Boulder Dash-XL 3D
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3DS
| Boulder Dash-XL 3D

There's no doubt that Boulder Dash is a video game classic. It was made all the way back in the '80s yet it provides the sort of tense and fiendish gameplay that games nowadays still struggle to achieve.

It is, however, very much showing its age, as displayed by this latest updated version for Nintendo 3DS, Boulder Dash-XL 3D.

The game is packed full of content, but we never felt hugely excited at any point about digging sand and pushing boulders around.

A Bould move

In each of Boulder Dash's grid-based caves there are diamonds to grab, boulders to be wary of, and enemies and dodge.

You can dig through the sand in any direction, and the aim is to grab as many diamonds as you can - preferably all of them - before leaving through the exit door.

However, gravity works to drop boulders on your head, and the unpredictably of them toppling all over each other and slamming down onto you makes every moment that you're in the firing line a little bit tense.

The key is simply to keep moving, and to have a clear path to victory set out in your head. This gets more interesting when there are enemies around to bug you and machines that turn rocks into diamonds.

The stereoscopic 3D doesn't exactly do much for the gameplay, but this is still an enjoyable take on the old classic, sticking mainly to the original formula while pumping it full of design concepts from the here and now.

A load of old Boulder Dash

It's a pretty neat replica, then, but one that isn't so exciting that you should rush out to purchase a copy.

After a few dozen romps through various caves we were pretty much ready to move on to something else. Once you've seen a few levels, you've seen then all, and it doesn't get any more entertaining along the way.

It's great that there are so many different modes - Puzzle features set layouts with set methods for completing them, while Retro throws stupidly different levels at you - but the game still never really gets properly pumped up.

Online highscore boards perhaps might have kept us in the fray, but as it is Boulder Dash-XL 3D is a lovingly crafted take on an old classic that warms the cockles of your heart without doing quite enough to stimulate your pleasure centre.

Boulder Dash-XL 3D

Boulder Dash-XL 3D iterates wonderfully on the '80s original, but refuses to ever ramp the excitement levels up to the max
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.