Bulletstorm

To paint a rather vivid picture of the this game, one would need only reference 80′s action movies rife with chiched one liners, egos and attitudes bigger than the guns being wielded, and a body count that would rival any real war. It’s as if this game’s market audience were the people that grew up on and still love those kinda of movies. People like me.

The game stars a rag-tag group of mercenaries who once were a rag-tag group of assassins. The guy in charge of their operations, General Sarrano, screwed them over big time and now they want revenge. Revenge comes at a price and strands the only two survivors, Grayson Hunt and Ishi Sato, on a resort planet gone wrong. Now they need to fight their way through hordes of gangs and mutants to get off the planet. If this doesn’t sound like a summer action movie, I don’t know what does.

The game follows tried and true FPS mechanics with a few extras tossed in for a varied, but balanced playstyle. The extras come in the form of combos that can be executed by using the weapons available and the environment. For example, you could use the Leash (think of it like a whip that pulls enemies and objects to you) and yank a hapless foe to you. Once close enough, kick him away from you. Now shoot him in the head for a nice tidy little combo. Things can be as complicated or as intricate as you want (within limitations of the game mechanics, of course) with each combo netting you points. These points are used to upgrade your weapons. While this may seem pretty gimmicky, it actually works rather well and rewards players for getting inventive with their kills as any special kill only nets a maximum bonus the first time it’s used. You can, however, make it through the game without a huge score. This makes the game a bit more accessible as some of the special kills and combos are hard to pull off while under fire.

The look and the feel of the game really isn’t anything new, though there is a lot more color in this game than previous titles made by Epic, which is a welcome change. The dialogue is total 8o’s cheesy ball full of vulgarity and racial slurs galore. This combined with the kill combos means that this game definitely earns it’s rating. Oddly enough there was a debate over the female leads breasts, with the final outcome having them reduced in size. With all the other stuff going on in this title, I’m rather surprised that was a big point of contention. Aside from all this, the game is as short as it is fun and should take most players no time at all to blow through it. However, that fun factor will keep players coming back for more. The multiplayer feels as though it was tacked on and is about as satisfying as the Echo gametype, which allows players to track scores on a global scoreboard for each of the singleplayer levels. I mean, if you’re the competitive sort, then these might appeal… might.

Over all the game is insanely fun and has pretty sizable replay value. While I wouldn’t consider buying it at full price, I would definitely suggest picking it up. However, if you aren’t a fan of action movies from the 80′s you probably won’t find it as enjoyable as other FPS games out there.