Bombshell is an Action Shooter game in which bomb disposal technician turned mercenary for hire, Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison must strong-arm her way across 4 planets in an Unreal Engine-powered galactic adventure to rescue the president (and humanity) from an apocalyptic alien threat. With out-of-th...
Bombshell is an Action Shooter game in which bomb disposal technician turned mercenary for hire, Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison must strong-arm her way across 4 planets in an Unreal Engine-powered galactic adventure to rescue the president (and humanity) from an apocalyptic alien threat. With out-of-this-world enemies, a never-before-seen arsenal of devastating weaponry, and a host of genre-crossing mechanics -- Bombshell is set to blow you away!
History in the breaking - Be part of Bombshell's debut as she fights to save the president and her people from a maniac's mechanical monstrosity
Brave New Worlds - Traverse the dying world of Kyron as it's consumed by its neighboring sun, discover the secrets of a civilization frozen in time on the distant world of Zeroth and travel to the epitome of technology - a villain's vision which threatens to consume all that exists
Robot-armed and Dangerous - Shell, shock and shatter your way through vicious, bloodthirsty predators, an augmented alien species, and the remanants of an ancient race re-animated, with more than 10 weaponized arm modifications
Heavy Handed - Fierce finishing moves and interactive environments make Bombshell as dynamic as she is deadly
Isometric Ingenuity - Brilliantly brutal isometric shooting layered with classic role-playing mechanics, including experience points, upgrades, side quests, and non-linear levels. All with a twist of first-person shooter mechanics.
I was curious to see what the new 3D Realms was going to cook up. Sadly I was dissapointed. Mediocre is a word that sums up this game perfectly. Combat is bland. Camera angles are hit and miss. Voice acting is terrible, Character get stuck in the scenery.. and so on and so on. A patch or two could probably fix a few of these problems but for now, wait for a 60% sale and buy it then. Just not worth the full price.
Bombshell, Bombshell, what do I do with you?
You set me up for a date with this Shelly chick, y'know, the one you get your title from... robot-armed and dangerous? Yep, that's her.
And it starts off like a wonder.
She's not the busty play-doll type, tell you that. Over the top, tough as nine-inch nails, throws crass humor around (calls her missile launcher PMS, you believe that? Haha!), she even breaks the damn fourth wall a number of times!
Easy on the eye, too, she is. Crisp at max resolution, if nothing too fancy. Her choice of music, boom, immediately sweeps me up! Guitar or ambient, doesn't matter, it just fits her whatever pose she strikes.
I fall for her very quickly.
But... when we start to dance... it goes awry somewhere along the way.
Her guns talk sharp and sweet, but she gets stuck in obstacles. Her map disappears. She steamrolls baddies one moment, swatted like a fly in the next... as if outta balance, y'know what I'm sayin'?
So we dance and... I'm starting to feel like I don't wanna dance anymore. I try to lead but she's... well, stiff. Has difficulties jumpin', too. Robot arm dragging her down, maybe? I dunno.
We dance for a few levels and... I meet her folks. Don't really seem like her folks, honestly. They're just her folks cause... y'know, to have a plot twist there?
As it goes on, I wonder more and more often... how did I end up in this mess?
Then, the date is over and I'm thinking Shelly will stay with me, guns blazin', fourth wall breakin', robot-armed and dangerous... but only in my dreams.
Y'know why that is, Bombshell? Cause I met this chick and I fell for her, she even got a place on my li'l desktop... but you keep throwing pebbles in the way of her and I. Small pebbles, irritating pebbles, but a lot. Most of them are shaped like bugs. Odd, huh?
They're not enough to make me hate Shelly, but what they're more than enough to do is... keep me from dating her. Ever again.
A real shame...
2.25/5
I have to be honest with you guys. I preordered the game just because of my nostalgia and the deep love I have for Apogee. Back then booting a game up and hearing that magical Apogee fanfare at the intro was almost a guarantee that the next few hours were going to be amazing. Even when seeing the first gameplay videos of Bombshell and not seeing any of that magic of the past in them, I still convinced myself that the final product was going to blow me away.
