A deliberate b-movie-style action game, Bombshell promises gritty action and tough characters. What it delivers is a kickin’ soundtrack and massive levels that are boringly large to traverse, wrapped in - a 3D environment viewed with an isometric camera? It’s an odd design decision that prevents Bombshell from being a lively action romp and instead makes it tedious and distant. If you canA deliberate b-movie-style action game, Bombshell promises gritty action and tough characters. What it delivers is a kickin’ soundtrack and massive levels that are boringly large to traverse, wrapped in - a 3D environment viewed with an isometric camera? It’s an odd design decision that prevents Bombshell from being a lively action romp and instead makes it tedious and distant. If you can get it for around $5 it’s a satisfactory time-waster, but not much more.
Total size on my hard-drive: 8.9 GB
+ Full controller support.
+ Graphics are nice (Unreal 3).
+ Despite the nice visuals, runs well. Max settings @1080p averaged between 75-110 fps on my RX 470.
+ Excellent soundtrack.
+ A number of different weapons to use, and switching between them is very fluid.
+ Stunning environments. From lava to snow and ice to sci-fi wonderhell, there’s a lot of detail.
+ Appreciate the under-stated humor. From jokes about fetch-quests to weapon-naming (Shelly’s chain gun is called the “maxigun,” and the missile launcher is referred to as the PMS), the laughs are frequent but easily over-looked. Those who search carefully in one level will find the Temple of Dopefish...
+/- Voice acting is all over the place, with some great work by Valerie Arem as Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison and the legendary Jon St. John (Duke Nukem) as the villain. The rest vary from average to terrible.
+/- Even knowing Bombshell is emulating b-movie tropes, the characters (aside from Bombshell herself) mostly fall flat. There’s little that is surprising or convincing, even within the confines of the traditional “evil mastermind” or “misplaced father” tropes.
+/- Too often you’ll want to pick a weapon and stick with it for most encounters, depending on the level. Like the flamethrower completely wrecks the ice level (as you would expect), and for special powers, why would you use anything other than the bubble shield? Well, the energy sword (basically a lightsaber) inflicts tons of damage, so it makes a good case, but it’s easy to argue in favor of OP weapons. The shotgun (called the “motherflakker”) will be the go-to weapon for most of the game.
- Checkpoint saving only.
- Bugged achievements. They don’t always trigger. Then a whole bunch will trigger at once.
- I experienced a few glitches, most of them involving Shelly getting stuck on the environment. Also had a boss spawn outside the boss arena once. Reloading a checkpoint is the only solution. Health orb would glitch, showing full health when in fact the numerical health readout showed much less. Fell through an elevator once, which then glitched on the upper level, while I respawned on the lower, making it impossible to back-track and complete a side-quest (reloading a checkpoint didn’t fix it).
- Levels are HUGE. Just traversing them takes a large amount of time, and while there are some unlockable short-cuts, traversal becomes a giant chore. Made worse by the back-tracking that side-missions usually require. It’s nice that there are so many nooks and crannies to explore, but that’s a small compensation.
- Can’t rotate the camera.
- Little enemy variety. Actually, the variety itself is decent - each of the four episodes has a few new enemies – but with the levels being so large it feels like you’re fighting the same enemies over and over.
- Soundtrack may be great, but the size of the levels makes the music loop way too much.
The decision to go with an isometric camera angle for what should be an fps is a curious one, and, coupled with the size of the levels, really hurts the experience that Bombshell offers. If it had fit into a more traditional fps mold, it could have been more popular – especially given the weapons available and the potential for an old-school, action-based (instead of cover-based) shooter. Thankfully, the next game in the series, Ion Maiden (a prequel), does exactly that. That’s a game that I’m really looking forward to playing, but Bombshell unfortunately leaves a very mixed impression behind. Pick it up if you see it cheap, but expect it to drag on well past its welcome. 5/10… Expand
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