How much do you enjoy saying dick? How about tits, butthole or rimjob? If you’re of a certain age then Bulletstorm will make your profanity-strewn brain light up like a Christmas tree – everyone else will probably just sigh and go back to playing something a little more… interesting. I don’t think Bulletstorm is without merit. The satisfaction of killing screaming freaks in a variety of ways is initially fun and the game is a little more self-aware than I ever thought it would be, but once those fresh nuggets of joy begin to fade there’s nothing left that’s memorable.

The premise:

Bulletstorm follows former soldier Grayson Hunt, and his cyborg partner Ishi Sato, whose squad went AWOL after they were betrayed by their commanding officer, General Sarrano. Ten years later, after a spontaneous and liquor-induced attempt to take revenge on the General and his forces, Hunt’s and Sato’s ship crash-landed on the planet Stygia, a former resort planet now overrun with meat-eating plants, feral mutant tribes, criminals, and freaky monsters. Hunt and Sato search for a way off the planet, all while doing battle with the General’s forces, who also crashed on Stygia after Hunt’s attack.

What I liked:

Visuals – for a shooter made with the Unreal engine (which every critic believes is shite) Bulletstorm looks incredibly vibrant and colourful. Vistas over an overgrown city look as verdant as those in Enslaved and some set pieces are breathtaking in scope and size. The most memorable being chased by a giant flywheel careering into the scenery while escaping on a train. It also does a good job of breaking up these expansive-looking outdoor areas with dark and grim levels underground. These are more like the usual Gears of War grey ‘n brown remix which makes emerging into a sunlight drenched city all the more arresting.

Initial gameplay – the whole point to Bulletstorm from the trailers and demo was centred around ‘KILLING WITH SKILL’. After grabbing an electrical leash in the first hour you have the ability to pull enemies towards you, impaling them on spikes, shooting them in slow-mo or using your boot to send them into environmental objects. This is all great fun at first – the text pop-ups giving Bulletstorm the over the top arcade feel that puts a grin across your face in no time at all. This playground of death allows you to experiment with weapons and can lead to totally unique ways of approaching levels.

What I didn’t like:

The start – for a game marketed with such dudebro fervour the actual experience is so painfully slow to get going. The opening scenes involve a brief flashback which for story reasons is essential and vaguely interesting. But the actual playing experience of the first 30 minutes is bizarrely dull and boring. You do a bit of shooting, fade to black, cutscene. Vault over an obstruction, fade to black, cutscene, obtain item, fade to black, cutscene. The pacing is dreadfully plodding and even after grabbing the leash and unlocking the skillshot system the game still struggles to get into gear until several hours in.

Gameplay – despite enjoying Bulletstorm’s skillshot system in the opening half of the game I quickly became bored with it. I know! Madness right? Part of this apathy came down to the variety of enemies and the rote nature of the level design. Outside of the set-pieces, which are admittedly impressive, the push and pull mechanic never evolves. Once you’ve leashed a dude and kicked him into a Man-Eater you’re pretty much done. Sure, I could go through the skillshot database and collect ‘em all but it adds little to the experience or, frankly, my boredom during the latter half of the game.

Burnouts – When I encountered these creatures (fully mutated humans) I knew something was up. The change from ordinary armed humans to dumb, powerful melee mutants sucked most of the enjoyment out of the game. Killing these bullet-sponges was neither fun or added anything to the fiction or atmosphere of the world. It felt more like a change for change’s sake and it marked the point where I thought Bulletstorm fell back into mediocrity.

The Judgement:

I really don’t have a problem with Bulletstorm’s inherent immature attitude. Some of it is ends up being self-aware and deprecating, other times unnecessarily profane beyond self-parody. It’s DudeBro nature and the skillshot gameplay are pretty cool at first but for a game that seems to pack a lot of action into its eight hours, I was oddly bored most of the way through. It’s slack-jawed opening hour and the lack of progression with the shooting mechanics mean that Bulletstorm, for me, was a let down.

 

Bulletstorm review - the 18-rated shooter for 13 year-olds, 3.0 out of 10 based on 2 ratings