Bulletstorm

When it comes to portraying a story about betrayal, revenge, and ultimately redemption, what would be the best course of action?

Making a shooter featuring more swearing than a dinner party with Gordon Ramsey and the ability to kick people into cacti for points probably isn't the preferred route.

Bulletstorm is a decidedly mixed narrative, wound around the idea of being scored on how you progress through the game. It's an interesting premise. While being an obvious extension to the XP gain system most shooters feature these days the amount of different kills, or Skillshots as they are called, is impressive. The points you earn from the Skillshots are then used as currency for weapons and upgrades at lockers called drop points. While giving the point system meaning, it also gives the player an incentive to actually expend effort in pulling off the shots.

From the outset it's evident as to what this game is about. It wants you to be brutal and sadistic while it tries to make you laugh by saying naughty words. It has a feel of self parody about it. It's like the game knows it's being puerile, that it's catering to the most base of base humour and it's fine with that. But there's always the niggling doubt behind all that swearing, that there should really be some substance to the story.

This builds up in the background until the game's climax where it bursts to the forefront, confusingly jarring the stand out themes from one extreme to the other. It felt forced and because it spent most of the time behind a façade of toilet humour, it disconnected me from the emotions I felt toward the characters to begin with.

Perplexing tonal shifts aside, Bulletstorm plays really well. I've not experienced a shooter where you feel quite this powerful close up. A lot of games tend to make you keep the enemy at a distance. Thanks to one of the strongest kicks in all gaming, you can dispatch multiple ne'er-do-wells in an instant. Coupled with the stasis effect applied after the kick, which leaves your prey hanging in mid air for a few seconds, it really is one of the most powerful weapons in the game.

A joke about Sparta would seem necessary here

The star of the show would have to be the Leash. Acquired early on, it allows you to interact with objects in the world and to pull baddies toward you, Scorpion style, to dole out some toe-capped justice. Enemies that can't be leashed can then be Thumped. A blast of energy that flings most goons 30 feet into the air and slams mini-bosses to the ground. 

There is an awkward reason it takes centre stage, however. Aside from a pretty amazing pistol and a gun that fires a sort of bolo-mine, most of the weapons are pretty forgetful. The main weapon looking like it was ripped straight from Gears of War.

Which leads me to the look of the game. I don't know if it's the engine beginning to show it's age or derivative design, but the whole game has a distinct Gears of War clone-iness feel to it. In no way does the game play like GoW, but it looks like it could inhabit the same universe.

Having said that, there is really nothing wrong with wanting to look as good as Gears of War. It tries admirably, certainly injecting more colour into the environments. Overall it looks decent, like most Unreal 3 games do, just nothing incredible.

However, the most major downside to the entire game would be how much it holds your hand throughout. Now, games need some sort of on screen help for certain events in the game world, but to have these appear as bright blue button prompts actually straight up telling you what to do is asinine. It could be dismissed if said prompts happened once, or even twice, as a means to get you to learn the game's processes, with each event thereafter having just a visual hint like a glow or outline. Having every single event have a pop-up prompt appear from as much as 40 yards away removes all thought from the gameplay. This type of thing has to stop.

In ending, it's a very fun game. The player character controls very well, the mechanics are sharp and some of the dialogue can be genuinely funny. There's also a part where you control an giant mechanical Godzilla. Need I say more?