Bulletstorm - Hekaton

Bulletstorm: Review (for real this time)

Bulletstorm - Hekaton
Our entire Awesomeness Quotient for the month has been used up with just this one screenshot.

Now that we’ve all enjoyed my hilarious joke, here’s what I really thought about Bulletstorm.

Straight up, I’m going to confess that it’s a long while since I’ve had this much pure, unadulterated fun with a game. I can’t remember the last time I blasted through an entire single-player campaign in one sitting.

I also have to confess that since completing the game, getting a healthy quantity of stars in Echo mode – essentially Bulletstorm time trials – and dabbling for a few hours in multiplayer Anarchy mode, my love affair with the game has waned.

Perhaps it was just chemical attraction. We met, we bonded, our bodies pumped out hormones – deeply manly hormones, of course, the sort of hormones that enjoy a spot of murderin’ – and for a time we were wrapped in homoerotic embrace. But then the lustre faded and we awoke, covered in blood and other more personal bodily fluids.

But lets put this aside – I’ll return to it later – because it’s time for me to explain what the game gets right and why, if you have any time at all for first person manshooting, you will probably love it.

In design terms, the game is fucking fan-tastic. That’s “fan-tastic” as Frank West would say it, so you know I’m being 100% serious here. The variation in environments is great, with each Act moving you to a significantly new locale, each Chapter offering up new scenery within that locale, and even within Chapters the environment design makes every area a distinct battleground. Ditto the enemies and the weapons, which scale up with just the right amount of challenge. The game is chock-full of mooks to play with but, having said that, the first time you encounter Freaks or Burnouts you’ll find your previous tactics wanting; you’ll have to get inventive. And being inventive is what Bulletstorm is about… to an extent.

Bulletstorm - mooks
Who'd be a mook? The best you can hope for is a memorable one-liner being spouted as you're dispatched by the hero. The best these tools ever get is a dick joke.

The weapons are brilliant. You’ll always be forced to lug around a boring old assault rifle, yes: it’s a workhorse, a gun-of-all-trades. But it also has hefty ammo reserves to fall back on once you’ve exhausted your more exciting toys. Then there’s the leash, your other trusty tool, which can be used to grab distant or concealed enemies and pull them towards you.

The other weapons all have their own charms and you’ll find your favourites. I liked the sniper rifle with the remote-control bullets, the revolver with mounted flare gun and the explosive bolas best. There’s nothing quite like tying up the frontrunner of a pack of enemies and using him as an impromptu landmine, right? All of these weapons tie in to the game’s chief innovation: the Skillshot system.

Unless you live under a rock or don’t really follow games – in which case hello and welcome to Arcadian Rhythms, I’m pleased that Google has led you here – you’ll be dimly aware of what this system is. Essentially it awards you points for every enemy you dispatch; the baseline is a measly 10 points. Kick a guy into a cactus and that’s 50 points – or 100 if it’s the first time you’ve done it. Or you could kick someone off a cliff and, just before they fall, shotgun them in half. That’s about 100 points: 50 for the fall and 50 for adding insult to injury.

The Skillshot system is great, it really is: it encourages experimentation with the environments, it pushes you towards being inventive in order to gather more points (and in so doing unlock more weapon upgrades), and it also discourages you from sticking with your one or two favourite weapons – a perennial problem with the FPS genre. On the other hand, it’s strangely limited. There are about 130 skillshots in single-player mode including weapon-specific skillshots and unique environmental interactions. What’s missing is the option to chain these together. If you drag a guy towards you from behind cover, turn and kick him towards some loose electrical cables, then stick something explosive on him and detonate it while he’s being shocked… you get nothing more for it. The game only allows multiple skillshots to be applied when it says you can. It’s understandable – too many chaining multipliers would throw the point gathering and upgrade progress askew and thus unbalance the game a tad, not to mention the additional development and testing demands – but it’s also disappointing.

Bulletstorm - Anarchy mode
That's not to say it isn't still fun to pull a guy through the air by his face.

But you won’t care about that for quite some time. On my first playthrough I unlocked about 90 single-player skillshots; that meant another 40 for me to find. I knew what some of them were but others remained a mystery… an exciting murder mystery.