And finally the game was released... and it's nothing to write home about. If Apogee's name wasn't slapped on the front cover, we would just talk about a decent generic isometric shooter and nothing more, the ones that popped up on GOG or Steam and you only consider buying on each Summer Sale for a fraction of the initial price.
The story is nothing to write home about, just the typical alien invasion that only our main protagonist can prevent. But this is only a minor issue, after all even Duke Nukem didn't have a story to show besides "they stole our babes" angle. But that's when you have to ensure that your title shines in the other departments. And unfortunately with Bombshell they dropped the ball there as well.
For starters, the main protagonist is bland almost silent heroine, a far cry of what Duke Nukem was back in the day. No bad ass one liners, no funny remarks, no interactions with the environment, nothing. Bombshell is as expressive as a slab of concrete and almost as silent. You would expect that this is the one aspect that Apogee would try and get right, but unfortunately no, it seems like they didn't try at all.
Secondly, the levels are extremely bland and repetitive, despite the used engine being capable of far better visuals. I'm not talking about the texture or lighting quality, but the level design and the aesthetics of each area. Even though it starts promising, with a big shootout at the White House, soon after you are teleported into the alien world where everything consists of geometrical shapes, making it look like they used a simple level editor to create the levels instead of putting real effort in creating imaginative worlds. There are some exceptions here and there, but none of them will stick in your memory after finishing the game. I mean everyone who ever played Duke Nukem 3D still remembers the first episode by heart, room by room, but here the only thing I remember is basically the lighting color in each level.
So why don't I put a single star on the game and call it a day? Because the mechanics are decent and killing aliens is fun for the most part, especially after unlocking the bigger guns. There is an upgrade system that at least gives you a reason to complete each level in the best of your abilities to unlock better gear and upgrades. Well... that's about it, to be honest. Solid mechanics in a rather bland package.
Do I regret buying the game full price? Not really, I bought way worse titles and I really want to see Apogee becoming a reputable studio once again, creating amazing games and giving me the same chills every time I hear that fanfare at the intro. Buy it when the price drops.
The heroine, Bombshell, is a female version of Duke Nukem. This is the one thing the devs succeeded at. The same adolescent humor, the same sexism, but overall fun and cool in a cheesy way. The rest of the game unfortunately sucks. There are solid ideas, but the execution is poor. The graphics look nice, but the camera can't be zoomed out enough to actually see what's going on. It can't even be rotated and is tilted in a way, that you don't see enemies who attack from the bottom of the screen. So for most of the game you will use the minimap to shoot in the general direction of red dots. Which means that you'll kill most enemies without ever seeing them, apart from the moments where enemies teleport right on top of you and swarm you.
- The protagonist is slow and the weapons are imbalanced. There is rarely any need to use anything but your infinite ammo starting pistol, once you've upgraded that.
- No free saving! Even worse, the checkpoint system is bugged. If you re-load a checkpoint, often all the map that you had explored when you reached the checkpoint, is forgotten again. Or the game forgets that you already had picked up a key and you have to do it all over again.
- The bugs. There are lots of them. The protagonist keeps getting stuck in the scenery and so do the enemies. Or she falls through the floor. Or she walks on air instead of going down stairs and you can't get down to a lower floor. You have moves that knock down enemies. Cool, huh? Not so cool that the enemies become invulnerable once they are on the ground. Sometimes they don't get up again, but still resume shooting at you and you have no way of killing them anymore. Sometimes the enemies forget that you are there and just stand around for you to kill them one by one. And sometimes the game outright crashes.
I got this game at 90% discount. So I don't feel ripped off. But the base price is ridiculous. There are better top-down shooters out there that are free!
I loved the over the top shareware hits of the 90s. I can't get into a lot of modern "big house" games that take themselves too seriously. With that in mind, Bombshell keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek, finger on the trigger, and one liners at the ready. Very reminiscent of late 90s games where a lot of crazy things were tried out in 3D. While enjoyment is subjective, for complaints of stability, seems fine in the 1.2 release. Perhaps there should be a shareware version...
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