User Rating: 8.4 | Silent Bomber PS
Synopsis: To put it in simple words, Silent Bomber has not much of a story. You are basically a soldier named Jutah (which is pronounced Utah), who is trying to save the world for some odd reason. Silent Bomber takes place in the far future where battles are waged by robots. Eventually you find out that a ship in space is heading towards earth and you must stop it. The battles in Silent Bomber range from Streets of Earth, to space ships, and to errrrr..... a chess board so to say. Gameplay: The heart and Core of the game lies within Silent Bomber. The gameplay is totally unique in its own sense of a battle system(complements to Bandai) . Jutah’s weapon that is attached to his arm is a type of mechanism that shoots out bombs. What Jutah does is lock on to enemies and shoot bombs at them. They either lock on to the enemy or they stick to the ground, and then you detonate them when you want. As you progress throughout the game you soon come across different chips that do many different things that will come in handy during the gameplay, and others that just are fun extras for battle mode. First I will explain the chip system: When you collect chips you are able to go to the menu. In this menu, you can choose whether to improve how long you can Shoot the bomb, how many bombs you can carry, or how powerful they are. You can switch them around as you like, but it is always good to keep a good balance between all of them. The battle chips unlock characters in the two player battle mode, I will speak about the battle mode later on. There are four bombs throughout the game: Regular Bomb: The bomb you start out with The EMP Bomb: Shoots out electricity to foes that come near it. The Gravity Bomb: Which sucks your enemies into a black hole. The Napalm Bomb: Covers the whole area with fire. These bombs come in handy all throughout the game and for the most part are pretty essential to killing enemies and bosses. The bosses are a lot of the time pretty damn challenging, but are always a blast to play. The all have very cool patterns, and it will take a lot of memorizing to beat them. Also, surprisingly, it may take some thinking to find out their weak spots. They are always contained in an action packed atmosphere i.e on a moving lift, and keep you on your toes. They are not just bomb the person till he goes down. Surprisingly, for a level game, this one is pretty long and will satisfy you for a long time. Unfortunately, what this game lacks is a good battle mode that it seems they just threw in for the heck of it. Sometimes, the battles can be uneven and unfair, it just depends on what character you use. A lot of it has to do with button mashing also. If they are going to throw in a multiplayer, make it good. Although as it may sound, Silent Bomber never gets repetitive or boring, it is just non stop fun. To put it in short, the game is just non stop fun and utter destruction with explosions flying all over the place, it’s just fantastic. Gameplay: The gameplay never ceased to strike me as original. Totally new concepts that we unfortunately may never be seeing again. The main flaw in the gameplay is the battle mode, which have could have easily been done better. Graphics: Although outdated, the graphics are pretty sweet for its time. As stated before, the game takes a futuristic look and the level details are pretty outstanding. The character models are pretty cool and original. Jutah looks pretty badass (of course he has to be, he is the main character in an action game that is the code isn’t it?). Other character models can be pretty lame though. The look is kind of a Space Punk futuristic look if you know what I mean. The enemy design was defiantly amazing, some of those mechs were just eye popping, and everyone seemed to have very cool looking weapons. The enemies I remember most where these praying mantises that looked very cool. The view is a lot like a birds eye view. Not the ones you see in RTS games, but a whole lot closer. The explosion effects where pretty good for the time, and same with the character movements. The CG cut scenes back then where pretty amazing, I thought graphics would never-ever get better.(and boy was I wrong as hell) Graphics in Silent Bomber are A-ok. This could really make a great anime. Graphics: Great levels, some poor character design, cool enemies, a great show. Controls: The controls in silent bomber are decent, they are not that great in fact. There is definitely quick response, but it has awkward button positions. It is one of those games where you have to relocate the way you are holding your control at times because you are pressing so many buttons at once, and it usually makes you do it fast. This is a problem and it is quite a nuisance. This is one of the flaws of the game. However, as mentioned above, the button response is great. Controls: They could have used better button positioning. Story: The story in silent bomber is pretty poor and doesn’t really give you any detail about the whole conflict going on. Sometimes you just find out random things along the way that aren’t very necessary To put it in simple words, this game probably has the story of a Mario game on the Snes consoles. Not cool at all, they could have really worked on that, but I suppose it was not a main focus. Also, at times, the give you brief description as in why you are going where you are going. The game may as well had no story. The story was just a crappy base introducing you to the different very cool levels. Story: NO story at all!!!!!! Music: The music in Silent Bomber is pretty good for the most part, I only found myself turning off the volume in one or two of the levels. The soundtrack mainly consists of Techno/Trance beats, that really put you into the mood of bombing everything you see in site.. The funny thing is, I found one of the songs in DDR Konamix. The song I believe is called "Earth Light", and the artist is Called "Leo Light" Music: Overall the music is great for the most part, with an exception of a few levels. Sound/Voice Acting: The sound in Silent Bomber is great, especially for its time. Of course you would have to expect that from a game where the main emphasis is to bomb the living daylight out of your opponent. So the sound is A-ok in my book. Unfortunately the same thing cannot be said about the voice acting. It is just terrible, as well as the dialogue. However, one cannot expect top-notch voice acting coming from a game with not much story, so I will be easy on them for that reason. Sound/ Voice acting: Great explosions and gunfire shots, but awful dialogue and voice acting. Overall: Silent Bomber is one of the best action games ever released on the playstation. It is a shame this game didn’t do so well sales wise, but it should have. It did not get the publicity it deserved. Silent Bomber relies on the gameplay that intended to blow us away. (Pun intended) However, it has a few drawbacks, the controls, and the voice acting, but I was able to cope with that and I am sure you will be able to as well. Overall: Silent Bomber can easily be a great game considered by today’s standards. All they need to do is update the sound, graphics, make some tweak ups to the gameplay and they are set. The game had originality and a great heart that could have satisfied the heart of action gamers all around if it just did better in the U.S.
