I have to admit that I'm not the best at Bomberman, but I'd like to think I hold my own. Well, at least that's what I thought when I played against the computer. Playing against another player however, is a completely different story.
The path to multiplayer starts with connecting to Nintendo WFC, which is a painless process. Not having any real life friends with a DS handy, I opted to play against random people in the Battle Dojo. Lucky for me, the Battle Dojo pits players against other players of roughly the same skill. How do they determine skill? Through Bomber Rating; the more battles you win, the higher your Bomber Rating. Conversely, the more you lose, the lower it gets.
Maps and game mode are randomly chosen in Battle Dojos. While up to 4 players can duke it out, it was hard enough to find one person to play against, much less three more at the same time. For some reason, it took less than a minute to find another player to battle against in World Battle — where you can fight people in other countries, but after five minutes of searching in Domestic Battle (in your own country), I still couldn't find someone to play against.
My first battle was on the normal albeit generic Bomberman map in normal mode. The other player warped around a bit, but I couldn't tell if the lag was due to my connection or theirs. It was a bit annoying because I kept trying to trap him between two bombs, but he would walk right over them. Despite the lag, I got my opponent in the end and saw my Bomber Rating go up.
My second battle was not so lucky. Our connection was fine and the first map's game mode was a race for a crown. Unfortunately, I didn't know that till the end. While I was busy trying to bomb my opponent, he was busy bombing his way to the crown. My opponent stuck around for a second round and a second map, which was the star-collecting game mode — whoever has the most stars at the end of the round wins. The catch is that if you get bombed, you drop all your stars. I think by the time he won that second round, he felt sorry for me because he just left the game.
My third battle was pretty much a crapshoot. The map was completely dark except for a small spotlight focused around my Bomberman. The map would light up for a brief moment whenever a bomb exploded, but other than that, my opponent and I were dropping bombs in the dark. My opponent ended up dropping a bomb near me that I literally walked into. Repeat that several times and that's how that round went.
When I got to my fourth battle, I thought I had a pretty good tactic figured out. I would follow my opponent around and wait for him to drop a bomb, then try to trap him between his own bomb and one that I dropped myself. That doesn't work so well when the opponent can kick bombs — which was what I found out after I dropped a bomb and the other player kicked it back at me, trapping me between it and two blocks. Yes, I really am *that* good.
Half the fun of Bomberman is hearing opponents scream as they realize they're trapped between a wall and a bomb they placed themselves. Unfortunately, that fun is not included in Bomberman Land Touch 2. This may be good for other players, since my voice tends to turn into a high pitched shriek whenever danger comes close to my Bomberman, but I think the game would be more enjoyable if there was voice chat.
I think I may return to battling the CPU until I get better, but pros at Bomberman might fare better against real life opponents online.
