Bionicle Heroes Review

What’s up with games that make it impossible for you to lose? It may be a sign of the times, but kids these days are not challenged or faced with any sense of failure. I can only imagine what this world is going to look like when we have a bunch of adults in charge with no experience in defeat. Bionicle Heroes is just another one of those games that teaches children that it’s okay to be a miserable failure as long as you try hard doing it.

The first problem I have with this game is I have no clue why I’m doing anything that they have me do. You run around blasting things for no apparent reason, anything you want, collecting LEGO pieces along the way. If you are a fan of collect-a-thons, Bionicles is a great game for you. If you just find it annoying, this game will probably make you depressed. Aside from LEGO pieces, which can buy you upgrades and such, you also can collect 5 silver pieces and a gold piece in each level.

You will also need Bionicle “masks” to fire different weapons and reach different areas in the game. Certain masks will open doors, climb walls and walk across water. Each mask counts as a life, so if you die, you will have up to five other chances to beat a boss before you properly lose the game. Even though it is nearly impossible to die, and an even further stretch to lose a level, things are made even easier by the fact that you can collect these masks during boss fights. As soon as you lose one, you can just pick it right back up. Think of it as an infinite number of extra lives.

The biggest challenge in Bionicle Heroes is actually having your character die. The enemies in Bionicle Heroes will rarely, if ever, hit you. When they do, they cause minimal damage and can be easily killed. With an infinite supply of lives, even if you do “die”, you come right back and do not even have to restart the level. To make matters worse, there is a Hero Mode, which is nothing but an invincibility mode that lasts a couple minutes. You barely have to do anything to even earn it. Collect some LEGO pieces and bam, your character is invincible, as if he wasn’t already.

The only good thing I can say about this game is that it looks relatively good for the type of game that it is. The lighting and fire effects are nice and everything is well detailed. There’s also a decent amount of variety in the different worlds that you will visit, and the enemy bosses that you will encounter as well. The downside is that the camera is erratic and will disorient you to the point where it almost makes you feel sick. This is a barely manageable system where the controls and camera impair you more than anything.

Overall, I can’t say Bionicle Heroes is the biggest disappointment of the year because I was not expecting much. I think it’s safe to say that the game proved to be more disastrous than even I anticipated. It may be mildly entertaining for children, only due to its simplicity, but this is a far cry from the types of games that kids played when I was younger. The challenges of Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog have been replaced with what amounts to automatic success for today’s generation of gamers. It’s a pity that the developers put such little faith into their customer’s abilities, as this game only enables a generation to grow incompetent.