Bomberman ULTRA is exactly what you would expect from the franchise. The goal of the game is (typically) to be the last robot standing. There are a few gameplay modes that break away from this goal (more on them in a second), but this is the primary mode of play. The arenas are laid out in grids of various designs with obstacles blocking your path. Some can be broken by explosives, some can't. You run around dropping bombs and picking up powerups to enhance your or your bomb's abilities, all in the hopes of catching one of the other players in your blast. Like I said, classic
Bomberman gameplay.
What's great about ULTRA is the amount of customization you can do, not only in your personal Bomberman model, but in the number of arenas, match-settings, available powerups and arena gimmicks. I think the best way to go through all this is to walk through what you can do in order to get into a match. Mind you, you can simply tap your way through most of these screens to take the default settings if you just want to go straight to the game.
The title screen lets you choose between Local and Online play. Online play lets you bring up to four local players into a match with another four players (so 8 online total). From this point on, setting up a game is just like setting up a local game. Once you've selected your players (which can be a combination of human and CPU-controlled locally for up to 8 Bombermen), you then get to select one of the game's 14 arenas. These arenas range from Classic (the original grid) to Big Top with arrows that change the direction of your kicked bombs, to Thin Ice that has tiles breaking up and reforming around you to block your path as you run around. Other gimmicks include cyclones that knock you, bombs and powerups around, tiles that change the pace of your walk, fire traps that send you flying into the air and teleporters. Some arenas let you choose which of these gimmicks you want to use, but each one has a unique look and feel to it.
When selecting the arena, you can also choose between standard gameplay, or one of the other two, Zombie and Paint Bomb. Both of these are basically the same, with the goal when the clock lands on zero is to have the most tiles in your color (which is done by laying bombs of course). The difference is in Zombie, you respawn every time you are blown up, while Paint Bomb will put you in "Revenge" mode when you blow-up. This means you appear on the edges of the arena lobbing bombs at the still-live players trying to blow them up.
Once you know where you are going to fight, you then go to the General Settings screen that lets you change tons of aspects of the game. Anything from the number of wins, to the time limit, if Bomb Shelters appear on the map and how the Sudden Death Blocks appear at the end of the game can be configured here. The last screen before letting you blow up your friends deals with the types of powerups/downs that will show up in the game. There are a few default selections you can cycle through, ranging from Beginner to All, and other settings include whether or not the pickups will burn away if/when hit by a bomb blast or if Skulls will appear and how their infection is spread. Or you can go down to the list of pickups yourself and check or uncheck them so you can play with only a specific selection of pickups. As for the pickups themselves, they are everything from the classic fire, bomb and speed ups (and downs) to remote bombs, power bombs, line bombs, bomb kicks and punches, as well as nasty little land mines that bury themselves until someone walks over them.
All of these little details that can be tweaked and modified for each match which means that you can have a wide variety of gameplay styles that make the game stay fun over and over again. It is because of this (and the huge number of players that can be on the board at the same time) that will make this game a draw at parties.
