Pros: Some neat animation
Cons: Too simple, fuzzy graphics
The bottom line: Younger kids might get a kick out of it, but I think it'll bore most older gamers.
Bionicle Heroes is a fairly decent 3D shooter for the Windows PC. It is also available on many different console systems. While some gamers might get a kick out of its exhaustive gameplay, I found it to be a cross between Gauntlet Legends and Lego Star Wars, but not quite so good.

I’m not too familiar with the Bionicle line of toys, but I do know they are a more advanced part of the Lego family. In this game, you play a Bionicle robot who looks like he was made out of Lego pieces. You will get to fight a variety of different opponents who also have the Lego look. While this might sound neat, it has already been done before in the two Lego Star Wars games that were a lot more fun than this.

There isn’t too much of a story to this game. Basically, you are on this big island and you must go around collecting masks and defeating opponents. Each mask lets you use a different ability, and these abilities are required to unlock certain passageways. This means you get to go back and forth a lot. First, you’ll find a door that requires a mask, then a few minutes later you might find the required mask. You can skip over a lot of stuff in the game to complete the levels, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of items that may help you in the future.

You begin the game in a room full of different chambers that offer entrance into the various levels and worlds you get to visit. Gauntlet Legends used the same exact kind of selection system. In fact, the goals in this game are very much like Gauntlet in how each level has tons of hidden extras. It’s also just as repetitive and the levels make you fight for sometimes too long in between save games.

The gameplay is presented using a third person perspective, but your character resides on the bottom left of the screen. It’s an odd way to present the game, and it takes some getting used to. I found the control system to be in need of some fine tuning because it sends to swing too widely around, thus making aiming too daunting of a task. All you do is run around blowing up stuff and collecting the pieces. Eventually, you’ll collect enough Lego pieces to go into a type of Hero mode where you get extra powers. Each level has a boss at the end, and they can be challenging if you don’t figure out the right strategy to take them out.

Even though the action is fierce, it isn’t bloody or realistically violent since you’re just blowing apart Lego creations. The game incorporates a type of laser beam aiming system when targets are nearby, otherwise you’ll be shooting blind without any kind of crosshairs. I found each level to get boring rather quickly because you have to fight through so many little things that never touch you. I’d rather take on a handful of opponents that at least offer some challenge, rather than swarms of bugs that just make each level take longer to finish.

The graphics in this game have a bright white washed out look to them, so much that they don’t look quite right. The game allows you to tweak the video settings quite a bit, so this doesn’t have very steep system requirements. Even with the video settings cranked up, it still has the look of a console game ported to PC, as the edges and animation just aren’t as sharp as what you get on some PC-only 3D shooters. It is kind of neat to see the Lego pieces come apart or back together, but I think it looked better on Lego Star Wars.

I found the music in this game to be quite good, though it sounded a lot like movie themes. I can’t quite place where I’d heard the orchestral themes before, but they sure sounded familiar. I could be mistaken. In some parts of the game, the music can be annoyingly repetitive. The sound effects aren’t much to talk about since the music sort of drowns them out.

All in all, I found Bionicle Heroes to be lacking. The graphics are so bright and fuzzy that they don’t look right, the levels are rather bland and linear, and the control system is jerky. Even so, this game is kind of fun, but there are so many other 3D shooter games out there that this one just doesn’t compare. I prefer stuff like Unreal Tournament or the Battlefield series, but maybe younger kids will enjoy this more. I’ve read some online complaints from Bionicle fans who said this game doesn’t really stick to the Lego world very well, but that’s not something I could begin to verify.