I recently purchased Bulletstorm when it was Amazon’s Dead of the Day. I have to admit here and now that although I was a little bit interested in Bulletstorm I was just as interested in the Gears 3 Beta invitation that came with it. I had been considering purchasing it, but when it was announced that you did not have to purchase Bulletstorm to get into the Gears 3 Beta I rather quickly changed my mind in deciding to wait to purchase until it was a cheaper price. It was eventually revealed that you would need a Gears 3 Gamestop preorder to get an invitation, so seeing Amazon’s Deal of the Day I decided to bite the bullet (hurrrr) and give Bulletstorm a shot. (Ok, ok, that was the last pun I swear!)
Presentation/Feel
sfd Bulletstorm is presented pretty perfectly for what it wants to be — a crude shooter looking to be all about two things: killing with skill and fun. The characters are larger than life. Our main character (whom players control), Grayson Hunt, is an ex-military commando turned renegade drunken space pirate. Ishi is Grayson’s best friend and another ex-commando. He is injured in a crash landing and in order to save him a doctor adds cybernetic parts to him including an AI. He spends most of the game trying to fight the AI, who is only looking for survival, for control of himself. The last two important characters are General Serrano and Trishka. General Serrano is a brash, vulgar man — the stereotypical drill sergeant. Trishka is a commando under Serrano’s command. She is just as tough and vulgar as the boys and can hold her own in a fight.
In addition to the presentation of the characters is the writing. The writing is full of witty and memorable one liners. In one exchange Trishka says that if Grayson and Ishi try to follow her that she will “kill their dicks” to which Grayson replies “What? What does thet even mean? Your gonna kill my dick? I’ll kill your dick! How bout that, huh?!” Another exchange between Gray and Ishi has Grey talking about the possibility of them snuggling and making out in a “totally hetero way.” There are many immature and coarse exchanges like this throughout the game that you will (or should) chuckle at. The playstyle fits right along with the dialogue, but we’ll talk about that more when we get to gameplay.
Sound
The sound is nothing extraordinary. The music, while not bad, is largely forgettable. That’s not meant as an insult to it at all. The music is fitting, but by no means will you walk away from Bulletstorm humming any tunes. The sound effects of the weaponry is good and gives a good feel for power, especially on secondary fire modes. Where the sound aspect of Bulletstorm shines is in the voice acting. The voice actors of Grayson (the player character), Trishka, Ishi and Serrano really understood what the Bulletstorm is — a crude, violent, testosterone filled guilty pleasure. This comes through in their delivery and fits the overall feel quite well.
Graphics
Bulletstorm has the oddity of having both fantastic graphics and graphics of questionable quality. The backdrop of this resort world that you find yourself on is bright and vibrant. I often found myself stopping the march to the next group of baddies to stop and admire the landscape. The Unreal Engine does some very nice water effects — they were evident in BioShock and they were evident again in Bulletstorm. Some of the problems with the graphics is when you take a look at the area that your character inhabits. Not all of the foreground has graphical problems. Some areas of the foreground are very polished, but others could have used more time to polish. There is an area later in the game where there is an electrical storm outside of the building. When you see the storm in the air the effect is not that bad, but when you see the lightning hitting surfaces the lack of polish is somewhat evident. In addition there were one or two cutscenes towards the beginning of the game where the fine textures on the characters failed to render giving everything that typical “before texture pop-in” type of a look. The problems with the graphics are nowhere near gamebreaking, but it is obvious that some of the graphical work could have used that little bit of extra polish.
Gameplay
adsf The gameplay is the area where BS really begins to shine. It is by no means perfect, but it has a lot more pure fun than I’ve experienced in a shooter in a bit of time. The beauty of the combat of BS is the point system. You will receive points for various different types of kills.
A basic kill (shooting an enemy enough for them to fall) is worth 10 points. If you manage to land a headshot kill it will be worth 25 points. Then there are other types — anything from environmental to shooting an enemy in the family jewels followed by a headshot. There are over 100 skill shots, as they are called, that can be discovered and performed, often named for innuendo. The effect of these skill shots is that enemy encounters become an event rather than a means to the next part of the story arc. Instead of seeing a battle as something to be cleared to get to the next one I started seeing each encounter as it’s own level. How can I maximize the number of points I receive for these kills? What new skillshots might I be able to pull off in this encounter?
