Thayala’s World

Bulletstorm
Developer: People Can Fly (subsidiary of Epic Games)

Assume, for a moment, that what you really want in a first-person shooter is solid gameplay. great graphics, and a plethora of dick jokes. If so, then Bulletstorm may be the game for you. And it delivers.

The marketing executives for Bulletstorm clearly believe that the “incredible new ‘skillshot’ system” is the center of this new game. While playing the game, I foolishly thought that the innovation was the “leash,” a wrist-worn device that lets you pull enemies to you in slow motion. It’s used throughout the games both in combat and what I would normally call “puzzle solving,” except that the solution to said puzzles is always highlighted for you with the text [Q] USE YOUR LEASH appearing over the object that you are expected to manipulate.

I have to assume that this wasn’t always the case, and that players initially were exploring the level trying to determine how to get to the next area, flinging their leash at every object they could find. “This is not fun for the player,” says one developer. “You are right,” says the other. “Let’s rethink this whole ‘puzzle’ thing.” And then the proceeded to add the aforementioned “hint,” as well as labeling every other situation where you might need to kick, crouch, open, or in some other way interact with an object. Thankfully, every enemy on the screen is not labelled with [MOUSE 1] SHOOT THIS, but that may have been a limitation on time. Maybe I should try playing it at the “hard” difficulty—insert joke here—and see if all of these labels are removed.

No, dear reader, intriguing level design is not the focus of this game. The game’s focus is on killing enemies in the most imaginative ways possible. While you could simply settle for the mundane headshot or typical RPG to the groin, you are encouraged to find more creative ways to kill your enemies, such as using your leash to drag an enemy toward you (when you do this, the game switches to slow motion), kick him away from you into a cactus, and as he flies toward the cactus, sever him in half with your shotgun. Yay! Bullet Kick + Pricked + Legless earns you 225 skill points!

You can then use those skill points to buy upgrades for your weapons, such as additional magazine capacity or special “charged” shots, which are basically secondary fire modes. There are seven different weapons available (ten if you count the Leash, the chaingun that can be “borrowed” from a boss or ripped off its mount a la Halo, and a… well, that would be a spoiler), that include usual shooter staples such as the carbine (Peacemaker Carbine), shotgun (Boneduster), rifle (Head Hunter), and magnum (Screamer), as well as three more exotic weapons: a gun that fires an explosive bolo that can wrap around enemies or objects before a timed or triggered explosion (Flailgun); the Bouncer, which fires appropriately bouncy mines toward your enemies; and the groan-inducingly named Penetrator, which fires rocket-propelled drill bits into (or through) your enemies, often driving them backwards into walls, cacti, etc.

As I mentioned before, each of these weapons has a secondary fire or “charged” mode that can be purchased through the skill shot system. The carbine, for instance, can be upgraded to fire the equivalent of 100 shots into a single burst of energy, while the sniper rifle’s upgraded shot is an explosive round. So you upgrade your weapons, use the upgraded weapons to earn skill points to purchase better versions of your weapons, wash, rinse, and repeat.

Enemies in the single-player campaign become repetitive relatively quickly, but there are a lot of them, since you need meat to feed the skill point grinder. Most of them are quick to kill, with a couple exceptions—there are a few enemies move too quickly for your leash to grab them, other enemies require you to shoot them in specific areas of their body to kill them quickly, and some are heavily armored (and armed). There are also several miniboss and boss fights. The mini-bosses become a speed bump, as once you start upgrading your weapons it takes very little effort to dispatch them (the game designers make up for this by making you face more and more of the minibosses at once).

The boss fights teeter on the edge of being fun and being overly repetitive, since they basically require you to figure out the pattern of the boss while you avoid being hit, and then shoot at the conveniently glowing parts of their anatomy until they die.

But the writing. Oh, the writing. The story itself is a fairly straight-forward revenge scenario, and is actually enjoyable except when the characters insist on inserting every possible bit of sexual innuendo, profanity, and/or dick joke into practically every line of dialog. For example, when our hero meets a female mercenary, she warns them to stay away from her. Behold.

One character in particular, General Sarrano, can’t utter a line of dialog without some form of swearing, with the occasional racial or homophobic slur thrown in for seasoning.

The strange thing is that none of the dialog feels out of character, really, it’s just that there’s so much of it and it’s often so over-the-top that it made me feel a little uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s clever, but usually it’s just kind of… there. As a result I felt some disconnection from the main character.

So in the end, Bulletstorm’s single-player campaign was fun. If you have young ones in the house or someone who doesn’t appreciate blue language and humor, you might want to get out the headphones.