BoomZ review: Ready, aim, fire!

If you’re a sucker for cute things or easy-to-understand turn-based artillery games, you might want to check out BoomZ.

BoomZ is a turn-based action shooter game on Friendster with a cute and colorful design. It pits you against other players or against AI and the goal is to use various weapons to shoot projectiles at opponents. It’s a lot like Gunbound and Worms. So how is BoomZ any different?

Gameplay: it’s all about power and angles

In BoomZ, the idea of every match is to fire projectiles at your enemy until one of you is dead. Simple, right? But landing a hit isn’t that simple. Players must consider the terrain, the enemy distance, the angle and the amount of power required before making the shot. Otherwise, you will be hitting thin air, empty terrain or worse, your own character. You also have power ups, special skills and in-game items that can come in handy. This is all good, but if you have played Gunbound before, you may find BoomZ rather simple, as this game does not have wind or any similar factor with the same effect.

For those who have not played Gunbound, the concept of wind affects how a player makes a shot. For example, you must consider the strength of the wind and which direction it is taking. If you are making a shot towards the right and the wind is blowing towards the left, you might want to increase the power of your shot, especially if you are using heavy artillery. This is the factor that was missing in BoomZ. I’m not saying they should’ve put wind there, but any similar factor would’ve made it a bit more interesting. Once you figure out the angle and power in BoomZ, it’s pretty much cakewalk and luck from there. It could have used another complication.

In-game screenshot from official website http://cdn.mmog.asia/game/boomz/index.php?sec=gss1-01

Screenshots from the official website show that there is wind direction and strength. However, this is not something I encountered when I played the game. The interface in these screens is also different from what I experienced, so I’m not sure if they removed wind or if I need to play more to get to the maps that have wind. If it’s the latter, too bad: the game got too boring and repetitive for me to play any more. Every match felt the same and it practically boiled down to who could gauge distance better with barely anything to challenge that estimate.

Visuals, cute. Audio, nope.