Game reviews: Bombshell fails to go off, and Klaus is cute yet deep
The dampest squib to be seen in gaming in a long time, and a fresh, imaginative take on the platform genre
3D Realms
Remember Duke Nukem 3D? The wisecracking, shotgun-shooting, jetpack-wearing badass who slaughtered aliens in the time before first-person shooters went all grim and realistic? Or how about Rise of the Triad? Killing pixelated bad guys with two-fisted gunplay? Those were the days.
3D Realms remembers them – it ought to, it made the damn games. It remembers the era so well, in fact, that it’s tried its hardest to recreate those crude but amusing worlds in Bombshell, only to fail laughably, hopelessly, miserably. The game’s influences aren’t immediately obvious – it’s top-down for one, an action RPG in the Diablo vein, with heavy FPS mechanics that attempt to keep things fresh.
Let’s start by ignoring some major factors here. Let’s ignore the fact that a one-armed bomb disposer is somehow the only person on the planet tasked with saving the president from an alien attack. Let’s ignore that the humour goes far past juvenile into kill-me-now territory. Let’s even ignore the fact that, yes, in a male-dominated medium, this female-focused game has a gun called the PMS.