Sunday 29 May 2016

Bombshell

A friend posted an early video of Bombshell quite some time before the game came out and I didn't think much of it when I saw it. Mainly because it didn't show much except for the character. This is the trailer if you don't remember.


This game was developed by a small team who took over the 3D Realms title and apparently this was supposed to be a Duke Nukem game, but because of rights issues they couldn't use Duke. So instead, they made a new character, Bombshell.


So how did the game turn out? Well that depends on who plays it. This game isn't for everyone. There are people who will only play AAA titles and will only play games that get rave reviews from every major review site. I'm not one of those people. I feel that games like Call of Duty are terrible, but they get great reviews every time while being nothing more than rehashes of all the previous titles.

Bombshell on the other hand didn't have the budget or manpower that other games get. To me, that's not a bad thing though. The game has its share of bugs but other games that had huge budgets had more and worse bugs than this game had.


The game did crash to desktop a few times, once at the final boss and other times through the campaign. There were also graphical glitches including some enemies bodies stretching when killed , animations for executions not being animated properly and having a trail of Ky (currency) trail me for a while instead of disappearing when picked up.

The game also wouldn't load my campaign at one point until I went to settings and turned everything down to low. Then It loaded and I turned up the graphics again and the problem didn't happen again.

The other major glitch that was pretty frustrating was late in the game. I had to collect 4 crystals but the very first one wouldn't register as being picked up so I couldn't complete the level. It took a couple level restarts to get it to fix itself.


Aside from the crashes and crystal glitch, I had a good time playing through this game. I actually wanted to keep playing and that's not a feeling too many games give me.

Voice acting from the main characters ranged from good to OK. Bombshell's voice acting was well done, while the main enemy, Shelly's (Bombshell's) (spoiler warning) sister was ok and so was the colonel's)

The random soldiers you come across in the game though had some atrocious voice acting and I couldn't tell if it was done that badly on purpose or they just ran out of money to do a decent job. Once NPC almost made me fall asleep with his really tired sounding voice.


I enjoyed the graphics in the game. The enemies looked neat and there was a good variety of them and I like that as you progress through the game's levels you go up against more variety and different weapons are more effective against certain enemies.

The weapons were really cool as well. There are standard action game weapons such as a rocket launcher, shotgun, machine gun, and flamethrower, but there are also some less standard ones like a weapon that shoots out a wave that blows up mechanical enemies. Each gun also has a secondary function. The shotgun for example shoots out a charge that freezes mech enemies for a short time.


I enjoyed all the weapons in the game. Though the one I used the least was the Amiga, which is Bombshell's AI arm and when you use it , it separates from her body and becomes a spiderlike robot that can shoot at enemies and can get into places that Shelly can't.

The level design was interesting for the most part. Lots of it looks similar, but there were sections that looked impressive. I found myself wanting to explore as much as I could. It paid off because there is at least one weapon that you can miss if you don't find the parts to it.


You level up as you kill enemies and complete secondary and primary objectives. When you level up you get points that you can spend on upgrading your health, energy, and shield. You can also upgrade your dash, punch and bubble shield abilities. The higher your level , the more you can upgrade your weapons. You upgrade weapons by spending Ky which is the game's currency which you find around the levels or by killing enemies.


There is a good mix of action and puzzle solving/exploring. There are times when a ton of enemies will surround you and things can get very hectic. I have killed myself too many times trying to use my bombs on them and blowing myself up in the process and I have been killed just by being overwhelmed and had my health drop to zero from being attacked from all sides.


Some enemies can be executed. You will see them kneel and above them there will be a prompt to do an execution. These are pretty cool but after you've seen them all you might want to avoid doing them but you do get extra XP when you do an execution. Some of the execution animations are bugged. In one, shelly takes a bomb and shoves it into the enemies mouth. Though the bomb doesn't move with her hand , so it floats in the air while the rest of the animation playes out. There was also a bugged animation where she takes the enemies shotgun and used it on the enemy.


There are a few boss fights, but I found them to be pretty easy. They were still fun, but the only reason I died in the first one was because I fell in a hole. I also would have beaten the final boss the first time had the game not crashed. I will see though if the boss fights are more challenging on the harder game mode.

The game pokes fun at its own story and how ridiculous it is. I wasn't paying too much attention to the story this time around but it had something to do with the bad guy trying to turn everyone into a machine hybrid, and something about finding out who your sister and father are.


I found myself really enjoying the music in the game. When things got hectic the music would change to something faster and more exciting. It was definitely a good soundtrack.

Bombshell also references other video game characters like Lara Croft, and I even came across the corpse of another 3D Realms character that I used to love when I was a kid. I played all the games he was in and was a bit sad to see how he ended up.



Those things didn't detract from the game for me at all though. One thing I liked were parts in the game where you will come across a mounted turrent. If you hold the aim button down time slows down and you can mow down a ton of enemies in bloody slow motion. It seems pointless but it was fun each time I did it.

Bombshell herself looks cool. In my opinion. I know that on certain forums there were complaints about her looks but you have to take that with a grain of salt because on the internet people say some ridiculous things. She has changed from the announcement trailer though. She is more covered up and her hair isn't black and the side of her head isn't shaved.


Also, in the trailer she takes a shotgun with her but in the game her arm turns into one so she doesn't need to take one with her.  Steam says that I played the game for 11 hours. I think that was a good amount of time and I enjoyed most of it.

There was free DLC released for the game in the form of challenge missions which I haven't spent much time at all with but I might at some point. I also want to do an new game + and try a harder difficulty. I also heard that the game is getting a prequel which will be an FPS game. That sounds interesting to me and I'd definitely want to play it.



I hope that enough people supported this game that the developers end up making a sequel. I would recommend this game to people who like old school games and shooting and blowing up lots of stuff. I had fun with the game and that's more than I can say for a lot of big budget titles that are riddled with microtransactions and feel incomplete without the map packs they put out for extra cash.