Review: Bulletstorm (PS3)
Tired of the same ‘ol shooter? ’Bulletstorm’ promised to deliver us a brand new, balls out experience. FOX News hated it, so does that mean we are suppose to love it?
While sales may not show it, or even give us a hint towards – but how many military shooters can we buy each year? Call of Duty has been an annual release since Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360. Don’t get me wrong, the games offer quite the experience, online and off, but it’s the same ol’ formula just with a fresh coat of paint, some new dialogue, and new weapons. Despite my love of Killzone, last month’s Killzone 3 is no different than Killzone 2. The Medal of Honor reboot was solid, but it’s obvious the game was trying to act more like Call of Duty. These are just the main brands out there, the indie scene is filled with these types of games these days.
That is why it was such a refreshing sensation playing the Bulletstorm demo back in January. Granted, it is an FPS, but it focuses less on realism and how “close to home” can the game be. Rather it takes us back to the old days when it was all about mindless violence, a la DOOM or Wolfenstein. The only concerns from playing the demo were: would kicking these enemies in the balls and throwing them against spiked walls be worth buying at full price?
In Bulletstorm you take control of Grayson Hunt, the leader of a mercenary group referred to as Dead Echo. The team works for General Sarrano, a shoot first, think second-type commander. He finds the targets, you kill ‘em. You begin the game on the hunt for one of Sarrano’s targets, which you later determine to be an innocent civilian. Your team discovers that Sarrano isn’t ordering the deaths of enemy combatants, but those who speak out against him.
The game flashes back and forth from future events in the first mission of the game. As we progress to the present timeline of the game, Grayson and his team are no longer working for Sarrano but have opted to make it their goal to destroy him. Despite Grayson wanting to take down his former General; the two are very much alike. They think with their balls, not their heads; they rarely consider the aftermath of their decisions and all in all have no consideration for what is reality.
After a brief space battle, both Sarrano and Dead Echo crash land on Stygia, a planet of rather strange origins. Your goal of getting revenge must be placed on hold, rather it is now a priority to get off this planet. The first Act in Bulletstorm doesn’t help to establish that this is the “balls out action game” it was promised to be. Understandably the developers wanted to setup the story, determine character credibility, and so forth but there isn’t much to be had in the first few chapters. Thankfully, the rest of the game delivers the experience you were waiting for.
One of aspects about how to go about playing the game is creativity. The game’s emphasis is to be creative on the way you kill your rampaging enemies; referred to as Skillshots. There are over 150 different skillshots to perform throughout the game, the more variety you perform the more skillpoints you receive to upgrade your weapons. There will be times where you will simply repeat familiar skillshots to get past harder points of the game, but don’t be shy to die once in awhile trying to perform moves that have rarer opportunities. There are shots that can only be performed in certain areas of certain chapters; thankfully no one chapter is much longer than the other making the ability to replay a chapter less of a chore.
As you progress through the story you will be introduced to different enemy types. Each variation has their own unique ways of being killed – it all depends on which ones work for you. The foes with armor plating are sure to frustrate you at some point during the game, as your AI friendlies rarely will help you out. This is nothing new to the genre – having teammates that offer little to no value outside of cinematic dialogue.
To sum up the campaign for Bulletstorm – it does what it promised to do. It provided an arcade-like experience with focus on big balls, big guns, and dozens of enemies to kill. The story is nothing special but it was never penned to be. Rather the focus here was replayability. With some odds’n ends to collect through each level, a wide variety of skillshots to perform, and a fast paced experience – it is worth playing through the game a few more times. Achievement/trophy whores will need to if they want to gain all the listed accomplishments. The game is not meant to be taken seriously – which was one of the key marketing ideas for the title. From start to finish, the campaign can be defeated in roughly six hours.
