Review - Monday 1st January 2007 - 12:00am
In the game Bonk’s Return, Bonk has, well, returned! And I don’t mean the usage of the word Bonk as explained by Wikipedia. Bonk, is an all time favourite oldie character from the year 1990, where it made its first appearance. Basically, its about the adventures of a caveman with an attitude, and an incredibly powerful head that can be used to bash enemies and knock lava rocks aside!
Bonk’s Return is a side scrolling game, where you play, Bonk of course. In story mode, your mission is to rescue a damsel in distress, who has been kidnapped by Drool, a creature that looks much like Barney’s evil twin. You go through a linear story line, finishing levels by killing baddies with your head and reaching the end checkpoint of the stage. Several new baddies and abilities are introduced as your progress, such as the ability to climb using your teeth to hold on to certain walls. Also, whenever you use your head to knock an enemy, the enemy becomes a ball which flies up into the sky, and disappears when it hits the ground. If you can jump and hit this ball again, you can get extra points, and even a health item! I like this feature, and I find myself lingering sometimes to knock the enemy in the air and see how long can I do it. There’re 5 challenges in the game, which are really, actually only two. Four of the challenges are races, where you must race from one end of the map to the other, using several routes, and even collecting points to “turn back time” so to speak. This time score can then be uploaded on the net to compare with other players. The other challenge is a level where a huge volcano in the middle randomly spews out molten lava rocks, and you must knock twenty rocks in the air in the shortest amount of time.
Bonk’s Return is a cartoon game that uses vivid colours, in combination with smooth animation elements. It certain ways the animation is funny as well, for example when Bonk gets all hyper whenever he eats meat. So Bonk gets an A+ for graphics. As for music, Bonk has a great menu music, but there isn’t any during gameplay. For a cartoon game, it’s usually best if there was some. Instead, Bonk gets the usual funny sounds whenever he jumps, or gets hit by an enemy. So he gets a slightly above average for sound effects.
On the whole however, Bonk’s Return was very fun to play through, especially during story mode. Unfortunately, the challenges don’t really hold much replay value, so unless you want to go through story mode again, to maybe beat your high score, Bonk’s Return has average replayability. Luckily the story mode is pretty long. But for all side scrolling fans, Bonk’s Return is a must! For action fans, they should give Bonk’s Return a try as well.
