Whip it good
With each weapon contributing its own unique skillshots, attempting to claim all becomes something of an addiction – particularly the tougher to pull-off ones. Try grabbing a foe with the whip, shooting his mate and finishing off your first victim before he hits the ground. Not easy. Skillshots come into their own during multiplayer gaming too, with players able to team up to complete a whole different roster of skillshots than those you’ll find in the single-player campaign.
Gonna send you back to mother in a cardboard box...
Bulletstorm’s variation in its approach to combat is something of a double-edged sword, however. While you have untold ways of going about your murderous business, for me it became pretty obvious what worked and what didn’t, leading to my eschewing a few of the guns on offer altogether. Still, it means you can always mix it up on the next play through Dead Space-style.
Without ruining too many surprises the variety of enemies on show is impressive with later foes proving much more intelligent, able to avoid your whip attacks, for example. You’ll get assistance of the gargantuan kind in one memorable chapter too (again without spoiling anything), though your AI comrades, a cybernetic Ishi and others, contribute little more than taking up a position and blasting away mindlessly.
Meet the sidekick
A quick mention of multiplayer too, though a lack of servers at the time of writing means there was no way to test it on-line. On a local network, however, it proved entertaining stuff. Anarchy mode is particularly enjoyable, a riff on Halo: Reach’s Firefight mode where waves of enemies must be defeated, the difference being that you must hit a certain skillshot score in order to progress through the waves. Echos mode, meanwhile, opens up sections of the solo-player campaign to multiplayer freestyling to great effect.
Verdict
Bulletstorm is gaming’s equivalent of The Expendables, only a lot more fun. And it’s refreshing to see the FPS genre stripped back to its fundamentals, namely, a huge emphasis on the fun. Only a lack of a particularly engaging narrative negates what is otherwise an early contender for shooter of the year. ®
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Bulletstorm
COMMENTS
Lolz @ Sir Wiggum
The Jury is out because it's not set in a contemporary setting? The Jury is back in with thier decision about your commetns and have decided you are a plank.
Gaming is all about innovation and fun and having played the BETA for this I can assure you, it is absolutley brilliant. Set in the future or not, if a game sucks, it properly sucks. This is back to basics, good old fashined blasting. Remember the beserker power up in DOOM II? That massive smile you'd get at knwoing you were going to kick some serious arse? Thats this game through and through.
Briliant.
The only questions that really matter
1. Is this game, brought to us by those of Painkiller fame, as good or better than Painkiller?
2, Is it crippled with DRM?
3. Is there a gun that fires shurikens and lightning.
£25 at Play
>... the £50 odd SRP ...
http://www.play.com/Search.html?searchstring=bulletstorm&searchtype=gameall&searchsource=2&searchfilters=s{bulletstorm}%2bc{362}%2b
and I think just under £30 on Steam.
Remember that the console kids like spending mum and dads money - the PC crowd will be spending their own, so it will be cheaper.
The REAL question for PC gamers is whether the (any) new game is nothing more than a console clone, or whether it is able to use the full range of PC features (normally things like cross-fire/ SLI, leaning etc.) from a little searching it does seem that the game is a console port, and there are a range of problems with it on PC.
shame.
ttfn
Game is fantastic on PC
Admittedly, I'm playing on an i7 quad core with a GTX460 and 8MB of RAM, but what the hell? Bulletstorm is probably the best-looking Unreal3 game to date. God alone knows what Epic has been putting in People Can Fly's tea, but it seemes to have worked: it's a corker. Game play is totally bonkers and much of the dialogue is very chucklesome in a very infantile way. In other words, this is a bundle of fun - and a very good-looking one, at that.
Got my game via Steam. Absolutely no issues - plus the game is linked to Windows Live (with Achievements) and playing on the PC with the 360 controller is to be highly recommended. No, seriously: try it for yourself and see.
