I love Tetris. I love Smash Bros. I love Balloon Fight.
In other words, it was natural for me to be the one to preview Firehose’s Slam Bolt Scrappers at PAX this past weekend, because it combines all three in the most chaotic way possible.
And, when I say chaotic, I need to emphasize: C-H-A-O-T-I-C. It’s especially so when combined with three other players on a noisy show floor and suffering from a hangover from the night before. Damn you, Atlantic Beer Garden. The platformer is played in 2-D and requires someone to be quite ambidextrous, not only moving a character around a screen while punching enemies and firing off special weapons, but also collecting and placing blocks a la Tetris on their home platform.
I managed to squeeze in a couple matches against some unlucky convention-goers, and our team won both times pretty handily. I don’t even know how that happened, as at one point I had been killed and was regenerating (done by mashing buttons in a certain order) and my platform was nearly wiped clean, when only moments later was declared a victor.
But I guess that’s the magic of this little game. It all just sort of works, even with floaty controls and difficulty to focus on one area (again, possibly due to a hangover). It’s loads of fun in short, uncontrollable bursts.
There’s definitely a trend in games recently that forces friendships apart. Slam Bolt Scrappers isn’t helping fix that, and when the game releases (TOMORROW!) it’ll probably end a few marriages as well.
Available 3/15 for the Playstation Network (PSN). Images courtesy Firehose games.
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