Reviews of Bulletstorm

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Bulletstorm is a breath of fresh air (or recycled from the past?) in the FPS market that's overflowing with "gritty" war shooters; that's what the developers set out to create, and I think they accomplished their goal handily.

People Can Fly brought back the old style of crazy, fun, explosive weapons that used to be a staple of the FPS genre in this case, a revolver that can fire explosive flares; a sniper rifle with bullets that you can steer; or a gun that shoots an explosive chain which can create booby traps out of objects in the environment or your enemies, and a handful of others plus the ability to kick, and the "Leash", which allows you to pull enemies toward you (setting in a temporary slow-motion effect) or launch them into the air. Combining all of these together racks up points that allow you to purchase ammo for your better weapons, charged shots, ammo capacity upgrades, and just generally aim for a high score. Creativity is a big part of the fun, but it's pretty easy to fall into a simple kick-and-then-shoot everybody regimen. Staying sharp and mixing up how you kill your foes keeps things interesting, but if you just do things the easy way then it has the chance to get stale.

Single player campaign length leaves something to be desired, as it only lasts maybe 6 to 8 hours. I didn't really keep track. But you kind of gradually get a handle on your own playstyle and learn the tricks of the game in your first playthrough, so a second playthrough at least still feels fresh, and there is Echoes mode in which you run through individual levels of the game and try to rack up a high score, plus a multiplayer mode for those so inclined; I wasn't.

The story isn't particularly riveting, but the ridiculously coarse dialogue is an... interestingly entertaining addition to the ridiculously coarse gameplay (as you should know, this is absolutely not a game for the family). The characters don't do much to garner an emotional attachment, but they do feel a bit like drinking buddies: not that reliable, but they're fun to hang around.

The game looks pretty nice. The graphics don't raise the bar, but they're certainly not dated. While the whole game has that generic Unreal Engine 3 look, the developers splashed a good amount of color into the mix so it's not just gray and brown. The character and weapon designs are still very reminiscent of Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War, so it looks a little "been-there-done-that".

The parts I didn't like aren't game-related and are only relevant to the PC version: primarily, the integration of Games for Windows Live. It took me about half an hour after I'd already installed the game to actually begin playing, although part of that was trying to figure out how to open the encrypted config files, because the options menu in-game is a joke. (No FOV settings, no option to disable mouse acceleration, and pretty much everything else that you would normally customize in a PC game.) Games for Windows Live, of course, requires an account to register the game to (at least you can use an Xbox Live account, which I already had). It also distributes game updates and patches, so right off the bat I downloaded a game update, which told me that I needed to close the game to finish installing.

Except there's no way to close the game until you get to the menu. And there's no way to get to the menu without logging into Games for Windows Live. And there's no way to log into Games for Windows Live without installing the update. And there's no way to install the update without closing the game... ad infinitum. I had to open Task Manager and force the game to close.

But once I'd sucked it up and decided to just live with the oppressive iron fist of PC publishers, the game is just a lot of fun. I still don't think I would give up keyboard and mouse just to bypass the PC gaming headache (that is, by playing on the Xbox 360) and once you get past the initial setup, Games for Windows Live stays out of the way.

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If you can get past "Games for Windows Live", you'll be good to go. The DRM for PC is the one drawback to this game, and you can see that it's reflected in most one or two star ratings. But, I would have to disagree with their ratings. If I was rating GFWL I would give it a one star too. However, we are attempting to review the actual game not the crappy publisher.

The game itself is gorgeous, epic, intense, hilarious, and extremely entertaining. The only game that makes me laugh as much is probably Portal 2. The graphics definitely aren't dated. The animations and "hugeness" to everything was incredibly well-done. There's something to be said for graphics like these vs graphics seen in a game like Crysis 2. To me, Crysis 2 had incredible graphics, but it had no real style and was a pretty joyless experience to me. Bulletstorm is definitely not joyless. It's a riot. And it's pretty. For a day or two, I was a kid again and I loved it.

Of course, this game is NOT for kids. But in a small way, it almost makes you feel like you're being "naughty" just for playing it, with all of the adult language and innuendos involved. I highly recommend the game on all counts.

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sometimes we play games for a challenge, sometimes we play games to escape reality, sometimes we play games for interesting plot and characters, sometimes we play games for beautiful music, visuals, and story, sometimes we play games just for fun, and this game is all about fun.

things i like about this game:

the scoring and skillshots system is very well designed and kept me hooked throughout the main game, and continues to keep me hooked in the echo mode after. it has never been that fun finding more creative ways of destroying your enemies.

gameplay is varied, from blasting a big ship at space, boarding a helicopter and shooting a huge monster from above, to remote controlling a huge gorilla robot to crush enemies below, and many more. they are not excessive and are there just to occasionally give you a break from the meat of the game, which is to find innovative and fun ways of killing enemies.

most of the time the game is at outdoors, with beautifully rendered visuals and grand scenery. i love games like this.

all of those juvenile cursing and humor. there are some cleverly written lines, and some just "memorable" lines. dick jokes are not excessive.

the plot can be dark at times but generally it is light and fun.

you can turn gore off (cursing can be turned off if you like that).

things i don't like about this game:

occasionally characters can get stuck in places. i've only experienced this twice throughout the entire game though.

the ending is sort of a cliffhanger. i understand that they were trying to set up for a sequel, which seems unlikely at the point, but still, it would be nice to have some kind of closure.

the drm is ok. i've never experienced any problem with it. and the achievements are shared with xbox and windows phone 7 games to become part of your gamerscore.

overall it is a highly entertaining title. i've never played an fps that is this fun throughout. get this game. and you will have a blast.

