Bulletstorm Review (360)

Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

Just as you’d thought you’d played every single variation that can be introduced to the already over flowing waters of the FPS genre, here comes Bulletstorm and its cast of foul mouth mercenaries to stick 2 fingers up at the competition and say “here I am *@%& #/@* look at me!”. And that’s exactly what this very aptly named game does from start to finish during one big rollercoaster that is the campaign all the way through to the excellent anarchy multiplayer mode. You begin the game on the lead protagonist Grayson Hunt’s space ship with his friends Rell, Ishi and Doc. This is just a game controls walkthrough and an introduction to the toilet humour throughout, but serves as a good introduction. After this Grayson drunkenly smashes his ship into that of General Sorano, the games main bad guy, then it cuts to a short bit of gameplay to explain the hatred between the 2 characters. Now back in the main game you’ll be greeted by the wreck that is Grayson’s ship and a very badly injured Ishi on a wonderful resort planet/hell hole called Stygia which you’ll very quickly come to realise is full of all sorts of crazy folk and mutants. From here on in it’s all about getting to Sorano, who you find out has crash landed on the same planet, for a way off the dump you’ve just landed on, all the while fighting through the most ridiculous amount of enemies they could throw at you and it never lets up. En route you’ll meet the cocky heroine Trishka who’ll try and kick your ass before joining you in getting out of this mess and has her own story to be revealed. The storyline isn’t one of Bulletstorm’s strong points. but the clichéd story of revenge and betrayal does fit the over the top humour and action nicely all the way through the games extremely fast paced 7 acts and 18 chapters up to the suitably cheesy ending. So how does the game look and play!? The game is laid out in 3 modes. Campaign, Echoes mode and Anarchy mode. In the campaign, the action is cranked to 11 from start to finish, moving from all out gun fights to gigantic set pieces in and out of vehicles. You start off finding a power cell to save your injured friend Ishi. During this, you’ll find your soon to be best friend ‘the leash’. This is used for everything from moving obstacles to most important of all, killing bad guys. Once Ishi is saved, your next big step is finding a dropkit, Bulletstorms own little shops/record keepers that are dotted throughout the game for you. Upon finding this, you discover what makes Bulletstorm’s gameplay so different. The skillpoints. You’re awarded points for every kill, but not just the kill,but how you do it.. What starts off as a gimmick becomes an obsession. No longer is this a ‘how to I get to that checkpoint’ kinda game. You find yourself taking time to figure out what can be done to the poor people standing in front of you. The more stylish you are, the more skillpoints you receive. These are used as currency for weapons, ammo and upgrades throughout the game. The more of these you get the more skillshots become available to you.

This game is polished to a degree that I wish all games were

This addictive feature brings me onto echoes mode, where you’re let loose in certain parts of the main game with the sole purpose of racking up as many points as possible. This is one area where it all comes alive and the obsession just gets worse. Continuously going through the various echoes perfecting each kill is fantastically addictive. Then you have anarchy mode, Bulletstorm’s 4 player online co-op kill frenzy. You join up with 3 other players to fight your way through a points based horde mode. You get enough points, you go through, you don’t, then you get the opportunity to try again. This makes for some great laughs as you try and set the shots up, constantly throwing special enemies that have required team skillshots to perform.. The early levels aren’t that hard but it ramps up the difficulty at a nice enough pace to keep it interesting. Next up, the graphics….WOW! This game is polished to a degree that I wish all games were. In motion it’s a sight to behold. The environments are crisp and detailed and the action moves smooth as silk. Adding these graphics and smoothness on top of the gameplay just makes Bulletstorm a joy to play. Unfortunately, after I’ve just talked the game up to high heavens it’s obviously not without fault. The campaign is rather short. I finished it in around 7 or 8 hours on the hardest difficulty. It does however get a nice bit of longevity added by the other modes. The action may also, if you aren’t as excitable as myself, grate a bit. Maybe you just want to go from point A to point B as quickly as possible. In that case, maybe Bulletstorm isn’t for you as it forces you to do skillshots for currency. The voiceovers may get old if you don’t like a bit of toilet humour like myself. But last yet definitely not least, I was seriously disappointed at the lack of a co-op campaign or echoes mode. I feel that this was a big opportunity missed and hope they consider it in any possible sequels. All in all I feel that Bulletstorm is a great game that’s the kind of refreshing idea the FPS needs to keep it going. It’s quick and slick with a few annoyances but always holds your attention. Anyone looking for an old school shooter with a new school touch should definitely try it.