FTG Review: Bulletstorm

This is not your daddy’s shooter. Bulletstorm from new comers People Can Fly, Developed by Epic and Published by Electronic Arts (EA) is set to blast the shooter market in the nuts and stick a size 13 boot up its ass. How well does Bulletstorm stand up against season veterans like Call of Duty or even Killzone 3 it direct competitor? Read on to discover if Bulletstorm will skill shoot its way to victory or just be another victim of Brutal Melee!

Story 9

Bulletstorm’s main characters, Grayson Hunt and Ishi Sato, start their story as part of a military squad that gets a dishonorable discharge for questioning orders (let’s keep it vague so no spoilers!). Several years later, Gray and Ishi are now pirates and fugitives who happen to stumble across a space ship carrying the commanding officer that betrayed them and got them discharged. In a drunken rage, Gray decides to take out his revenge on the commander, wrecking his craft and killing his crew.

Once you crash land on the planet, the game really starts to shine.  You land on is called Stygia; Stygia used to be a tourist paradise, but now is inhabited by mutated freaks and exiled human gangs. Gray’s goal is to find a way off the planet and exact his revenge on the confederate officer.  Barring spoilers, I will allow you to figure the rest of the story for yourself.

Gamelplay 9

The controls for Bulletstorm will be familiar to any one who has played a first person shooter in the recent years; the layout is a pretty standard affair (I am a firm believer in if it’s not broke don’t fix it). Once we get past the controls, Bulletstorm takes and about face from the rest of the shooter market and starts to carve it own destiny. Bulletstorm’s main tag line is “Kill with Skill” and in order to kill with skill you will utilize a new concept called the “skillshot”.  Skillshots range from the simple “get a headshot” to “shoot an enemy in the balls then kicking his head off”.

Along with the skillshot, you quickly receive an implant called a “leash”, some sort of nano-wrist-grapple device that allows to you pull objects and enemies close to you.  While not unique,  Bulletstorm adds great depth to the lasso’d enemy concept with the use of skillshots. There is nothing more satisfying as leashing an enemy, pulling him towards you, then stomping your foot into his head, or just flinging them into an environmental hazard. Each skillshot will give a pre-determined point value which you can spend on ammo and weapon upgrades. The bigger and more difficult the skillshot, the higher the point value you will receive. You will find yourself constantly checking the skillshot database to see what new kill you can pull off to get the highest amount of points. Upon receiving Bulletstorm and putting it in my Xbox I played for six hours straight and lost all track of time, due to the amount of fun I was having.

One of the few problems that I have found is that Bulletstorm is very linear with set paths from battle to battle, and that there is no jump function.  The latter complaint really baffles me why they did not add a jump function, a couple of times it would have come in handy to evade enemies. On a couple of occasions, I got stuck in the geometry of the map with to move and a jump function might have helped.

Graphics 9.5

What can be said?  Bulletstorm is fucking gorgeous! Bulletstorm says good bye to the gritty realistic shooter formula that has been flooding the market in recent years and that is inherent in using the Unreal engine; Bulletstorm welcomes back color to the shooter. With massive views and draw distances you will find yourself stopping at times to take in the scenery before continuing on into the fray. Graphically, Bulletstorm can hang with the best of them. I noticed a few hiccups here and there with textures, but nothing that is going to stand out unless you go looking for it.

More on the next page!

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