Bulletstorm

Alright Babe, knock it out of the park.

A suicidal attempt at revenge goes horribly wrong and two former special ops soldiers end up stranded on a hostile planet.  Now they have to find the very man they tried to kill in order to make their escape from the clutches of death.

---

Recommended Age Minimum Age Available On... 18+ 18 PC, Xbox 360, PS3 Overall Fun Length Frustration   Violence Sexuality Substances Gambling 7 6 2   10 0 5 0 Mods Religion Anti-Law Community Sports Magic Miscellaneous 0 0 0 2 6 0 10

1.     Gameplay

• Overall Fun - 7

In 1976, the controversial video game “Death Race” was released.  Players were rewarded with points for each “gremlin” they ran over in a car.  People were concerned at the fact that players were rewarded for running over living things with cars.

If parents thought that was bad, I wonder what they will think of Bulletstorm.

Mild. Show me the real stuff.

Bulletstorm’s feature game mechanic is that it rewards players with points for performing unique or difficult kills on enemies.  It isn’t enough that the player kills an enemy, the player is encouraged (and in multiplayer required) to perform difficult and violent kills on enemies, much of which involve a plethora of blood and gore.

That's better.

This game gets extremely bloody.  There are well over one hundred different unique kills the player can perform, each with varying degrees of violence and sadism.  This is gone into in graphic detail in the “violence” section below.  However, the graphic nature of the violence aside, the uniqueness of this game and the lengths that the developers went to make every section of this game unique cannot go unappreciated.  There are a wide variety of levels, a healthy mix of enemies, and a cornucopia of objects and traps to use against said enemies.

Squashed enemies imminent.

The storyline was easy to follow and, despite the stereotypical nature of the characters and the fact that the main character looks distinctly like the character from another, more well-known game series, the characters were actually somewhat interesting.  The dynamic between the main character, the often hostile female ally, and the robotically cold male ally were usually entertaining, which made the down time between combat sessions amusing.

It seems we're at an impasse.

The only major problem I had with the game was the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger after accomplishing very little.  The player’s two main objectives throughout the game are to get off the planet and to kill the main antagonist, a particularly foul-mouthed general.  The player manages to accomplish the first goal, but the game leaves the second undone in order to set up for a sequel.  While some games can accomplish this well, leaving a first game in a series “undone” in this way makes me significantly less likely to want to try the second game.

What happened to this guy?

The “cliffhanger” ending and the somewhat disappointing multiplayer mode prevent this game from being anywhere near amazing.  Hopefully these problems are taken into account for any future games in the series.

• Length - 6

Bulletstorm’s campaign lasted a little more than 6 hours, but this can potentially extend depending on what difficulty level a player is playing at and how much time a player spends looking for the hidden items.  There are a few different types of collectibles hidden throughout the game which can be fun to find.

The game also has some decent replay value.  I completed about 75% of the different types of kills, but there were a lot that I missed.  A few of them I would love to go back and try to complete again.

There is also a cooperative multiplayer game mode which could be fun for friends to play together.  However, after completing the campaign I found this mode somewhat boring and didn’t spend long with it.

• Frustration Factor - 2

There wasn’t much that was frustrating about this game.  It flowed fairly smoothly overall.  The only exception was this one type of enemy that would try to rush me and my allies.  If they got close, they’d automatically wrap me in an explosive belt that would detonate within a few seconds.  On the easiest difficulty level the explosion would severely damage me and would prevent me from firing my weapons while I was wrapped up.  The enemies were relatively simple to kill, but if one caught me off guard I would end up in serious trouble.

This leads to the other minor problem, my friendly AI were fairly useless.  In some ways this was extremely helpful because it meant that I could get more kills (and thus more points), but it also meant that I couldn’t count on them to watch my back while I attacked.  The simplest solution was to keep moving quickly and constantly slide around a level.

2.     Parental Notices

• Violence - 10

Violence is the primary focus of this game.  While this can be said about other shooter games, Bulletstorm in particular highlights the high levels of violence and encourages players to discover new and gruesome ways of killing foes.  This is done by a sort of point-based credit system.  The more unique or difficult a kill is to do, the more points the player will get for performing it.

Shot in the throat. Ouch.

For example, a standard kill (shooting an enemy in the chest until he dies) will net the player 10 points.  A headshot (shooting the player in the head until he dies and the head explodes into blood) is worth 25 points.  Using the shotgun to blow the top half of an enemy’s body clean off the bottom half is also worth 25 points.

Bits and pieces everywhere. It's like a jigsaw puzzle but with human body parts.

Kicking an enemy into a giant cactus, electric wire, or metal rebar is worth 100 points.

Anyone for skewers?

Stunning a mini-boss, kicking him in his armored butt-plate to pop it up, and then shooting him in the crack until he dies is worth even more points.  Fire also shoots from his anus with an accompanying farting sound.

I don't want that toast.

There are even hidden level-based kills.  In one section, a giant helicopter gets downed at the end of a long bridge.  The blades, however, continue to spin dangerously while enemies jump around the player.  The player can kick enemies into the spinning blades and will eventually have to kick a giant boss into the blades as well.  There are many other events similar to this.

Impale a sub-boss with a drill, then kick it into his chest.

To say that gore is present in this game would be a serious understatement.  The vast majority of the kills a player will be performing will be extremely bloody and filled with gore.  Aside from the kills, the player will find various amounts of gore in the levels.  This is featured most prominently in some sort of a feeding area for creatures on the planet.

