Smart Bomb

When a new console launches, people expect there to be a few games from each genre: puzzle, racing, role playing, and many others. Since the PlayStation Portable has launched, players have gotten their fair share of puzzle games. Not to be outdone, the developers at Core Design Unlimited wanted to get a piece of the puzzle genre with their latest game entitled Smart Bomb. Read on to find out more about this game.

The world is at the mercy of a madman who is creating highly sophisticated bombs. In response to this threat a specialized bomb task force, lead by Colonel Cage and newbie Michelle Grace has been created with the purpose of finding and defusing these bombs. They were so successful because they were using a new VR technology for disarming these bombs. One day Colonel Cage disappeared and so did all of the bombs. Suddenly the bombs started showing back up so it is up to Michelle and you, a new recruit, to defuse these bombs. Are you up to this challenge?

The premise of the game is simple enough - in each level there will be one bomb. In each of the “bombs,” players will have to diffuse several different components. Each component is different puzzle that will have to be solved before the time goes out. There are several different puzzles that players will have to solve throughout the game. One is getting a laser beam to bounce off mirrors to get to the other side. Another involves moving balls around the level trying to hit switches, similar to another PSP puzzle game: Mercury. Another is moving around gears throughout the level to get a certain item to start, such as a fan. The easiest one is flipping around tiles to the same color circuits to reroute the power. All of these puzzles are pretty easy in premise, but the very short timers and controls make this game much harder and frustrating than it ever should have been.

Someone forgot to send this game through quality testing because the controls are horrid. Many times you will be wasting valuable seconds trying to get one piece to move to a specific place in the puzzle and you will be fighting the controls to get it there. This should not happen in a game of this nature where you only have a few valuable seconds to get the job done.

Smart Bomb is not the most graphically intense game; it doesn’t even manage to come anywhere close to that. I say this because I am extremely puzzled why there are so many graphical problems in this game, including framerate issues. Moving objects around in the puzzle seems to make the game slow to a crawl, which is very agitating when you have only thirty seconds on the clock before you go “boom.” Also some of the movable pieces in the puzzle are not clearly defined so you could risk the chance of making a bomb explode just because you were not aware that a certain piece could be moved or rotated.

Whoever chose techno music for this game didn’t think this all the way through. If you were in a bomb squad, the last thing you would want to be listening to as you try to diffuse a deadly bomb that could wipe out thousands of people would be techno music blaring in your ears. If that wasn’t bad enough, the music is very generic as well and seems to be randomly cut in each level. The sound effects are also terribly generic as well.

If the bad level designs, quirky controls, extremely short bomb timers, and framerate issues weren’t bad enough, there is one thing that will make you have the desire to throw your PSP out the window. Smart Bomb does not contain any manner in which to save games. So that means that if you diffuse five of the eight or so components but screw up on this one, you will have to start all over from the beginning. Then you will have to wait through the extremely long loading screen to start all over from the beginning. This will frustrate the tar out of you. There is no excuse for this, at least give a save for every three to five components you diffuse. The same is true even for the training mode. You are learning the mechanics of the game, and you run out of time, so bam, you have to redo all that you have already done. This is not very fun in my books.

Smart Bomb is rated E 10+ for Everyone 10+. It also supports four-person wireless multiplayer.

Gameplay: 4.3
Unresponsive controls make this game a “blast to play!” - pun and sarcasm very much intended.

Graphics: 4.5
Framerate issues and bland backgrounds really make the score go down.

Sound: 4.2
Techno music for a game about bombs about to explode, who made this choice?

Difficulty: Hard
All of the game's technical issues that should have been fixed during QA testing make this game extremely hard to play.

Concept: 7.4
I like the concept of the game, when I first saw the game it reminded me of a game I played many years ago on the PC. The concept for the game is the only thing it has going for it.

Multiplayer: N/A
Smart Bomb supports up to four-person wireless multiplayer.

Overall: 4.2
Smart Bomb has too many things going against it, including bombs timers that are way too short, especially on harder puzzles, which turns off the casual player. The biggest thing that make this game get such a low score is non-responsive controls and framerate issues will make you want to slam your precious PlayStation Portable against a brick wall. Avoid this game at all costs if you value your sanity.