![]() Every time an enemy runs out and you fail to glean a solid wad of points from the kill, you feel impoverished, partially because points earned from skillshots are what let you upgrade weapons and buy ammo. Instead, they’re more like your playthings, and the real spectre that dogs you is your score. The skillshot system rules all in Bulletstorm, and for it to work enemies can’t be something you’re concerned about. They’re also far less of a danger than you might be expecting. The enemies are charismatic in their mad, cannibal dodging and attacking, and they’re plenty obliging when their time comes to fall over, howl in agony, or burst into meaty chunks, as enemies must. ![]() The guns all pop and crackle pleasingly, each with a reload animation an alt-fire that whispers of hundreds of man-hours of work. The story’s pulp trash, but I'd happily argue that it's great pulp trash. There are lots of little sparks like this. The reason you’re on the planet is because you attacked a space cruiser belonging to General Serano, your ex-employer and betrayer, causing both of your ships to crash land, and now the only way you’ll get off the planet is by hitching a ride in a rescue vessel sent to save him. Despite Bulletstorm’s story amounting to two foulmouthed men - who look and sound like they’ve been injecting ground-beef since birth - trying to get off a pulp sci-fi terror planet, the characters work well within the game’s idiot universe. And yeah, a lot of that’s down to Remender’s bottomless creativity when it comes to swearing (he pokes fun at himself early on in the game when the character you’re hunting declares that if you come any closer she will “kill all your dicks,” only for your exhausted protagonist to scream back that he doesn’t understand), but I was also laughing at the most absurd setpieces the FPS has ever seen, as well as moments of perfectly inoffensive wit and irony.Īnd it’s not all jokes, either. With the exception of Sumotori Dreams, a game hasn’t (deliberately) made me laugh this much since I was eleven years old. The voice acting is flawless, and the designers have provided a lavish stage for the entire thing - beautiful backdrops of a fantastical holiday planet turned mutant playground, moments where the action falls away to let the dialogue or vistas speak for themselves, even instances where the level design and set-pieces accompany the jokes with impressive comic timing. ![]() Writer Rick Remender has done an extremely good job here. I’m talking about stuff as basic as Bulletstorm’s plot and its sense of humour. I’m not talking about the Skillshot system here, although that is part of it. He's bored because he is so smart, and has the potential to be awesome. Bulletstorm is the whip-smart kid at the back of the class in the vintage replica rock & roll t-shirt who’s not paying attention because he’s so torturously bored. But the problem with labelling Bulletstorm as dumb is that dumb implies thoughtless, and Bulletstorm is as far from thoughtless as any FPS I’ve ever played. And you’ll know the game’s story centres around a murderous romp across a dusty planet where killer freaks and mutants swarm about like ants on a lollipop.Ī natural assumption when you learn all this is to think that Bulletstorm is a dumb FPS, albeit an over the top one, and that maybe you’ll pick it up somewhere down the line and have a bit of fun with it. You’ll know that if you shoot a man in the testicles, you’re encouraged to kick his head clean off as he lies screaming on the floor for the ‘MERCY’ bonus. If you’ve been following Bulletstorm's noisesome marketing, you’ll know this game has a quadruple-barreled shotgun, and that if you blow an enemy’s torso clean off with it you get 100 points and the ‘TOPLESS’ Skillshot bonus. I want to start by dispelling an assumption that I think a few people have been dragged towards by the gale of gore, guts and innuendo surrounding this game. I returned to RPS having finished the single-player game and invested some six hours into the multiplayer, making me perfectly equipped to tell you Wot I Think. ![]() Bulletstorm isn’t actually out until this Friday, but EA recently demanded we send one of our number along to play, complete, and review the finished game.
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