Had a dream about this last night. The player character was a smartly dressed black man in a dark blue suit. It had clock tower level graphics, proof that it’s the gameplay and not the graphix that make the game. You had to search a convoluted interior area like a residence or office, find the bomb, and defuse it. I vaguely remember there was some kind of instruction about examining the electrical meters to determine which meters had been recently serviced or something…the bomb was connected to the electrical system. It was hard, intense, and confusing - the way I like games to be.
Then it started to get really weird. I was inside the game all of a sudden. Then I realized, it wasn’t only bombs you had to worry about - you also sometimes had to deal with attack by a human character. There was a noise at the door, and I grabbed a garrotte, ready to strangle whoever came through. Alec Baldwin walked in, but he was inside a big bag. I yelled: “Baldwin in a bag! Baldwin in a bag!” and wrapped the wire around his neck. I managed to throw him to the ground, but he wriggled out of the bag and escaped my grasp.
That’s all I can remember.
I really, really wish this game was real.
I guess there are enough talented Dopers here who can do it if there’s a budget.
I volunteer to write the storyline.
Each Baldwin brother should come in a different bag.
I think the OP’s onto something. However, I could see bomb defusal being more of a title like Modern Warfare: EOD.
There are enough war games already, taking place in the same goddamn god-forsaken dusty desert with the same tan/brown color palettes and the same stock military characters. I saw The Hurt Locker - I thought it was a bad movie, actually. But dig it, dude: the kind of game I envisioned was more about corporate/industrial sabotage and domestic terrorism type bombs. The kind of bombs that are left by crazy lunatics like the Unabomber; bombs among us right here at home, hidden in post offices, laundry rooms, scientific labs, etc. And the hero of the game is a sly, dapper, suit-wearing guy, not a military grunt.
How about instead of having to find one bomb per level you have to find several. The places you look in would also have signs pop up. Those signs would have numbers on them and that number would indicate how many bombs are adjacent to that sign.
Needs a snappy title though.
What if when you entered a room, you got a number telling you how many bombs were in the 8 adjacent rooms?
Different types of bombs should invoke different mini-games to defuse them–some puzzles, some dexterity tests, some just requiring you to follow complicated procedures (from memory). There should also be complications, like booby traps or difficult placements. Maybe one of the bombs could be in a vest on a hostage, and it will go off if he stops moving (a scenario I recall from some show with Sammo Hung); the player has to defuse it on the go.
I actually like the idea quite a bit.
There’s a part of Metal Gear Solid 2 where you have to search a section of the “Big Shell” ocean oil refinery station for bombs and spray them with some kind of spray that deactivates them. The people who made the game were ingenious in hiding the bombs; they’d always be in places where it was totally impossible to find them, and yet, when you finally did find them, you’d think, “how in the fuck did I ever miss that?” The changing camera angles were also used to great effect in directing your attention away from where the bombs were. Fantastic section of a fantastic game.
Baldwin in a bag! Baldwin in a bag!
