From the first time I saw Bulletstorm I was interested in it. The concept sounded interesting and I am a huge sucker for arcade style scoring systems in games. It also helps that I thought Painkiller, the last People Can Fly game, was a ton of fun. The concern for me was always how the story and dialogue was going to turn out.
The game really doesn’t put it’s best foot forward, the beginning features a lot of tutorial and a lot of cursing but not a lot of what makes the game fun later on. You play as Grayson Hunt who, for a variety of reasons, isn’t the most likable person right of the bat. The game starts off with most of his posse getting killed and Ishi, the lone survivor of Hunt’s crew, now pretty much hating him.
Once the game gets past the setup, it starts to push past being just another FPS. The Skillshot system is my favorite addition to a shooter in a while and actually is at the core of much of the game’s design. Instead of trying the make the game about dodging enemy fire and only popping out to do headshots, you are rewarded for being creative with the game’s vast arsenal of weaponry. One of my favorite combos is using the leash on Grayson’s hand to pop all the enemies into the air, then using a charged shot from the pistol (appropriately named the Screamer) to set everyone on fire. From there you can get even more points by using explosives to blow everyone up in mid-air. The game feels almost as free form as something like Halo because there are so many options for every encounter.
The game looks great, this is one of the best uses of Unreal Engine 3 in quite some time. That makes sense though seeing as how People Can Fly is now owned by Epic. The game is bright, colorful, and vibrant. The character and weapon designs are well thought out and fit the universe perfectly, making for a really cohesive look. Things aren’t always perfect though, there is the occasional texture pop that is associated with Unreal Engine games and it can be really noticable at times. The sound effects are good, but the guns sound a little weaker than they look.
Everything is pretty much golden with the gameplay, so it really comes down to how the story turned out. Like I mentioned before, the game starts off rough. It feels overly serious and the writing isn’t great. Once you get into Act 2 things really turn around. One of my favorite dialogue exchanges in the game is when you meet up with a character named Trishka and she tells Grayson that she will “kill his dick off” and Grayson replies by asking what that even means. The game is filled with lots of really funny banter between characters, and even though there is a lot of immature dialogue in the game it hits often enough to make it work. To my surprise the story actually gets way better as the game goes on, and there is a strong motivation to see what is next.
I think that Bulletstorm is one of the most fun and inventive shooters I have played in a long while. It is a break from the seemingly never ending stream of modern day military shooters that come out now. Pretty much the whole time I was playing the game I just had a big, stupid grin on my face. If the early parts of the game were just a little bit tighter this would probably be the best shooter I have played in years, but it is still a game that shouldn’t be missed. As long as you push past the beginning you are in for a hell of a shooter, with a lot of things you haven’t seen before.
Score: 4/5 Stars
by Nicolas Perez
