Dumb N’ Bummer
by AIM
Productions, Price: $14.99
Reviewed October 2003, by Howard Paw
An elephant named Dumb has been kidnapped
by the vulture Bummer and his crazy cohorts, trapped in various
mazes; it’s up to you to help Dumb escape his captors
and make his way home while knocking a few vulture heads
in the process. This is the basic story premise of AIM Productions’ action
game, Dumb N’ Bummer.
Played from a top down perspective, the
game looks very much like a scene taken out of PacMan. Instead
of Mr. PacMan and the gruesome foursome ghosts running around
the maze, you control an elephant while a fair number of
vultures run after you. Fortunately for the action buffs,
this is where the similarity with Pac Man ends. In this game,
you are not left defenseless; the boulders that are scattered
all around the maze can be used as weapons against the enemies.
You simply need to push boulders towards the vultures, crushing
them and thus, eliminating them from the game. Be careful
though, for every killed vulture, an egg will appear and
if you don’t destroy the egg in time it will hatch
and another elephant killing vulture will emerge. Once you
have killed and destroyed all of the vultures and eggs, you
will be transported to the next level. Another way to complete
the level is to arrange all of the marble blocks within the
maze into a straight line, though this isn’t as easy
as it may sound. Personally, I prefer to simply get rid of
all the vultures and eggs , much easier and it somewhat pleases
my sadistic nature (hey! Who wouldn’t enjoy squashing
evil vultures?) The game features 40 levels of vulture busting
action and as the game progresses, the number of vultures
increases and they tend to get smarter and faster. They won’t
simply blindly run into a wall and they’ll try their
best to go around any boulder that can be potentially hurled
at them.
Graphically, the game looks good. While
it won’t be winning any awards for best graphics anytime
soon, it still is pleasing to the eyes and looks very retro.
The graphics reminds me of games that I used to play on my
SNES and Sega Genesis. Dumb N’ Bummer also features
background music and sound effects. Similar to the graphics,
it’s nothing special but it blends in with the game
quite nicely. There are options to turn off the music, sound
effect or both right on the game screen, which is quite nice
as you won’t have to leave the game just to turn off
the sound.
The game is controlled by the D-pad on
your Pocket PC and no other buttons are required. As much
as I love the no frills control method of the game, it would
have been better if the control buttons can be customized
as not all Pocket PCs have a good D-pad that’s fit
for gaming. On an iPAQ 5450, Dumb N’ Bummer is definitely
hard to play as the D-pad on this unit is way too sensitive
no matter how I tweak the button sensitivity. I was able
to try this game on a Mitac Mio 339 Pocket PC (which has
a joystick instead of a directional pad) and the game was
immensely more enjoyable as the controls were 100% accurate
thanks to the joystick. The control problem would have easily
been solved if the controls are customizable or there was
an alternate method of control like a virtual D-pad, but
alas, this is not the case.
After playing a myriad card and puzzle
games, it’s nice to play a simple no brainer arcade
action game like Dumb N’ Bummer. The strength of this
game lies in the fact that it’s easy to pick up while
being challenging enough to hold your interest. But be warned
though, try out the demo first and see if your Pocket PC’s
D-pad can control the game reliably. |
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 ARM & XScale |
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