PlayStation Experience Hands On — Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

While At The PlayStation Experience I Was Able To Check Out Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes; An Interesting Bomb Disposal Title Coming For The Project Morpheus

Project Morpheus was on the show floor for the PlayStation Experience. It had a bunch of different tech demos and early games to help show off how cool the tech could be but one game that got a lot more buzz than anything was Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes. Given the demand of the Morpheus at the PSX the line was doubly huge for Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes but I had a chance to sit down and give this cool bomb disposal virtual reality title a few play throughs. Most were on beginner but I did get a chance to play the higher difficulty. Here are my thoughts on the whole experience.

As a little bit of background on Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, it uses the tried and true TV/Film sequence where a novice bomb disposal agent has found a bomb and is on the phone with an expert to make sure it doesn’t explode. In the case of this game the disposal is the person with the VR mask on and the expert is a friend sitting nearby with nothing but files on how to decode and defuse the different traps and triggers on said bomb. This is where the keep talking part comes in as the disposal player can’t see the notes and the expert can’t see the bomb. Everything is described by one and other to make sure no one explodes in the game.

While the graphics are not yet to a level to compete with many other AAA titles out there, Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes does exactly what it needs to and pulls it off well for the game. This includes some of the puzzles being difficult to decipher by design and not fault of hardware or design. It really did feel like you had some kind of suitcase bomb that was thrown together and dropped off at a police department. This added an extra level of dread for the one on the helmet as they called out what they saw on the bomb. Well at least it did for me.

The best part and the most fun part of Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes was that it really was like a technologically advanced game of charades when you boil it down. Normally a game that is dreaded but Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes left me and my buddies laughing in the end with how much fun it was to try and figure out what the hell “squiggly lines” meant when presented with symbols to press. Not to mention when one of us that were playing the role of the expert stated “push the button” before reading the rest of the text in the manuals. It usually went like “Push the button…Wait! Push and hold the button…Nothing happened? Good. Now…”

There was one issue I did happen to find with Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes that could lead the game to loosing replay factor rather quickly. While the puzzles were random I was able to memorize the manual to the point where the first run was completed in 4:59:02 in minutes. The second run was done in under minute’s time. Granted once we jumped to a higher level that truly mixed up the puzzles there was no time to even complete one puzzle before blowing up but I can see that difficulty declining fast with multiple play throughs of the same person. Then again, maybe it was just me and my memory.

None the less I think Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes was probably the best way to show off the Project Morpheus without relying on street luge or flight sims. Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes shows what can be made with a very forward thinking and talented development team and I can’t wait to see what they will be able to come up with once the device and game have reached the end of the development cycle.