Bulletstorm is a first person shooter developed by People Can Fly games and published by EA and uses the Unreal Engine created by Epic Games. The core concept of the game is that the player has the ability to kill enemies in a wide variety of ways using a whole arsenal of unique weapons. The game follows Dead Echo, a former elite military unit turned space pirates, and its leader Grayson Hunt after they crash land onto resort planet full of crazy locals and wildlife that would like nothing more than to tear them apart.
Players take on the role of Grayson Hunt who is the leader of Dead Echo squad which used to be an elite military unit until they were betrayed and turned into space pirates. Grayson is an alcoholic and reckless and that causes him and Dead Echo to end up stranded on a planet inhabited by hostile and crazy people. Every character in the game that can talk does so in a very abrasive and annoying way. In almost every sentence there is some made up combination of obscene words and adjectives and nouns. There’s almost no reason or explanation for it but it continues for the whole game and by the end it is just obnoxious. It’s like they had 2 large hats, one with adjectives, adverbs and nouns and the other one with every dirty or obscene word and then pulled one of each for the random pairings and then placed in blank spots in the script mad lib style. While playing through the game I didn’t like any of the characters and going on in the story Grayson is trying to redeem himself and make up for what he’s done but by the end I couldn’t care less what happened to any of them.
‘Kill with skill’ is the slogan for Bulletstorm and they encourage players to use their wide variety of weapons and the environment to kill enemies in creative ways. The game gives the player a leash that allows them to yank enemies towards them and when they get close the enemies will glow blue and move in slow motion giving the player time to set them up for a skill shot. The player can also kick enemies and this also causes them to go into a sort of slow motion stasis. Combining the leash and kicking with different weapons and environments is the key to performing most skill shots and racking up the points. Along with kicking there is also a slide kick if you double tap the sprint button and it will make Grayson slide for long distances. Sliding was one of my favorite things to do in the game and I mostly slid from place to place instead of just running.
The weapons in Bulletstorm are pretty unique, fun to use and the game encourages players to use all of them. The game starts out with the generic assault rifle that the player always has and can’t change out. Every gun has a secondary special shot and the assault rifles special shot will disintegrate enemies it hits and can hit more than one if they’re lined up right. Then there’s a handgun that is really powerful with a flare special shot that sets all the enemies in an area on fire and knock an enemy of their feet if hit directly. The handgun ended up being my go to weapon throughout the game because it could take of limbs from a distance with a single shot. Other weapons include a four barreled shotgun, a Flailgun that launches two sticky grenades attached by a chain and can tie up enemies, a sniper rifle that allows the player to control the bullet after its shot, the Bouncer which fires explosive rounds that look like a ball and can bounce off of surfaces and the Penetrator which fires drill bits at enemies. My personal favorite weapon in the game was The Penetrator because it would hit enemies and carry them until they’re pinned on a surface and continue spinning the enemy around. The only weapon in the game I really didn’t like using was the sniper rifle and that was because whenever I would shoot the enemies would automatically try to run away from and dodge the bullet making it difficult to use at times.
Skillshots are introduced into the game after acquiring the leash and it is what is used to score soldiers in the military for their performance. Points earned through this can be spent at dropkits found frequently throughout levels for weapon upgrades and ammo. Using dropkits players can also see what skillshots they have and haven’t performed yet and their point’s worth. The upgrade system for weapons is pretty shallow and is only used to unlock the special shot ability for each weapon and used to upgrade ammo capacity. By the end of the game points are sort of worthless and are only used to refill ammo, which is surprisingly sparse in the game. I thoroughly enjoyed doing some of the skillshots in the game and experimenting with different combinations like tying an enemy up with the Flailgun and then kicking them off a cliff for the Sadist skillshot. The coolest skillshot I came across was when I used the Penetrator from above on an enemy and it pinned him to the ground and spun him in circles making him look like he’s break dancing and getting the Breakdance skillshot.
Multiplayer in Bulletstorm only contains one mode which is the coop Anarchy mode. Anarchy mode allows up to 4 players to go against waves of enemies while trying to reach a par score. In Anarchy mode players can use points to buy weapons, ammo, and upgrades that are a lot deeper than what is in the singleplayer. Such upgrades include upgrading player speed, kick power, and health and upgrading weapon’s power and reloading speed. It also includes a lot of team skillshots which are worth twice as many points, such as Tug-o-War when two or more players try to leash the same enemy and pull him apart. One big drawback is that there are only 6 levels and the replayability of the multiplayer is severely lacking. There is also Echoes mode which allows players to replay sections of the singleplayer campaign to try and get the highest score on the leaderboards but it’s not really multiplayer.
Overall I really enjoyed Bulletstorm because of its solid and extremely fun gameplay. I didn’t play through the singleplayer because of the characters, the story or the colorful dialogue, I played through it in spite of those things just because I was having so much finding different ways to kill people. The game really doesn’t have much replay value other than going back and trying to get all the different skillshots and some limited multiplayer. In the end I would highly recommend playing Bulletstorm if creatively killing enemies sounds like your kind of thing.
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