[Kyanos]

Any mention of mod tools? Reviews mean jack shit if a modding community forms around a game.

[Hank]

Drek, on 30 January 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:

Any mention of mod tools? Reviews mean jack shit if a modding community forms around a game.

Yes, 3D Realms' confirmed the probability of mod tools, but wait until it's real
https://boards.3drea...iting-tools/126

I think, if the critics are the dominant motivator, nowadays, for buying games, there may not be enough modders for the game to modify.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Mblackwell, on 30 January 2016 - 10:13 AM, said:

The game is mediocre, not broken. It's not the best game in the world but certainly not the worst, and if you see the version in review footage it doesn't match what's currently out, which includes fixes for what testers and even reviewers reported. I'm not sure how much more patching and tweaks are planned though. Playing the game I can't help but think that with a few adjustments a lot could be improved. In its current state there's still fun to be had, although whether it's worth the current price is up to you. You should probably check one of the streams currently ongoing before you make a judgment though, and with steam refunds you could probably buy it and try for yourself.

I think Bombshell's biggest problem from day one was communication. Interceptor and 3DR decided to promote the game as an arpg, instead of an overhead shooter (with lite rpg mechanics) ala Take No Prisoners and Mageslayer which is what it is, and that was a huge mistake. Because of this, reviewers are immediately going to compare Bombshell to Torchlight II, Grim Dawn, and Victor Vran, and since Interceptor's game doesn't have classes, choices between unique skills that fundamentally change how you play or fantastic loot, it's automatically going to be reviewed lower than those other titles as it lacks the features required to remain competitive.

I believe they're also criticizing 3DR's history, Bombshell's terrible reveal, high price and public legal squabbles. A decade ago 3DR produced Prey. They were synonymous with quality, polish, originality and absurd delays. Their reputation has been irreparably tarnished in the ensuing years: lawsuits, the DNF fiasco, layoffs, buyouts, etc... Bombshell's reception probably has an element of people who wish they reviewed DNF lower, and, unfortunately for Interceptor, to avoid any potential criticism from their contemporaries, decided to make sure they were on the right side of history and annihilate the game.

[LkMax]

Drek, on 30 January 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:

Any mention of mod tools? Reviews mean jack shit if a modding community forms around a game.

A, the "good" old Bethesta way...

[MusicallyInspired]

I wish I could buy this game, give it the benefit of a doubt, and disagree with all the haters, but I'll never know for sure because I can't stand these isometric action games.

[Mr. Tibbs]

25 people playing it on Steam at the moment. No longer listed on the top sellers list.

[Lunick]

A friend mentioned that they removed the "6.9" score out of the IGN review on the store page.

[DukeNukem64]

Holy... Sounds crazy Lunick. To make it "fit" with the rest?

[Sixty Four]

I will try Bombshell soon end of the month is bills time looks kind of fun and I will get extra points for showing my girl that I am being a girl and kicking ass

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

I love how the first image in the game's Steam description says "History in the making" and implies that Bombshell is going to be some famous game character instead of some chick in a below-average isometric game that tanked in sales and reviews.

[Sixty Four]

MYHOUSE.MAP, on 30 January 2016 - 11:40 PM, said:

I love how the first image in the game's Steam description says "History in the making" and implies that Bombshell is going to be some famous game character instead of some chick in a below-average isometric game that tanked in sales and reviews.

I hope to enjoy it personally and I laughed at the reviews not going to lie gave me a long needed one and felt good.... All I can do is that though, honestly how long will people listen to this? Yeah it effects sales and everything your doing its not a joke but all I can do is lmao at reviewers of today. I could write or say half the crap they say without playing a game let's be honest here. I am 99% sure I can. That's the thing though there in control a sad fact you bet. Its not even my typical genre xD Don't care about reviews they can suck it down (suck suck it down ohhhhh) game reminds me of devil may cry with more firepower and a hot girl Maybe when I play I will eat my words but I kind of doubt it. And while i'm at it lets get a ROTT 2 xD please I say I am begging. Bombshelly can be a playable character to I promise I will be her and kick all of you guys ass in Rott 2

[Steve 64]

Sixty Four, on 30 January 2016 - 11:38 PM, said:

I will try Bombshell soon end of the month is bills time looks kind of fun and I will get extra points for showing my girl that I am being a girl and kicking ass

I love to see your Let's Play of bombshell, sent your videos to me when you upload them so I can watch them.