But enough about that: how about the story? Yep, we all play manshoots for their plot, obviously we do. Why else would anyone bother with everybody’s favourite Mad Dog McCree remake, Call of Duty?

Bulletstorm may surprise you thanks to its genuinely well-written story. It’s very macho, superficially very dumb, but it’s a loving pastiche of the sort of beefy-men-with-guns games that essentially define Unreal Engine 3. It plants its tongue in its cheek and gets on with sharing its turned-up-to-11 over the top tale of violence, betrayal and more violence, and it’s better for it. Bulletstorm walks the fine line between being dumb and being mockingly detached, chiefly thanks to some memorable characters. Grayson, a cocky alcoholic with a sense of fun matched only by his loyalty toward and guilt concerning his team; Ishi, torn between his human and AI personalities, is perpetually conflicted and regularly irrational (so that’s why he sometimes gets stuck on walls!). Then there’s Trishka, cut straight out of the bad girl with an attitude mold but – and I cannot stress how happy I was to see this – never reduced to a love interest and always driven by her personal motivations. And finally there is General Serano, a complete and total arsehole who gets many of the game’s funniest lines.

Bulletstorm - Grinder wheel
The grand prize for most improbable vehicle goes to this thing. I still haven't figured out what it was originally built for. Possibly the planet was colonised by a splinter group of rogue unicycle enthusiasts.

Then there’s Anarchy mode. Eschewing the deathmatch-oriented approaches of other FPS games, People Can Fly have instead gone for Horde-style co-operative gameplay that makes use of the skillshot system, introducing additional skillshots that require two or more players to complete. Some of these are very tricky, but pulling them off… well, you’ll feel like Barry Big-Balls, that’s for sure. Especially if you just shot a guy in his.

It’s a double-edged sword, sadly, because for this game mode to work you need to be playing with people who understand the game and maintain constant communication. This makes it a game to be enjoyed among friends rather than random players, and this in turn makes it difficult to find a match worth playing. But even if you have no Bulletstorm-owning friends do give it a go: it’s still rewarding.

There are parts of Bulletstorm that are easy to criticise. Its marketing campaign made fun of the Call of Duty series and its attendant hangers-on (Medal of Honor, I’m looking at you) but Bulletstorm boasts its own on-rails sequences and even a QTE where your interaction is reduced to pushing buttons to make a cutscene progress. Maybe no one told the marketing guys about that. I bet they feel real silly now.

In terms of replayability the campaign may reward two playthroughs but not much more than that. I recommend doing the campaign on Normal first so that you can enjoy and explore the skillshot system. Then, repeat it on Very Hard for a real challenge. Echoes will provide plenty of entertainment but some levels can seem overly easy after beating the game; perhaps this will be expanded in future DLC.

My ultimate conclusion? I insist that you play this game. It is big, brash and beautiful. Its sense of bombast and desire to entertain will reward you. Its core gameplay is more-ish and finds a good balance between reactive skill and quick planning. Its story, characters and setpieces will stick in your imagination. Innovation? Nah: the gameplay is basically what The Club should have been. Perfect? Not by a shot, and you won’t enjoy it forever. Fun? You bet your dick.

Bulletstorm - hekaton's mouth
Predictable joke about a breath mint, sir?

Posted

in

, ,

by

Comments

15 responses to “Bulletstorm: Review (for real this time)”

  1. GordoP Avatar
    GordoP

    I got to play a few hours of Echos when a buddy brought his 360 by my place and I was quite impressed. Even on my old CRT TV it looked great, like really great, as a comparison Red Red Redemption only looked a fraction as good on the same TV.

    I can't warrant a buy just yet, but as soon as a sale hits I'm certainly gonna make a purchase.

    And the bolos are just amazing!

    1. ShaunCG Avatar

      Yes, I'd hesitate to recommend it at full price, but for £20 (not sure what the CAN$ equivalent would be) you'll easily get your money's worth.

  2. Spann87 Avatar
    Spann87

    The last paragraph sums this up beautifully. This is another game in the same vein as Bayonetta: Not afraid to be fun for the sake of being fun, which as I remember is kind of the point…

    1. ShaunCG Avatar

      That's definitely its philosophy in a nutshell. :)

      I've not yet tried Bayonetta – AJ reviewed it on his own site and it sounds like the last third is a bit of a grind after a wonderful first two thirds?

