Horrible controls, horrible pacing, horrible gameplay. Really, just bad overall.
User Rating: 2.5 | Smart Bomb PSP
I'm a big fan of puzzle games. In fact, I was only mildly interested in getting a PSP until I started reading about Lumines, at which point I new I had to have one. I was excited because three very cool looking puzzle games would be available for the system very soon after launch: Lumines, Mercury, and Smartbomb. The first two didn't disappoint. Lumines is one of the best and most addictive games I've ever played. And while Mercury wasn't mind-blowing, it's a great game in its own right. Smartbomb, however, is just garbage. First, it's hard. Really hard. Now, I don't mind a challenge. But there are limits to my patience with a game. I'm only on the third world (the first being training and the second being extremely simple), and I'm having a hard time getting through. One of the reasons it's difficult is each world, that consists of eight or ten bombs to defuse, has to be completed in its entirety without error to proceed. If you botch one of the puzzles, you have to start that whole section over. And restarting the section means stretching out and waiting for it to load. This is a serious puzzle game no-no. When I botch a level, I want to be able to hit start, then "restart level" and try it again. Or at least just try it again immediately after the time expires. Not so in this case though; Smartbomb forces the player to wait around thirty seconds for the little cutscene of something exploding to load and display. At that point we're back to the menu, where you can choose to try that section again. I'm not one to complain about load times, and 30-40 seconds isn't that terrible, but in this case, it's unnecessary, and it's very noticeable. Especially because many of the bombs give you 30-45 seconds to diffuse them. If you fail, you'll spend as much time waiting for the reload as you did playing the game. It gets real old real quick. What else? How about the controls? They suck. They're sluggish and sometimes plain unresponsive. Keep in mind that this a game where you're racing against the clock to diffuse these bombs. On more than one level last night I found myself wondering if I was hitting the right button to do something, because the game wasn't responding. This is unforgivable. And the gameplay itself is just irritating. There's one type of bomb where you have to rotate square pieces with colored wires on them to connect colored nodes on different sides of the bomb together. I get started on the puzzle, all the while struggling with the controls, and finally think I have it, but it doesn't clear. Then I see a random piece rotate on its own. Paying attention on the replay, I noticed that random pieces just rotate at will while you're trying to solve the puzzle. Now, once again, I enjoy a good challenge, but that'd be like trying to straighten out a Rubick's Cube with someone walking by every 15 seconds and twisting it up a few times. It's not fun, it's irritating. And just to toss one more thing on there, when the timer on each bomb nears expiration, the screen shakes violently, making it near impossible to pull off a last minute save. Overall I'm very disappointed with Smartbomb. What looked like a promising and interesting game turned out to be a sloppy, rushed, frustrating mess. Save your money. Puzzle gamers, if you want fun get Lumines. If you want a challenge (yet still very entertaining) get Mercury. If you want a migraine get Smartbomb.
