Hey video game lovers! This week I played through the brand new shooter “Bulletstorm.” This game is a little more offbeat than the usual shooters, such as “Medal of Honor” or “Call of Duty.” In “Bulletstorm” you play as a very rough and gritty rogue soldier named Grayson Hunt, who has sworn revenge on his ex-commanding officer for using him to commit terrible war crimes, as well as seeking redemption for his mistakes. The game opens with a little backstory that shows what kind of people Grayson and his crew were, what drove them to rebel against The Confederacy that they served, and then how they ended up stranded on a planet with an opportunity to get everything that Grayson wants.
Usually these types of shooting games are a dime a dozen, but surprisingly this shooter stands out from the rest of the pack, and not just because of all the toilet humor it utilizes. “Bulletstorm” has a storyline a cut above many other modern shooting games, with a set of characters that are a little more dynamic than you would expect from such a brash game. You can actually get a decent amount of feeling coming from the main characters and how they change as the game progresses.
The environments in the game look great, exactly what you would expect from an alien planet that is rich with radioactive toxic waste, violent and mutated inhabitants, and wildlife. It is all fairly colorful, there are bloody messes everywhere, and everything is hostile toward you and your surviving crew member, Ishi, who is also hostile toward you more often than not.
On the other hand, the enemies themselves are a little too tame for me, both in diversity and in character; if a developer is going to make mutated people for a game, then I think they should really play up the mutation aspect of it. Don’t just stop at four or five different types of enemies who still look like people for the most part and call it a day. I must admit though, I do like how you can dismember the enemies with all of your different armaments.
The developers did do a good job on the weapon design and combat. Most of the weapons are based on the generic assault rifle, a shotgun, a sniper, a pistol and a grenade launcher, but they all have interesting charged shots that are unique to each one, such as being able to fire a hundred bullets at once from the assault rifle, explosive rounds from the sniper, and incendiary rounds from the shotgun.
The truly interesting weapon in the game, however, is this device called a “leash,” which allows the player to grab hold of otherwise out of reach enemies and either fling them up in the air or pull them in close to you, opening up a whole array of different things you could do to them: go for any easy headshot, plant your boot in their face and send them flying into one of many different environmental hazards created for just such an occasion, or use a charge shot to blow them to bits, among other things. You can also use the leash to grab environmental hazards such as explosives or head eating parasites and fling them at enemies for some devastating effects.
Those aspects combined with what is easily the game’s most interesting feature, the skillshots, make for a fantastic combat environment. The skillshots themselves really steal the show, however, because they are unique to this game. These skillshots are how you earn points to upgrade your weapons in the game. The more outrageous your kills, the more points you earn.
For instance, just shooting an enemy only gets you ten points, but using your leash to fling a head eating parasite on them, then flinging an explosive at them gets you ten times that amount and more, depending on how creative you get with your kills.
The game’s graphics are on par with most other shooters these days. The audio is very well done, if not over the top with the toilet humor, and the story is more gripping than many other shooters these days. I think “Bulletstorm’s” slogan sums up the game perfectly, “Kill with skill!”
It definitely has a high replay value because when it comes down to it, “Bulletstorm’s” just plain fun and thus gets an excellent rating in lasting appeal, even if it is a little short in length. I am happy to give “Bulletstorm” a solid 4 out of 5 stars.