Good: Peppy music, occasionally fun puzzles

Bad: Dippy story, plentiful obnoxious puzzles

Potential Lawsuit: Obvious Minesweeper rip-off

Shane: Smartbomb dares to try a different approach to the venerable portable puzzle genre by melding a wide variety of simple brainteasers (think: flipping switches, aligning lasers, and enduring a lame Minesweeper clone) with a deep plot. It’s not a crappy concept, but the story—an overwrought and predictable tale of a mad bomber versus bomb-defusing experts—surely doesn’t do the puzzles (most of which are pretty darned obnoxious to begin with) any favors.

In fact, you’re probably better off skipping the cheesy story mode altogether. Its 10 levels of dull cut-scenes and duller voice acting combined with a smattering of annoying puzzles offers little fun. The developers have even engineered shocking new methods of making the game less enjoyable: First, you can actually die in the menu while choosing your next puzzle, thanks to an ever-present countdown timer. Next, the tortuous boss encounters boil down to vague trial-and-error defusing with strict time limits...prepare to replay these levels a few times.

You can experience the same assortment of passable-looking puzzles (sans narrative) in arcade mode, and you’ll find a few that aren’t too painful, like a Marble Madness–inspired maze and a clever bomb-disposal robot offering. It’s not worth it. Stick with Lumines.

Mark: If you’re going to slap together a bunch of dusty old mini-games available for free on the Internet, at least upgrade the graphics, polish the controls, discount the price—something. Sadly, the makers of Smartbomb didn’t heed this advice. What you’re left with is a bit like WarioWare, just without the personality, humor, originality, or fun. Even if you’re in the market for a collection of distracting brain-ticklers, the repetitive setup and some horribly designed interfaces negate what little enjoyment a few of the games might have offered.

Christian: Smartbomb is beyond merely bad—it’s kind of depressing. Even if it were done well, its unambitious collection of logic puzzles would still be stale. But the painfully restrictive time limits and sluggish control pushes it well beyond my tolerance, while the die-and-retry gameplay only makes it worse.

Then, of course, comes the ultra-laughable story. Tying a puzzle game to a futuristic military weaponry yarn? It worked in the movie WarGames but not here. Smartbomb is just a result of wrongheaded thinking from inception to completion. Its poor quality is so obvious that I don’t understand how this game made it to my PSP.

The verdicts (out of 10)

Shane: 3.0

Mark: 3.0

Christian: 2.5

Publisher: Eidos

Developer: Core

Players: 1 (2-4 via Wi-Fi)

ESRB: Everyone 10+

www.eidos.com

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Electronic Gaming Monthly.