Can bones get stained?

• Sexuality - 0

While sexuality is not a factor in this game, please take note of the “Language” mentioned in the “Miscellaneous” section below.

• Substances - 5

The main character is a serious alcoholic.  The entire prologue sequence is about him and a friend making terrible decisions that cost lives because they are completely drunk.  The main character ends up driving his ship and everyone onboard straight through (not just into, through) a gigantic enemy capital ship.  Somehow he manages to survive.

The screen isn't fuzzy yet, hit me again.

You would think that this would be an excellent opportunity to discuss the dangers of drunk flying, but the game doesn’t do that.  On the contrary, there are numerous bottles of unidentified alcohol littered around the game that the player can pick up and, in first person, drink.

Two bottles down and I'm still conscious. It's gonna be a good night.

If the player drinks a bottle, he becomes instantly intoxicated and gets bonus points for each kill.  The screen becomes fuzzy and movements become much more difficult to control.  Then, just as quickly, the player sobers up with no ill effects.

The only real purpose of the alcohol is to give the player more points for each kill.  If this element were removed from the game, nothing would have been lost.

There is also toxic waste on the planet.  In one section, the player will end up falling into a huge river of the waste and will have to run through it to survive.  It’s pretty gross and does short-term damage to the player, but there do not seem to be any long-term effects.

We probably shouldn't be wading through this...

• Gambling - 0

Gambling is not a factor in this game.

3.     Other Factors

• Mods - 0

There are no mod tools available for this game.

• Religion - 0

Religion is not a factor in this game.

• Anti-Law - 0

As there is no law enforcement on this planet, law enforcement is not a factor in this game.

• Online Community - 2

The only multiplayer game mode is a cooperative “horde mode” where a small team of players fight against progressively more difficult enemies.  Some of the players use microphones, but I never had any problem with the people online.  It wasn’t difficult to complete the levels and I never got any sense that the community was hostile in any way.  From what it seemed, only fans of the game and those curious to see what the online game mode was like were playing, so the entire experience was fairly relaxed.

Looks similar to the single-player...

• Extreme Sports - 6

There will be some pretty absurd physical feats the player will be required to perform.  There are many times when the player will have to cross huge chasms by using pieces of wreckage like the monkey bars at a playground.

On at least one occasion, the player will hang by the bar by one hand and shoot an enemy with the rifle held in the other hand.  The recoil from the weapon alone should have knocked the player off the wreckage, but everything ends up working out perfectly.

Serious arm strength.

On one occasion, the player is on a dam as the structure is collapsing.  The player has to jump off a scaffolding and grip a huge metal cable, using the cable to make a somewhat controlled descent to a floating platform hundreds of feet below.

Oh yeah, brilliant plan.

It should also be mentioned that the player somehow has the miraculous ability to survive vehicle crashes that should have left his body a mushy, pulpy substance.  He manages to survive crashing his ship kamikaze-style through an enemy capital ship, a glass tram car dropping a hundred feet to the ground, and a glass elevator getting shot out of a shaft like a cannonball.

Willy Wonka, eat your heart out.

There is also one section where the player and a small squad of assassins use some sort of magnetic boots to walk down the vertical face of a skyscraper.  It can be somewhat disorienting, but the action isn’t realistic and would be nearly impossible to replicate.

But magnetic boots don't change gravity. They should just hang off the building by their feet...

• Magic - 0

Magic is not a factor in this game.

• Miscellaneous - 10

Language

Occasionally we have to include “language” as part of our game reviews.  Usually this is just because of a few too many four-letter words that are thrown about casually.  For the most part, however, it’s the kind of language that one would expect to see in a rated-R movie.  Bulletstorm is not like those games at all.  These are a few direct quotes from the game:

“Hold your dick for one second you bungled rimjob.”
“Big bluff you prancing geisha.”
“I’ll fucking kill your dicks.”

Now, it was clear to me that the game’s writers were including heavy language to make things funny while making the characters seem tougher, but I think this went a bit too far.  The second quote was used by a particularly foul-mouthed antagonist while he was talking to an asian character.

The third quote isn’t really supposed to make sense (the main character openly mocks the character who says the line), but it’s still not the kind of thing you’d say in polite company.  These types of lines aren’t exceptions either, they’re extremely common.  I can’t think of a single cutscene that didn’t involve some sort of combination of swear words.

Kamikaze

In the prologue, the main character and his crew stumble upon his nemesis’ capital ship.  In a drunken rage, the main character drives his ship straight through the core of the enemy ship, severely damaging both in the process.

Is it just me or does that ship look like Jabba the Hutt's freighter?

Human Disfigurement

While it is possible that the majority of the enemies were at one time human and simply mutated because of something on the planet, I could never completely confirm this.  However, I could confirm that the player’s main ally was at one time human before becoming badly disfigured in an explosion.

He's like the terminator, but partially real.

The explosion decimates the entire right half of his head and most of his right arm.  Part of his brain was also damaged and had to be replaced with some sort of computer-based artificial intelligence.  Evidently it changes his personality significantly.

Assassination

The main character was one member of a squad of black ops assassins hired to kill gunrunners and other criminals.  Unfortunately for the main character, it turns out that the targets they were told to kill were innocent civilians and reporters who had information on the main character’s commanding officer (the game’s main antagonist).

Objectives: Assassi-... oh. You already did it. Good job.