[MetHy]

All I want to know is what's up with the FPS prequel made in Build? Is that even still a thing?

[Lunick]

MetHy, on 31 January 2016 - 03:50 AM, said:

All I want to know is what's up with the FPS prequel made in Build? Is that even still a thing?

Q4 this year, apparently.

[MetHy]

I thought it was supposed to be a free "marketing" product promoting the other Bombshell. Guess not and we're gonna have to pay for it, though I don't have a problem with that (unless the people involved in the making were not being paid like the rumors said).

Honestly I care more about the prequel, this like the Dark Void and Dark Void Zero effect. I really liked Dark Void Zero and haven't even played Dark Void.

[Oook]

I'm playing it and it's enjoyable: not shit, neither great. The price is nuts for what it is and this game needs coop, badly. The platforming is as stupid as I could expect from the developers of RotT, thanks to the deficient camera, which is way too close. The shooting is okay, and the landscape is gorgeously designed, but with a rather bland level design and weak enemy visuals (quadruped red aliens spitting acid, how original). The pace is slow, and the absolutely boring conversations where the control is taken from you or your character walks even slower don't help at all.
As for Bombshell herself, I think she need to be pushed either in a more aggressive direction, either in a more robotic, futuristic, dehumanized one -currently she's just too lovely to be "Duchess Nukem". The face is perfect, but her attitude needs to be edukated. Also, she would need a more recognizable outfit.
All in all, the game is meh (as I expected, for what the hell were they thinking to develop a generic top-down shooter and label it as an ARPG?) but I think Interceptor might have something very good in hands if they correctly develop this character and put her in a more fitting game, such as the BUILD prequel we all are waiting for. I would really like to see more from Bombshell, but again, if the player thinks this supposedly asskicking cybernetic woman is the cutest character he has seen in a videogame, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

[Player Lin]

That's funny since Bombshell's Steam page has said nothing about ARPG(just Action shooter, and "adventure" in its Genre tag, not sure if it was changed), but GoG.com still said ARPG at all...

I have to wait until I can buy it from Steam, GoG version just expensive for me...:|

[LkMax]

MetHy, on 31 January 2016 - 04:19 AM, said:

I thought it was supposed to be a free "marketing" product promoting the other Bombshell. Guess not and we're gonna have to pay for it, though I don't have a problem with that (unless the people involved in the making were not being paid like the rumors said).

Honestly I care more about the prequel, this like the Dark Void and Dark Void Zero effect. I really liked Dark Void Zero and haven't even played Dark Void.

Eh, Dark Void is not a bad game. Being allowed to switch between ground combat and flying by pressing a button was pretty cool in a few missions... unfortunately not all missions where designed like that though.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Player Lin, on 31 January 2016 - 07:43 AM, said:

That's funny since Bombshell's Steam page has said nothing about ARPG(just Action shooter, and "adventure" in its Genre tag, not sure if it was changed), but GoG.com still said ARPG at all...

It used to say this:

[Jenz/Amaka]

Oh look, there is a 3rd person view.


Now all is needed are mod tools to fix remaining issues and bam. Bombshell is now officially 3rd person shooter too.

[Steve 64]

Look better that way just saying

[TerminX]

It's really cool in third person, but most of the maps don't have ceilings or walls in positions that can't be seen with the standard overhead camera view.

[Steve 64]

Yeah I know well it could be patch to work that way fixing the textures and such right?