Sticking to true arcade fashion, solo players can also compete in Echoes mode – where they can play in a handful of different segmented portions from the campaign. Think of it like the Tier 1 Mode from Medal of Honor. While ammo is not limited, players are given par times for each level. It’s not all about finishing it as soon as possible, but also to score as many points as you can. Here is why learning skillshots are important – because the more variety of skillshots you perform, the more points you will receive. Simply shooting the enemy down won’t help you. Each level is rated out of three stars. The more stars you earn the more levels you unlock, though it won’t be hard to unlock all the levels by time you reach the third of fourth one on the list.
Online wise, the developers took a different route for multiplayer. Focusing less on killing each other, Bulletstorm‘s focus is teamwork. In its lone mode, Anarchy, up to four players can work together to fight off hordes of enemies in small, but colorfully dangerous levels. It’s quite similar to that of Halo‘s Firefight mode, or Left 4 Dead‘s campaign mode. Again, the focus here is creative kills that earn more points. After each wave dropkits will launch down to allow you to buy more ammo and new upgrades (including ones not available in the campaign). This mode can be played solo, but as you reach later waves you’ll realize why having a buddy might be useful.
In a game like this, one would expect your typical multiplayer modes like Deathmatch and maybe even CTF – it’s odd to see that the developers took a different route and only included Anarchy. This by no means degrades the experience that is being offered but it obviously limits the multiplayer’s appeal. New modes are not unheard of when it comes to future downloadable content, though let us hope we are not going to be paying for a deathmatch mode in later time.
The experience isn’t perfect for Bulletstorm. The controls mix together the “heavy” feel of Killzone with the “sharpshooting scope” of Call of Duty. For the most part, the controls are fairly simple and are responsive during the game; though there are times when you may prompt to switch a weapon or use your leash and end result is…nothing. Having played the PS3 version, there was a moment where I was forced to restart a chapter (Act 2 – Chapter 2) after the game failed to trigger the final observation point, causing me to simply just have an empty level to my disposal. Restarting a checkpoint did not work. It wasn’t much of a hassle as mentioned before, chapters are roughly all the same length and you can fly through them pretty quick.
Near the end of the game, the framerate from all the action on screen stuttered quite a bit, but never reached that “agitation point” where you get fed up. Given that there was quite a bit of action going on at once it was understandable and fortunately it never resulted in untimely deaths to the player. There are certainly moments were you are surprised that the framerate didn’t stutter, especially in a select few mid-campaign chapters.
Bulletstorm won’t appeal to everyone out there. It likely won’t take you away from your Black Ops or Killzone 3 addiction anytime soon but it does deliver a refreshing experience for the genre. Realism and nuclear bombs can only be appealing for so long; it’s satisfying to put a game in that focuses less on a Nazi-hybrid enemy or Russia, and focuses more on shooting disfigured and zany alien-like species just for the hell of it. I would never personally take a flight to Stygia, but it was a nice experience to get off Planet Helghan for a few days.
Depending how EA and People Can Fly (developers) deliver future DLC, Bulletstorm offers a fun, entertaining campaign, an addicting Echoes mode, and the multiplayer will become a party favorite soon enough. New modes are welcomed, but at what cost?
PROS: Focuses less on realism, more on shooting anything that moves. Echoes mode is the meat and bones of the game. Good variety of different weapons, each having their own unique ways of killing their foes. Ishi’s character personality is the strongest part of the story. Anarchy mode should become a favorite amongst gaming friends.
CONS: Multiplayer has limited appeal. More weapon types were sought for; spent more time upgrading weapons with unnecessarily ammo upgrades. It won’t steal you away from your current FPS addiction. The vulgarity wasn’t offensive but just over-abused throughout the campaign.
Bottom Line: Bulletstorm delivered the balls out, guns a’blazin’ experience it was marketed with. It won’t stop you from playing other first person shooters but is a game that is worth putting in every now and then to refresh yourself with just a mindless story and dozens of enemies to shoot down. We haven’t seen the last of this new IP.
Verdict: B
