Developer: People Can Fly, Epic Games Inc.
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rrp: £14.99 (Steam)
Released: 25th February 2011
Available on Steam
Played using: Mouse and Keyboard
Grayson Hunt is a foul mouthed, snarky and often drunk, ex mercenary turned pirate on his quest for revenge and/or redemption. He’s also who you’ll be playing as in this adventure. Joining him in this endeavor is Ishi Sato who is a pissed off cyborg (for reasons that are explained in the game and would be a spoiler).
Bulletstorm is a FPS (First Person Shooter to the uninitiated) from the creators of Painkiller, People Can Fly. At For a start there’s its signature weapon, the energy leash. glance Bulletstorm looks to be a simple run and gun shooter and that isn’t untrue, but Bulletstorm does have a few things which separate it from others of its kind.
For a start there’s its signature weapon, the energy leash. This is a weapon you’ll grow to love and use extensively with this games Skillshot system (something I will cover in greater depth shortly). You’ll also use the leash to get past obstacles etc to progress the game.
In case that video didn’t quite spell it out for you, Bulletstorm is loud, brash, bombastic and completely over the top but that’s what makes it great. There is something that should be kept in mind while playing this game, it was released at a time when a FPS was always either as realistic as possible and gritty or well… Or Halo. It was such a breath of fresh air, because it didn’t take itself seriously at all! Plus you have to love how vibrant the world is, yeah it’s filled with savages and murderers but it’s so damned colourful!
Now we speak on the second thing that separates this game from other run and gun shooters and that’s the Skillshot system. Every time you kill an enemy (after a certain point near the beginning of the game) you’ll see numbers appear in neon scoring your killing style, the more unique and interesting the kill the higher the numbers get, and the methods of killing your enemies can become REALLY interesting as the game goes on. You may wonder, why would you bother trying to achieve these weird and wonderful kills? Well Skillshots earn Skillpoints and Skillpoints can be spent in Dropkits that you find in the world allowing you to buy weapons, ammo and upgrades for your equipment.
The game gives you a list of Skillshots you can perform and how many Skillpoints they are worth, most of which are locked off until you discover them or get the correct weapon or skill.
Of course the trade off is that in order to perform the Skillshots that will give you the most points you’ll, more often than not, be in the line of fire for your enemies. So you can play it safe and play carefully slowly buying your upgrades but that’s boring and frankly if you want to play it like that I don’t care to know you. You can see what Skillshots you’ve not performed yet through a dropkit or by pressing [N] at any time. Sadly as you might be able to tell from the video, I’m not very good at Skillshots.
If you want a branching storyline then I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment, this game is completely linear. There’s no room for going off script and wandering the wilderness or making your own story, you play the one that’s set out in front of you, such as it is. To that end the game actually lacks a jump button, instead you can only jump when a prompt allows it. This is quite the jarring change for anyone who’s played a First Person Shooter for more than a few minutes, it’s clearly been designed that way to keep the player on track.
But, other than the removal of a jump button, I think that’s just fine, sometimes it’s nice to play out a story that’s been made for you. In this case I don’t think the story will be getting any awards nor will the characters be getting praised because they’re pretty one note, but that’s ok I wasn’t expecting a lot to begin with.
The humour in this game isn’t for everyone if you aren’t one for toilet humour and dick jokes then you’ll probably not get much of a laugh out of this game. Not all of the humour is vocalised though, quite a lot of it comes from the sadistic glee of shooting an enemy in the crotch and then kicking them into a cactus (or some other deadly implement).
It’s certainly not a game without flaws, for example there’s the whole Games For Windows Live issue. You see in order to play this game you must have Games For Windows Live installed and register an account regardless of where you bought it from. I also feel obligated to tell you that in order to install a version that works you have to uninstall the one that comes with Windows and then do a Google search for GFWL 6.5. This is an extremely annoying barrier to entry if you ask me.
It has to be mentioned that Bulletstorm is a console port and as such has a much smaller FOV than I am used to. Since there isn’t a FOV slider included (oh dear, I’m starting to sound like Totalbiscuit) the only way to fix this issue is by editing the system files. Not everyone will want or need to do this of course but without doing that the game just starts making feel a little queasy.
Bulletstorm is well worth a look into but not at is Rrp, it’s fun, but too short lived and given the whole GFWL issue £14.99 is just too much to ask. If you can find this game at a cheaper price though (say under £8) I would thoroughly recommend picking it up.
If you liked that then perhaps try;
Painkiller
The Borderlands Series
Shadow Warrior
