Monster Bomber review

Are you ready for another cheapo DS puzzle game? We certainly hope so - with the Game Boy Advance on its way out, the touch screen device will inherit every $20 "match the colors and win" game on the planet. The latest title to lob different colored objects your way is Monster Bomber, a puzzler that attempts to mix bits of Bust-A-Move and Space Invaders together to create something new.

And who better to do that than Taito, the developer of both classic games? Taito's taken the multiple colors and combo system of Move and fused it with the slowly descending waves of aliens from Invaders, generating a familiar, but addicting little game.

On the bottom screen lays your set of colors. Tap the stylus on a color to pick up a blob and then fling it upward at an enemy of the same color to make it vanish. But, if you tap and hold that blob in place, it gathers more energy and can be hurled at bunched-up aliens for a combo attack. The better move, however, is to toss that powered-up blob at a different color monster to push it backwards. As it goes back, it pushes any other creatures behind him - should they touch anything that's the same color as the initial blob, boom, they all go away, regardless of color. Falling power-ups and rotating obstacles can either help or hinder your game, depending on where they appear.

You can't go nuts flinging blobs around, though. If you hit the wrong color on certain aliens, they'll sprout into new monsters, multiplying until the screen's full of 'em. Some take two hits to kill, others explode and take out even more baddies. But that's it. Fling, fling and fling some more. It's a $20 puzzle game, after all.