Honest reviews on Bulletstorm

The initial screenshots and review of Bulletstorm turned me off. So did the opening sequence in which the main character kicks a pleading, bound prisoner into an airlock (which is promptly depressurized). I quit playing at that point, thinking I was in for the gaming equivalent of a Joel Eszterhas film, or maybe a crasser version of Duke Nukem Forever.

I was mostly right. But I started playing anyway after reading my fifth positive review. The game cost me $5. Why not?

Twenty minutes into play-attempt #2, and I no longer cared. The game was crass, mindlessly violent, and chock full of action-movie one-liners. (And since I played on PC, certain sequences -like "walking" across hanging rope ladders with my "hands" by pressing different buttons -were distractingly consolized.) The game was also ridiculously fun.

Remember fun? I have maybe 100 games in a collection built up over many years. Probably half of these are firstor third-person shooters. Many of these shooters are well produced, graphically impressive and technically brilliant, but few are *fun*. Bulletstorm is fun in the way Doom was back in 1995. Or the way Unreal Tournment was in 1999. Or the way I always wanted Serious Sam to be. Or the way the first Iron Man movie actually was.

Bulletstorm should be terrible. The storyline is hackneyed, the characters are stereotypes, the violence is ridiculous, etc., etc. But the *gameplay* is a delight, and the visuals are gorgeous. I giggled like a kid as I kicked enemies off ledges, lassoed exploding barrels and slammed them together in creative ways, shot sticky bombs into crowds of nasties and watched them ricochet off each other before erupting into a confetti of guts and armor.

I said the game was crass, and it is. But Bulletstorm pulls of an amazing trick. It rides the line of bad taste while remaining funny. I despise character banter in most games because it is tedious and rarely adds anything useful to a story, but in Bulletstorm, I felt like I was being let in on a running joke. "Yes, we are stereotypical characters in yet another save-the-world FPS. Let's have fun with this." I found myself laughing more than I'd care to admit at the in-game jokes, and the bad plot became less annoying as time passed. Again, the gameplay was the transcending factor. The weapons, the physics, the modeling were all fantastic, and managed to wring rare, fresh blood from a tired genre.

Here's the best thing I can say about Bulletstorm: I played through it in a matter of days. As an adult with a job, I usually abandon a game long before I find the time to finish it. In fact, Borderlands (another game I initially thought I'd hate) is the only other FPS I've played through in the past 3-4 years. Usually, I get 15-20 hours in and reach a tedious boss that isn't worth learning to kill, or realize I'd rather be working in my yard, or hanging out with my wife. Too many games these days are work. I do enough work *at work*. Bulletstorm bucks that trend by actually entertaining the player.

Unfortunately, there will not be a Bulletstorm II. At launch, it was priced like a console game, and hampered by the ill-conceived "Games for Windows" program, and subsequently sold very poorly. More than a year on, however, you can buy it for a song. If you like FPS games, you can spend much, much more and do much, much worse than Bulletstorm.

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At first glance, this gem of 21st century Marxist-Leninist dialectic appears to be nothing more than a violent game, which tells the simple story of large, burly men who wished to be professional wrestlers, but failed the intelligence test, and took up soldiery instead.

However, upon closer examination, a critique of post-cold-war socialist capitalism quickly emerges into the light, bearing a message not simply of condemnation, but also of profound understanding and compassion for the victims and even architects of the self-swallowing feedback loops of post-consumer culture.

Not content to confine itself to the crude techniques of symbolism so beloved of earlier, Hegelian-influenced Marxist-Leninist philosophers and writers, "Bulletstorm" borrows the metafictional techniques of Borges and combines them with a Dadaist sense of literary negative space to suggest, within the readers' own sense of the proletariat, the construct it wishes to address, coupled with a self-deconstruction impelled by inevitability of process, rather than any content-oriented deliberation of intent.

For example, when a character delivers the line "I'll shoot you in the dick!", the author(s) cunningly convey the image of a consumerist society where grown men might not only be paid to sit in sound booths and practice, over and over again, their delivery of the line "I'll shoot you in the dick!", but to discuss how best it might be delivered, and even to do so while being aware of its inherent absurdity, an absurdity they must cooperate with even while perceiving it for what it is, lest they lose the income with which they feed their families, and lose their status within the Capitalist machine upon which they depend even as it destroys them from within.

Indeed, the characters, presented as crude stereotypes of steroidal man-children who are unable to discuss a simple plan of action without shouts, threats of violence, or homoerotic taunts that reek of forbidden longing, form a brilliantly revealing juxtaposition with the the presentation that the authors make of *themselves* as a bunch of graceless dimwits who are so infantilized by the capitalist impulse-gratification loop that they are unable to write a story which does not rely upon simple, raw sensation to inform its urgency.

This is the video game company as performance art in its own right, and it is brilliant.

Gone are elaborate representations and rationalizations of Capitalist-Imperialist apologetics, replaced by a raw exposure of the post-Leninist man's desire to kick an outgroup representive into a cactus, then shoot him in the testicles. Yet, at the same time, "Bullstorm" also critiques itself, and the entire Marxist-Leninist movement that it represents, by asking "Does not this reveal that man *desires* violence and imperialism, even if he must purchase their heady thrills at great cost to himself? Is International Socialism not ultimately a failure, not merely for failing to elevate man above class warfare, but for failing to realize that man does not wish to be elevated?".

Like the convict miners who rebel only to destroy themselves along with their bourgeoisie oppressors, Marxism-Leninism is shown to be, perhaps, merely another "soul of soulless conditions", which has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain of oppression merely that the proletariat might wear the chain unadorned. "Bulletstorm" does not shy from self-analysis in this regard.

In short, "Bulletstorm" is a must-play for anyone to truly wishes to understand the modern critique of both Capitalism and Socialism.