Bulletstorm

Hello readers!

Sorry for the lack of posts, I had a sickness that ranks somewhere in the top five sicknesses I've ever had. I didn't feel safe writing anything when stuck with a fever. A fever that made eating vanilla yogurt and cheese seem like a good idea (it wasn't).

So anyway, I'm hale and hearty again so today you get to suffer through another video game review. Bulletstorm.

Story Breakdown: You're a space pirate out for revenge and redemption.

I could go more into it but that's it essentially. Not very imaginative I know but that's not what the creators of the game were worried about when they made the game. The storyline is essentially there to give them an excuse to let you run around and shoot the shit out of everything that moves.

Gameplay: I got this game on Steam of course so that means I played it on the computer. The thing I don't like about this is that the game was obviously made with the Xbox 360 in mind. The control mechanics are almost identical to Gears of War, the only change being a first person perspective instead of a over-the-shoulder (third person) perspective. You press space to sprint (wtf?), press it twice to go into the most impressive power slide I've ever seen. It's like rockets fire from your ass and your pants are made of grease as you slide your ass down a good forty feet of level concrete before you slam into some obstruction.

You also use space to climb over things. But only when prompted. Also you can't jump. This kind of game design encourages you to look for the obvious path and it is very linear. That is a word I hated early in my life, linear, because I had no idea what it meant and game reviewers would never explain it. Linear--apologies for those of you who are more intelligent than I-- means "of a line." In game terms it means that the game's gameplay and story events follow a single line, without much choice in the events of the game.

So you have infinite ways to kill that mutant, but as soon as you're done killing him and his hundred buddies you only have one direction to go: forward.

This isn't terribly bad and for a game like this is probably a good choice. This is a game that knows what it wants you to experience: the death of thousands and thousands of badguys in imaginative and horrifying ways... that earn you points.

The "sell" of this game, the "reason" you should buy it rather than that other shooter (aside from profuse and often hilarious usage of the word "dick") is that you get points for killing folk in creative ways. Example: If you straight up just shoot a guy to death, you get ten points. If you happen to kick him off a cliff, you get fifty. If you happen to kick him off a cliff while he was on fire onto some spiky rebar, you get a hundred and fifty points. If you happen to do that to him and three of his buddies, you get a multiplier.

These points have a use, too! They aren't just a score you get. You can use these point to upgrade your guns, buy ammo and generally keep yourself killing mutants in the manner in which you prefer--with extreme violence.

As an aside: You get fifty points for killing someone by shooting his ass--the bonus is called "Rear Entry."

Then you have the Leash. The Leash is an electric cord you can whip out by pressing Q and it will snatch a badguy and throw him at you. At the last instant the body slows down very much like slow-mo, but this only effects the bad guy. You can use this opportunity to carefully blow off his head, or just have an easier time shooting him. The game frowns on this as you'll only get twenty-five points for head shots. What you're supposed to do is use this time to find the most horrifying and creative way to kill this man/mutant.

Voice Acting: If you've read my blag previously you'll know that voice acting to me is very important. Make-or-break important. So I'm very happy to say that the voice acting in Bulletstorm is very good, if very over the top. For instance, the first time you meet Trishka, the female lead, she threatens your character by saying "If you assholes follow me I swear by something or other that I'll kill your dicks!" (paraphrase except for the last part)

Grayson Hunt, your character, replies with a very witty "Oh yeah? Well, I'll kill your dick!"

I should mention that while I was playing this game I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out where I'd heard the main characters (you) voice before. I just did a little bit of googling and it's the guy who voiced Spike Spiegle from Cowboy Bebop, along with every other voice in video games. Anyway, the voice acting is so over-the-top that it matches this over-the-top game perfectly.

Graphics: Nothing special. Typical stuff you'd see on the Xbox 360 but something my computer had to struggle with occasionally, because while it has a nice powerful video card it doesn't make up for a rather mid-range processor. You need both. Well, it depends on who you ask. I have a fellow computer geek friend who claims with the right video card he could run Crysis on a speak-and-spell. I wisely let the issue drop.

Aside from that the game is rather beautiful and the engine could render a lot of landscape. The water is pretty, the atmosphere (I mean, like, the air) looked like the atmosphere of a foreign world, and the cities looked like cities.

What detracted from this is that while the world itself was beautiful and real looking, the characters were a little cartoony. Something about them just made me think they were drawn rather than created. If you don't know what I mean by that, don't worry, because I'm not sure either. It's something that caught my attention, that's all. Nothing good or bad by it.

What I didn't like:

Endless shooting: Realizing the game is called Bulletstorm, towards the end of the game I was having to unload entire clips into badguys to get them to die. Fifty bullets, sometimes from mere feet away, all centered about the head and shoulders. Sometimes they wouldn't die, and I'd have to reload, and then continue to shoot the bastard until he deigned to die.

This is just a personal preference with me. When I have a gun in my hands (or my characters hands, I guess), I want it to do some damage. Assault rifles are made to kill people, and nothing else. I don't care how heavily armored you are, fifty bullets slamming into your helmet should be enough to turn your head into some form of jam, I don't care how tough you are.

Couldn't do anything with the Leash: Aside from pulling stuff towards me, I couldn't figure out how to make me pull stuff other ways. Maybe you couldn't, like I figure, but I'm not above saying I just didn't know what I was doing.

Jumping: You couldn't. You could climb over stuff, but you couldn't jump. In the universe of Bulletstorm, hopscotch does not exist. Also, friction. Play the game and you'll understand.

SPOILER ALERT! The following has to do with the story and will be in white font, so if you want to read it you're going to have to highlight it.

You didn't do a damn thing. You set out to do such and such, and not only do you not do it, you get everyone close to you killed except for the hot chick who's dad you killed. You didn't even kill the badguy who started this whole mess to kill. It was a lame ending and a total cop-out for a sequel.

So that's about it. I don't do numbering systems because it's arbitrary and in the past I've disliked games for the same reason I've liked other games. So I will say I liked this game enough to buy it for the single player, but from playing it I don't know how fun the multiplayer will be. If I have to shoot some jackass in Iowa seventy times for him to die I will be pissed.

Anyway, if you have a console I'd recommend renting it. If you are flush with cash I'd recommend buying it. Otherwise, it was a funny and fun six hours.

-McK