Of the many, many games I played at PAX East, the one that took me most by surprise had to be Slam Bolt Scrappers. I knew the game existed, I knew it had an awesome title, but I had no idea what it really was. Upon playing it, I knew what it was. It was a must buy.
So in Slam Bolt Scrappers you play as one of several little guys with customizable hats. What do the hats do besides look stylish? I dunno, but man are they stylish. You also get them from beating levels and stuff. But anyways, I’m getting off track. So you play the game thusly. All of your little guys can fly. Enemies come out of the sky. Little demon things and ninjas from what I saw. You punch the little demons to death. They drop blocks. Then you position your little guy over a Tetris style grid and figure out where to drop the block. If you can make a square you get a gun. But what type of gun? Ah, see, there are seven different colors of blocks. Red is missiles, purple is lasers, blue is shields, etc. You have to make squares of the same color in order to get anything done. That’s the tricky part. Also, the ninjas release power ups, like shields for your character and the ability to turn into a flaming missile when you press the punch button. Also also, you can attack the opposing players directly in order to massively stall them through death.
Now imagine all that in four player team deathmatches. Having to work together with a buddy in deflecting attacks and making attacks and putting the right pieces together at the right time. I literally did not want to put the game down. I had another appointment I had to get to. Screw that, I thought, I wanna play more of this. I even got to see a boss level from the single player mode. You have to hit a robot with your block arsenal, as he is invulnerable to attack. An even better boss battle came from a guy riding a cloud. You only have small squares on a giant tower that you can fill up, so you have to be very picky about where you put your blocks. It requires some major thinking.
This really is one of the most fun PSN games I’ve seen, and it comes out, oh, about todayish. You really should give it a download. It’s fun single player, it’s really fun multiplayer, it’s one of the best things to come out of PAX, and this is the show where I finally got to play Duke Nukem Forever after 12 long years of waiting. This game beat out 12 years of impotent frustration – that’s how much I enjoyed it. So do yourself a favor and check this out. I know this isn’t a review, but I can’t imagine this game only being good for the two stages of single player and few games of multiplayer I’ve experienced. That would just be cruel.