There is a database of skillshots, the majority with descriptions on how to accomplish them. This makes it simple to try to pull off a combo you never have before. These points you accumulate for various skillshots are used resupply stations. They can be used to purchase upgrades to your weapons or to purchase ammo. Thus the more points you gain during battle the faster you will be able to upgrade and the more ammo will be available for your arsenal.
The last thing I want to talk about is weaponry. You receive 8 different weapons for your arsenal throughout the campaign. This includes your standard fare like an assault rifle, shotgun, pistol and sniper rifle, but you also receive a number of unique weapons. One of these weapons, the Flailgun, fires 2 grenades attached to each other via a chain. The chain wraps around an enemy and you can remote detonate the grenades (often after kicking the enemy towards his buddies!) In addition, each weapon has a secondary mode which requires charges to fire. The assault rifle fires one megablast (supposedly 100 rounds in one blast), the pistol fires off a firework like round and the four barreled shotgun fires a wave of fire that can vaporize any enemy in its path. This adds extra mayhem and fun to weapons that might otherwise grow stale more quickly.
My only real complaint about gameplay is how quickly some skillshots grow stale. You will receive a lot of headshots and a lot of environmental kills. There was one section where enemies chase you down a corridor. I turned a corner in a U shaped hallway and found some rods sticking out of the wall. I waited around the corner and all 4 enemies came charging around the corner where I kicked all 4 successive enemies into the spikes for 100 points each. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if there weren’t so many of the same 2-3 environmental kills spots everywhere on the map. There’s only so many times you can impale or shock enemies to death before it becomes a tad stale. If they had added more variation and more skillshots (8-12 per weapon and 40-50 general just didn’t feel like it was enough) it would have really helped stave off some of the stale feelings towards the end of the campaign.
Story
This will probably the oddest part of the game for most people going in. The whole premise of BS is to be a mindless, fun shooter. It absolutely is, but there is an underlying story that takes a more direct (and serious) role by the middle of the game and into the second half. For those with little knowledge of BS, the premise of the game is to get murderous revenge on one man, General Serrano, for war crimes that he ordered our main characters to commit. However, in the second half of the game we see a lot of character growth in Grayson. His character shows significant maturation and looks as much for redemption as he does for blind revenge. Though I was only looking to “kill some dicks” with some “quality soldiering” I found myself looking forward to how the game’s plot would resolve itself the further I got into the game. While I won’t spoil anything, the ending does set up for a sequel. Let’s hope that Epic makes enough to give People Can Fly another go at the BS universe.
Replayability
Though I’ve only played the campaign once and done a bit of the other two modes (which we’ll get to in a second), I can see replayability of BS being higher than a lot of other shooters out there. The implementation of a multitude of skillshots (most likely more than you can achieve in your first playthrough) will make sure that you come back for more. In addition to the campaign there are two additional modes: Echoes and Anarchy. Echoes mode is basically a series of challenge levels where you attempt to get par scores where you can earn 1-3 stars based on performance. These stars unlock new maps. Your scores get uploaded to a leaderboard where you you can compete with your friends. Anarchy mode is a cooperative multiplayer experience that is actually tied to story arc much in the same way that BioShock 2′s multiplayer was a part of the narrative. While not a huge part it is mentioned by characters as you progress through the campaign. As for the gameplay Anarchy is a lot like Halo’s Firefight mode or Gears 2′s Horde mode. You fight off rounds of baddies, but the BS twist is that you need a certain team score to progress to the next level. There are challenge combos as well as team combos to add some extra depth and teamwork. Unfortunately replay takes a bit of a hit by not having a cooperative mode for campaign. I can understand why they did not include a coop mode in terms of the narrative. Gray never really knows who he can trust and the same characters do not always accompany Gray, but they could have done a Halo style coop where the 2nd player is not visible for cutscenes and story sections. This could have added team skillshots to the campaign mix and spiced things up a bit.
Final Verdict
Bulletstorm is well made and has a definite level of polish to it. It was a fun and somewhat refreshing experience. If you’re looking for a shooter that doesn’t take itself too seriously this is probably a game for you to take a look at, but don’t be shocked when the story takes a bit more serious turn in the second half of the game. There are some very good set pieces and it feels very big in scope. I did not time how long campaign took me, but I would guess between 10-12 hours. There is more than enough content to justify a full purchase (especially factoring in the Gears 3 beta in April), but this could also be a great title to hold out for in the long summer months. For $40 I feel like I’ve got my money’s worth.
Score: 9.0
