Bulletstorm review

Bulletstorm (360)

Bulletstorm is a game that has a great premise: a new take on the First Person Shooter, where simple ‘shoot this bad guy’ is thrown out. Instead you are encouraged to kill your enemies through an idea called ‘Skillshots’. In this you are given points for your inventiveness in dispatching your foes that can then be spent on upgrading weapons and buying ammo. This is an idea that led to an entertaining build up to the games release. This included an entertaining spoof of Call of Duty and its dull nature and possible an even funnier diagnosis from Fox News calling it "The worst video game in the world”. 

The game itself though is superb fun. The skillshot system used to great effect; with a basic kill gaining a mere 10 points, a headshot gives you 25, and shooting an enemy in the crotch and giving him ‘Mercy’ by kicking him giving you 100 points for you to wreck more havoc. This is a system that provides a large amount of possibilities, with 131 different skillshots to perform total, from hitting an enemy head on with a cannonball to skewering two or more enemies with a spear. You can combine these to great effect, boosting your score and having more fun in the process. It’s this encouragement of creativity that makes this game so good, helped even more by some entertaining environment kills that can be executed (I’m sorry) by kicking an enemy into piranha infested waters or getting an enemy hit by a storm. These environment shots though are sadly few and far between, with the majority going to weapon specific shots such as taking an enemies body off with a shotgun blast.


So the novelty of the game is great, and it leads us into the Campaign. In this you play as Grayson Hunt, an ex mercenary after revenge on his previous employer General Sarrano. Along with your companions Ishi and Trishka you seek out Sarrano after Gray causes both their ships to crash on the planet Elysium. The story itself is quite good, with a good but sadly sometimes vulgar script, which can lessen the laughs at times, but luckily most of the cast is a likeable lot. What makes the campaign enjoyable is the range of environments it has you visiting, from a nightclub to the caverns located underneath the city. The campaign itself will take around 9 or so hours of gameplay to complete. The only major quibble with this would be the events which pop up on occasion where you are rewarded for your quick reactions which can be a problem say if in a break in the action you were having a quick drink, bite of food etc.

I guess negotiation is not an option?

After the campaign is finished you have the game mode known as ‘Echoes’. This is a game mode which gives you bite size chunks of campaign levels without the cutscenes, challenging you to get a high score. This basically means skillshots galore, strategy to get the most points possible, and a lot of creativity. It is a game mode which comes infused with the always good ‘one more go’ feeling, knowing you can beat your previous score. The key I found when playing through was to give each a go, set a score. When you know what is coming I planned what weapon would work well in each situation that could get easy skill points. A variety of weapons help as well: the more skillshots, the more point; which means more glory. There are 14 of these for you to attempt a 3 star rating or a high leaderboard position along with five ‘advanced’ levels. The annoyance of this game mode is mainly down to your NPC teammate. They do not damage the enemies for you, and instead serve to get in the way on occasion as you set up that perfect skillshot. However this does little to harm the fun of this mode, as you come back almost helplessly to try and beat your best score.

Off road racing gone hardcore

The third game mode given to you is Anarchy mode. This is similar to Gears of Wars’ horde mode, where you face waves of enemies whilst you and up to 3 friends (or others online) try to rack up as many points you can. This means there is no competitive multiplayer mode, although it would be hard to imagine how it would work in this game. Anarchy can provide its problems though, with communication the key to success meaning one person without a headset could harm you. This is because the meat of the points you will be getting comes from ‘team’ skillshots requiring the involvement of at least 2 members of the team. Lack of communication can mean instead of bullet kick, for kicking and shooting a foe, you get das boot, for two members kicking the same person. This is a downfall in some ways as you need to trust your team and let everyone know what is happening to get to, and through, the larger waves in the game.

This is a game which provides a great imagination from developers People Can Fly and Epic Games. It is a nice fresh approach to an over saturated genre which you cannot help but admire. There is great fun to be had whilst playing this, and it’s a shame the sales figures have at this moment proved disappointing as this is worthy of a play.

8/10


Here is a taster video of some of the weapons and game modes to sink your teeth into:

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