metal gear bomberman but it's character action instead of stealth puzzles.

extremely unique game; as such, it's pretty uneven, and suffers for being developed prior to the dualshock, which could have enabled a much more elegant aiming system.

also the tutorial is literally a war crime. incredible

Silent Bomber is an action game where you run around a gigantic spaceship and blow up everything. Levels are short and sweet, and objectives revolve around finding things and exploding them. There are one or two missions that make you protect a target but they're over quick. The control and overall game feel is shockingly fast and fluid for a ps1 game, and I swear, explosions from this generation of gaming, with their low res billboard sprites, little triangles flying everywhere, and low bitrate stock sound effects blaring loudly, are so incredibly satisfying and crunchy compared to today.

Boss fights are the highlight, you can use your different bomb types, paralysis, napalm and gravity in different ways to handle them, though the final boss is such an insane difficulty spike it leaves a bad taste after hours of otherwise super fun game.

Silent Bomber is hardly very silent. It's similar to Bomber Man, but more action than puzzle or strategy. It's a really short experience, able to be completed in a couple of hours. For the most part it'd like to say it's fun, but it has some terribly tedious sections that can be downright frustrating at times. There were moments I got confused, as it can be really bad at making it clear where you need to go. Along with not explaining things there's a fun little upgrade system, but as far as I know the game never tells you it exists. The difficulty curve is all over the place, some bosses are total cakewalks meanwhile other levels feel almost unfair. My favorites would have to be the water tunnel and the giant elevator shaft, both levels where you are confined to a decent size space that is all visible on screen at once. In contrast the levels that I dislike are either so large you fall victim to screen crunch, or are really cramped to where it's hard to avoid enemies or give your bombs space. You are given special limited "liquid" bombs that you are really never pressured to use on normal enemies, and you don't want to either. Certain boss encounters are extremely obnoxious, but can be trivialized by effective use of the liquids - especially the stun liquid. The CG cutscenes have not aged very well at all, and the story is nothing to write home about. However, the actual graphics have their charm, and the music isn't amazing, but it's not bad. Lastly, there's a score system, it grades how well you do on each mission. However, there's no restart mission or replay mission buttons. Not only can this be annoying, but it also means you can't play a mission again for a high score without playing the whole game over. Overall it feels kinda half baked, but the central mechanic is enjoyable. I actually like the way the game looks and feels, and I hope we see something like this again.

Ein kleiner Überraschungshit für mich.
Eine simple, blockige Grafik aber mit großartigen Designs.
Sehr simple, schnelle Action die durchgehend flüssig bleibt.
Eine Story die nicht viel ist, aber trotzdem ganz neat erzählt wurde.
Und dann ein Gamebreaker und ein finaler Boss die diesen Eindruck enorm trüben.

Aber ich mag dieses Gameplay, diese Action bei der man schnell zum Gegner hin, Bomben legen und wieder weg muss, geht sehr schnell in Fleisch und Blut über. Das Spiel ist auch lange Zeit nicht zu hart um bloß nicht sofort zu frustrieren. Und es hat eine schrullige Synchro.

Es ist so das perfekte PS1 Spiel zum "mal eben nachholen". Nur später wirds leider deutlich schwächer mit einigen echt nervig designten Leveln. Aber die erste Hälfte ist großartig