First impressions: Bulletstorm

Remember a few posts ago when I was talking about Duke Nukem and said that he’s the epitome of everything a teenage boy thinks is cool? Well, Bulletstorm is the game that kid would make when he’s all grown up. Bulletstorm is the kind of game Duke Nukem would play.

Some fairly lofty aspirations, I know, but I assure you Bulletstorm earns every bit of those qualifiers. This game is so unapologetically vulgar and violent, that, even though I don’t live with my parents anymore, I kept looking around to make sure no one who thinks I’m a responsible adult would see me playing a game like this. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is pretty much up to you.

The demo starts off with a video uniquely made for the demo, with protagonist (wouldn’t go as far as to call him the “hero”) Grayson Hunt giving a profanity-laden walkthrough of the demo – how to play and an overview of the only mode present, a score-attack mode called “Echoes.” It’s very evident that Bulletstorm doesn’t take itself too seriously – all the humor is juvenile at best and the most important element of gameplay is discovering every vicious “skill shot.” One skill shot, for example, is called “Mercy,” which you get by shooting an enemy in the crotch and then kicking him in the head as he doubles over in pain. And, honestly, that’s one of the tamer skill shots.

You get points for every skill shot, plus more for environmental kills as well as chaining/combining skill shots. And points are important, not just in Echoes but for the campaign (which isn’t playable in the demo). In Echoes, the points you earn will be your score that’s posted to a leaderboard but they also act as a currency to buy new guns, ammo and refill your charge shots at stores called Drop Shops.

Only one map is available in the demo (titled “Collapsed Building) which you can easily make your way through in under ten minutes. Fortunately, the whole point of Echoes is to play it over and over, refining your strategy and trying for a higher score. Somehow I managed to put up my best score the first time I played and haven’t been able to match it. Echoes is also playable over the internet, but I’m not quite sure if this feature is available in the demo.

Being made by People Can Fly and Epic (the studio that also develops “Gears of War”) you might think that it’s odd that Bulletstorm is a First-Person Shooter – and you’d be right. Bulletstorm doesn’t play like other FPSes on the market today – it almost feels like a first-person Gears. There is no focus on cover, no jump button and not really much strategy needed outside of trying to string together newer, crazier skill shots. Grayson can vault over objects with the A button, which also acts as a button for sprinting and initiating one of Grayson’s melee attacks – the slide kick. Melee attacks are invaluable for starting skill shots, namely because kicking/slide kicking or throwing someone with your leash (an energy beam of sorts) sends that foe into a bullet-time-esque slow-mo for a few seconds, letting you experiment for different skill shots. The controls mention that the back button is used for a skill shot directory, but it’s not available in the demo.

It’s pretty interesting that the world of Bulletstorm (an abandoned planet named Stygia) is as bright and colorful as it is considering how much the game encourages you to commit heinous acts of mayhem as often as possible. While the level Collapsed Building didn’t feature too many large, open areas for combat, the backdrop of the game hints that Stygia was once home to bustling metropolis’, with many, large (albeit wrecked) skyscrapers dotting the landscape.

The demo also features an outro video, where Grayson takes the time to explain a bit of the game’s fairly standard plot – Grayson and his crew are stranded on Stygia but Grayson is more focused on some revenge plot than actually escaping the planet. Bulletstorm is definitely one to keep your eye on if you are an FPS fan but its lack of competitive multiplayer, its over-the-top, cartoony violence and different control scheme may turn some off. It may not be a day-one purchase for me, but the taste the demo gave me definitely left me wanting.

Bulletstorm releases on February 22.