[Loke]

Jim Sterling did a video on it. He sort of liked it.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Scott Miller and Frederik Schreiber did a Q&A over at GOG:

Fred on the low review scores and how it effects Interceptor:

Quote

Thanks for the question Vicklemos!
We're still analyzing exactly what went wrong. We can definitely agree that the game doesn't deserve a 2/10.
During development of Bombshell, we did extensive playtesting, quality assurance, and feedback sessions to make sure we were on a right path. We've gotten some great reviews alongside the abysmal. We don't know exactly why the 2/10 reviews happened, but it's something we're taking very seriously. (Our goal was to create a great game scoring around an 8).

It's affecting sales. That's no secret. Unfortunately a lot of people tend to listen to the big sites, without giving the smaller sites a chance. That results in a very (unfairly) low metacritic, which translates directly to low sales. We're doing our best to hang in there, and are working as hard as we can on tweaks and fixes to make sure that every point the reviewers brought up has been fixed. It's something we take very seriously, as Bombshell is a big risk for us. It's a game we spent more than 2 years on. As a small indie studio, that means a lot to us.

Filtering out the obviously unfair reviews (2/10's), we're focusing on the ones that gives the game a fair chance for what it actually is. A lot of the better reviews (Like IGN), gives a good amount of feedback where we can improve. All of this is part of our internal post mortem so we can keep making great and better games.

The the low score reviews of the game, just doesn't justify a 2/10.

Something definitely went wrong. Wether someone has it out for 3D Realms specifically, or if we completely missed the mark with Bombshell, we can't say. But it is something we have to look into.

es, it will affect the studio. We're a small independent studio. For instance, we've never done a Kickstarter. We depend on loans and investors.

That means that our financial situation is at a way bigger risk if a game doesn't do well. But we won't leave without a fight, so don't worry!

Scott on what went wrong:

Quote

I think some reviewers were affect by three key factors:

[1] They were expected Sci-Fi Diablo, and instead got a top-down shooter with RPG-lite features. Partially our fault, because we called Bombshell an "action RPG", not realizing that we'd be mistaken for being a Diablo-style game but with more action.

[2] The game definitely has several difficulty spikes that turned out to be much harder than we anticipated. Note that we are racing to fix this asap.

[3] The version of the game that was reviewed still had 200 bugs/glitches that were NOT in the released version on Steam. So, we were unfairly dinged for having bugs that were only in the review copies, given out a week before release.

My hope is that players will play the game and see that it's not anything like the lower review scores we've gotten. IMO, the game is a solid 7 at worse. It's not a Game of the Year contender, but it's super solid high-action fun with a lot of nice features and gameplay that is rarely seen nowadays.

Fred on planned bug fixes:

Quote

We're working hard on bugfixing, and already have the first patch in testing. It will be released later this evening/tomorrow morning. This month we'll also release patch 1.1. We're analyzing every review and every comment we can find about to game. Based on this, we're splitting each issue into priorities, and are starting to work on solutions. Our goal is to make sure that every legitimate issue is dealt with.

Delaying a game is not always easy. We're a small company, and at some point you just run out of money and resources. We delayed the game to January (From November), to make sure we could release what we consider a good game. We're really proud of what we managed to pull off, and we're going to support the game with fixes and content for as long as we can.

Fred on the games main issues:

Quote

We feel the main issues have been the messaging. We tried leaning up against pre-views comparing the game to a Sci-Fi version of Diablo. That make's reviewers and fans have different expecations. The goal was never to create an action RPG or anything close to Diablo. Bombshell is an Action Shooter, with small RPG elements sprinkled over it.

I also have to mention that the reviewers recieved a build a few weeks before release. In the meantime we fixed more than 200 bugs, most related to the feedback we got from reivewers. This means that most issues presented in these reviews are not in the released version of the game. In hindsight we should probably have waited with the review copies until the game was completely ready.

Last but not least, there are a lot of legitimate problems with the game as well. The boss battles are way too hard, weapon balacing is off in some places, and there are levels we could probably have cut from the release (It is a very long game). These are all things we're looking into for patch 1.1 as well.

