what it feels like going through a game like Bomberman: Act Zero, a "reimagining" of Hudson Soft's classic game series.

Yuck. That's all I can say. Whenever the word "reimagining" on a classic game is used, all I can think of are duds. The Contra games for PlayStation (not PS2), the Japan-only PS2 release of Altered Beast, the thankfully-cancelled Vectorman next-gen project...you see where this is going. And, unfortunately, Bomberman: Act Zero joins these tank ranks, putting you in the shoes of a soldier who must fight his way out of a deadly set of arenas for survival.

Those of you who grew up on the Bomberman series know that there's nothing serious about it. The tone, the cartoony look, the music, and the gameplay were all about happy design, even if the game was deeply strategic in terms of taking out your opponents. Throwing that all aside for a kind of cyberpunk look has left the game feeling lifeless and unhappy. That's not the kind of feeling you want to leave gamers with. It's like inviting them to a rave and then finding out that the only kind of music they have playing is polka.

The graphics aren't really that good to begin with. The game looks like it could've easily been done on the Xbox, save for some textures on players once you get up close to them. But even then, Zero fails to use the Xbox 360 hardware in any way, shape or form. The arenas look mostly the same, filled with dark, dank mazes and the occasionally cool explosion effect. Whatever imagery sparks the imagination, however, is defeated by a terrible camera system. You can either go for an overhead view, where you can't see the entire board; or a wide-open view, where you can see the entire board but you can barely make out the players on the field- that is, unless you own the highest brand HDTV in the universe.

On top of this, Konami has boasted a new feature in the game that isn't just useless, it's basically a lie. This feature is FPB, First Person Bombing. Okay, first off, first-person bombing? The purpose of this feature is automatically defeated if you can't see where the bombs are exploding or where exactly the enemies are at. You run around a corner and hit an enemy? Boom, dead. But Hudson didn't even use this, as the FPB isn't even first-person at all. It's an up close third-person perspective that has too many limitations for its own good. It's amazing to find a game that has absolutely no worthwhile view to use in the game whatsoever. And I mean amazing in a bad way, to the point you're shaking your head, wondering where your $50 went. The sound is just as limited, with lame-ass music and weak sound effects.