KEEP TALKING AND NOBODY EXPLODES
PS VR party starter tick, tick, ticks all the right boxes
Polite small talk? Nibbles? Inadvisable amounts of wine? Keep ’em – the truth is, nothing breaks the ice like the shared emotional trauma of defusing a bomb. Save an invitation for this originally-PC-only multiplayer game. It drops a live explosive into the lap of one headset-wearer, a convoluted 23page manual into the hands of everyone else, then sits back and laughs as chaos ensues. The rules are simple. Each bomb is covered in various procedurally-generated puzzle modules. Solve them all before the timer reaches zero, and you’ve safely deactivated the bomb to audible sighs of relief. Make three mistakes, or fail to complete all modules in time, and boom – that’s your dinner party/friendships/hypothetical body parts in pieces.
Only the VR-inhabiting “Defuser” can see the bomb and interact with it using DualShock 4. Meanwhile, a room full of “Experts” are leafing through printed instructions (or studying the digital version of the manual displayed on the TV screen) and firing questions at the Defuser. “What colour is the button?”“How many wires are there? Is the last wire red? No, don’t cut it!” They’re just as reliant on the Defuser to provide accurate information on what they’re working with.
“There’s a symbol that looks like a smiley face…”“I think the Morse code is spelling ‘B-U-M’?”“Just so you know, we’ve got 40secondsleft.”
ATOMIC SMITTEN
It works flawlessly: with screen-cheating, eye contact and hand gestures all off the table (probably just as well when things start getting heated), success hinges on how efficiently players are able to communicate. Inevitably, much of the team talk turns into screaming, laughing, praying and idiot-blaming as bombs become increasingly complex and timers and tempers get shorter. Environmental distractions in VR and hilariously devilish modules (one featuring buttons labelled with words like “Uhhh”, “Wait”, “No” and “Hold On”, another playing on the Stroop effect with coloured colour names) ensure every playthrough is its own challenge.
One more bombshell: there’s very little to criticise. Controls can be unintuitive for casual players unfamiliar with pads (they can’t look at the buttons, natch), and solving easier puzzles feels rote after many hours. But with a “custom bomb” mode that changes the number of modules, alters timers and adds hard modifiers, plus the ability for any and all bystanders to play along, even those quibbles are blown apart.
“TEAM TALK TURNS INTO SCREAMING, LAUGHING, PRAYING AND IDIOT-BLAMING.”