Scott on Bombshell's origins:

Quote

The character was first conceived about 1997, after I had watched the film, Barbwire, starring Pamela Anderson in the lead role. I wanted to come up with a really cool female action star who could handle any situation as well as a male hero, and also have a cool nickname, like Barbwire. Not long after I thought of the name, Bombshell, and I checked to make sure no one else in the game industry was using it.

The original idea was to give her a game all to herself. But that didn't work out, and so I convinced George Broussard to include her in Duke Nukem Forever, and in the first E3 Quake-engine trailer for DNF, you see her! But, at that time she was not nearly as well defined. In the early 2000's I tried to convince George that we should give Bombshell a cyber arm, with the story that she had lost her real arm in an explosion. But he wasn't a fan of the idea, and eventually dropped her from being in DNF.

Eventually, Fred and Interceptor learned about her and fell in love with the idea of a really strong and unique, non-sexified female lead, and two years later we have her in a game, FINALLY! lol. Interceptor did an amazing job giving her the perfect look, and adding a lot of special abilities like her super satisfying Mighty Punch.

Fred on Bombshell's relatively high specs:

Quote

When creating Bombshell, we wanted to make something that gave us the freedom to use the game camera in both cutscenes and gameplay, without changing meshes. Something that would use great technology, to differentiate ourselves from other isometric titles. We also felt that this would fit the game we were trying to make.
This meant that the entire game was built around "First Person Shooter standards" in terms of visual fidelity. (An example: The serial number imprinted in Bombshells' loverboy is visible is you zoom in far enough). Unfortunately this choice, also demanded high system specs. We did our best to make sure the game would run on lower spec systems, but yes, it is a demanding title.

Fred on future plans [SiN?]:

Quote

Hopefully! We have something brewing atm. that's related to another classic IP from the 1998 era.
Stay tuned!

Scott on Blood:

Quote

It's been a while, but I'll guess that 50% of it was in place before we handed the rights to Monolith. Most of the story idea was laid out, the lead character, most of the weapons like the Voodoo Doll, and the enemies mostly. But there was still a lot of work to be done making levels, adding new tech to the engine, the GUI, and tons of polishing.

It'd be fun to make a new Blood game or a full reboot, but finding out exactly who owns the rights to that IP has not been an easy process, so I don't think there's a good chance to see Blood revived.

Fred on the Bombshell Build shooter and Blood:

Quote

Expect at classic Build-Style shooter, with some cool tricks up it's sleeve!

We worked intensly on Blood, and even gathered the original team and founders of Q-Studios (The developers of Blood). Unfortunately due to licensing issues and ownership Blood is just not possible currently.

We would love to take a stab at C&C. Tiberian Dawn (The original 1996 classic), would do super well re-imagined to a modern audience. Starcraft need's a proper competitor! EA, you know how to get in touch!

Scott on Bombshell's humor/tone:

Quote

I think with regard to the story, anytime you have aliens attacking Earth, a female President with an American flag eye-patch, and a cyber-madman bad guy, there's probably going to be some cheese in the mix. We purposely went with an over-the-top storyline, because it's so hard to treat these types of stories with dead seriousness. We don't have the resources of a Naughty Dog or Rockstar, so we just do the best we can do.

The Duke Nukem comparisons are easy to make because Bombshell is fighting aliens like Duke does. But, I think Bombshell is a more interesting character in many important ways. For example, in Duke games, he goes around rescuing helpless "babes". In Duke's world, females are just there to be saved, and for him to have fun with. Bombshell, on the other hand, treats men as worthy team members, not as sexual fodder. In DNF, Duke sees a huge alien boss with three boobs in full view, and remarks, "I'd hit that." That may be the most juvenile line spoken in video game history--how did that get released!!?? Bombshell's speech will never come across so poorly.

I think you're right, though, that given this game's history, where we were making a Duke Nukem game originally, then had the rug pulled out from under us, that there was still some latent desire to make the original vision. Although, we consciously steered ourselves away from that as best we could.

[HulkNukem]

I'm still only a couple hours in, but I'm enjoying it; its a bit refreshing to play it.
Thanks 3DR/Interceptor

[Doom64hunter]

Quote

Unfortunately a lot of people tend to listen to the big sites, without giving the smaller sites a chance.