      1. Spann87 Avatar
        Spann87

        Bayonetta is a wonderful game.

        The last third probably is a little bit of a grind (Boss rushes and the like), but as a rule the game keeps up the crazy long enough for it never to become stale, in my mind. It's a game designed from fun combat out, and as such the climax attacks never become old – Even after the umpteenth time you've impaled an angel with a shining vagina on a spiky metal gym horse thing.

        The final battle with Jeanne is excellent too.

        I did start writing a piece on how games are only just now evolving to the point where they can be such stupid over-the-top dumb funfests, but I may as well have been stood with my trousers down honking a duck whistle for all the sense I was making.

        1. ShaunCG Avatar

          I guess writing about stupid over-the-top dumb funfests is a little bit like dancing about architecture. ;D

  3. Spann87 Avatar
    Spann87

    Bayonetta is a wonderful game.

    The last third probably is a little bit of a grind (Boss rushes and the like), but as a rule the game keeps up the crazy long enough for it never to become stale, in my mind. It's a game designed from fun combat out, and as such the climax attacks never become old – Even after the umpteenth time you've impaled an angel with a shining vagina on a spiky metal gym horse thing.

    The final battle with Jeanne is excellent too.

    I did start writing a piece on how games are only just now evolving to the point where they can be such stupid over-the-top dumb funfests, but I may as well have been stood with my trousers down honking a duck whistle for all the sense I was making.

  4. badgercommander Avatar
    badgercommander

    Agreed that the fight with Jeanne atop the building is the last good thing in the game after that it became a long, hard slog through tedium.

    1. Spann87 Avatar
      Spann87

      I'm trying to think what came after that.

      I will say that Jubileus is a complete and utter twat, the one-hit sucky-in death thing is one of the cheapest mechanics I've ever seen in a game.

      Jeanne's more than two-thirds of the way through though, isn't she? As I remember it's fight Jeanne, up the tower, Balder, Jubileus, end. This may be wrong however, I'm currently about half way through a runthrough on hard.

      1. badgercommander Avatar
        badgercommander

        After Jeanne, tower -> Gun turret sequence -> Buggy broken vertical platforming section -> Tedious Boss rush-> on-rails motor cycle ride up missile with instant death scenario -> Long winded boss -> Annoying onrails section with instant death section -> Bayonetta's quivalent to the car smashing from Streetfighter II, but with fail section -> tedious cut scene with credits that have fighting sessions interspersed.

        God I hate that game just thinking about it.

        1. Spann87 Avatar
          Spann87

          It's interesting how mileages vary, I loved the game (Other than Jubileus). The end of the game is a grind, true, but I found it highly enjoyable one, at least.

  5. Spann87 Avatar
    Spann87

    Woah, that's Marble Hornets shit right there.

  6. Spann87 Avatar
    Spann87

    "Despite a lot of early obsession about Bayonetta's proportions (not least from Hideki Kamiya who harped on about her bottom) and hyper-sexualised appearance she turns out to be a much more interesting character than I expected. I am not saying that the story is any good or that the Witch is some kind of Ellen Ripley of video games but she is much more interesting than the Princess types of the JRPG or the only-there-as-dressing side-kicks. Certainly Bayonetta is designed as 'sexy' but it all seems to be a bit of a joke, one that even the protagonist is in on. Every strut and pose seems to be part mocking and part self parody. For all the winks and pole dancing it is never as if she isn't in control of this image, nor is she some kind of nymphomaniac obsessed with men. In fact, the strongest relationships she develops over the course of the adventure are with females (previously mentioned and equally ridiculous looking Jeanne and a little girl). I don't want to get into it too deeply but a lot of people who have these preconceptions of what Bayonetta is going to be just by the box art and screen shots will find these perceptions to be false."

    I also thank you for writing this, I've been trying to verbalise this for some time.

    1. badgercommander Avatar
      badgercommander

      No probs, glad you liked it. It took me a while to get around to writing it down, but I sincerely feel that although not particularly deep she is at least more interesting and fun as a character than a lot of other females in games

  7. […] am sure that many people will find things to enjoy in Bulletstorm (hell, Shaun’s review makes a valid point in opposition to this review), but those looking for something markedly […]