From what I've seen the game was universally panned, even IGN didn't give it above a 70. What smaller sites is he talking about?

Quote

Filtering out the obviously unfair reviews (2/10's), we're focusing on the ones that gives the game a fair chance for what it actually is. A lot of the better reviews (Like IGN), gives a good amount of feedback where we can improve. All of this is part of our internal post mortem so we can keep making great and better games.

This is an awful, awful, awful idea. If you're just going to listen to the reviews that didn't dislike your game as much, then you're probably not going to succeed with your next title either. All these reviews are quite lengthy and all of them state what they didn't like much about the game, disregard the score and your pride and take your time to actually read what they have to say.

In particular, there's one aspect that's mentioned in every single review, and which is almost universally disliked:
The repetitive, unfunny one-liners.

Quote

Bombshell's speech will never come across so poorly.

Scott's dead wrong here.
It takes a special kind of talent to create one-liners that don't get annoying and grating after a while. Rise of the Triad missed its mark, as did Bombshell.

Quips like:

Quote

“How many aliens does it take to screw in a light bulb? None! Because they’re dead!”

Just aren't funny or witty, and for all the bad stuff DNF did, it never got this annoying and repetitive with the voices. Having an immature comment like "I'd still hit that" in front of a huge alien with boobs one time is far less damaging to the experience than having the same dumb line repeated over and over throughout the whole game when it wasn't funny or fitting the first time around. Duke Nukem 3D manages to get around the annoyance by having most of his lines occur uncommonly when he blows or picks something up. Most importantly though, they are all really short, and having anything longer than "Come get some" or "Hail to the king baby" repeat itself over a playthrough gets annoying to listen to really quickly.

[Micky C]

Not to mention that a fair chunk of Duke's lines aren't trying to be funny. Phrases like "cool" and "groovy" when you pick stuff up are fairly generic. Plus they mostly mirror what the player is likely to be thinking which is pretty cool.

In fact, did Duke even make jokes in Duke 3D? None come to mind. There are a few one-off, unique phrases like "don't have time to play with myself", and "this is KTIT, K-tit, playing the breast, uh... best tunes in town." But they're certainly not catch phrases.

[X-Vector]

Scott:

Quote

So, we were unfairly dinged for having bugs that were only in the review copies, given out a week before release.

Fred:

Quote

In hindsight we should probably have waited with the review copies until the game was completely ready.

Bit of a difference in attitude.

[MetHy]

Everyone need to stop give so much importance to pro reviews. Chances are the people who've given very low scores have hardly played the game, their vision of this genre would be "who cares about top-down shooter games, that is so outdated, it's the kind of things you pay 2bucks for on a Steam sale, play for half an hour and never pick up again".

Giving such a low score is a way for them to give themselves self-importance, a way to try and justify their silly job that is so serious to them. That and also a way to tell you that next time, you gotta include payment-fees for them in your marketing budget. They can't give low scores to the mass of publishers paying them, so they have to find something else to give low scores to, just to pretend they are being serious.

Yeah, I despise the world of pro reviewers, that's no big news. Bribes aren't new either.

But let's not forget that Bombshell is going for a retro style, gameplay-oriented top down shooter. Nowadays this is a very niche genre. You can't seriously expect to touch the more mainstream audience with it, whose gaming world is all about cinematic stuff. Big sites reflect that vision of gaming, so in that sense, the review is pretty accurate, mobile phone/tablet gamers, and even the Call Of Duty audience, wouldn't care about a retro style top down shooter.

You need to sort out the reviews, give more attention to those done by the audience you were aiming for. Again, you can't seriously expect to aim at everyone with this type of game in this new world of free "pay to win" social games and cinematic adventures on next gen consoles. ROTT was mixing retro and modern, so is Bombshell, you must know that you're going for a specific, smaller, audience, which big review sites don't reflect. If you didn't realize that though, then you're still living in the 90's.