Premise
It’s a shooter, so you should know the drill by now: Enter area, hold down the trigger until nothing on screen’s moving, continue on.
To put it simply, this game runs like Gears of War in a first person view. Large, muscle-bound men run around firing weapons while screaming primal war cries and shouting obscenities. The game tries to follow its big brother Gears, but it just feels like the machismo has gone beyond compelling and has become forced and contrived.
Plot
In a distant future full of Civil War and Seven Seas cliches, the player fills the shoes of a space pirate named Grayson Hunt. Gray and his boys used to be confederate soldiers but uncover a plot formed by their wickedly ambitious general… why is he so evil? Because the plot says so.
Basically your general is evil incarnate and has been using Gray and his squad to silence those who would run smear campaigns against him. Gray being a stand up kind of guy… well actually he’s not but we’ll cover that later, Gray and his boys object to this news and defect from the Confederacy and go into a self-imposed exile outside of Confederate space.
Gray and his boys come across the evil general and stage a drunken attack against his flagship; needless to say it doesn’t go well and they crash land on a strange world full of hostile locals. Now Gray and the remnants of his crew must fight for survival, escape and revenge.
Gameplay
In a crowded market like shooters, a game has to have some damn good mechanics to make it stand out. Bulletstorm does do a few things differently from its colleagues. First, and most noticeably, there is no jumping. That’s right little bunny-hoppers, no longer can a player just bounce around like a rabid bunny with a machine gun to avoid being hit; your feet are solidly planted on the ground. Instead of jumping, the standard A button is used for sprinting, dashing, climbing and sliding. The lack of a jump ability does mix up strategy a bit, yes we couldn’t jump in Gears of War either, but for a first person shooter this can be a huge adjustment for many players. The varied uses of what would be expected to be the jump button can lead to some fun action combinations, or may sometimes leave you constantly sliding into a low wall instead of vaulting over it.
The main gimmicks in the gameplay mechanics are kicking, and a leash weapon. Melee attacks are nothing new in shooters, in fact melee attacks sometimes play a bigger role than the firearms (Halo, anyone?) but when was the last time your melee attack was a mighty kick that sent your enemies flying dozens of yards away in a stasis-induced slow-mo? The boot not enough? Early in the game the player acquires a tool called the leash, it works as an electric grapple beam that grabs objects and throws them away, or grabs an enemy and pulls them towards you.
These mechanics are handy tools as they are quite effective compared to shooting your gun endlessly, plus the game rewards players who mix up their attack combinations into bizarre combos of death that are sometimes brutal, sometimes comical, and always gory. Points are awarded to the player for original kills, and these points are used to purchase upgrades and weapons; why shoot a guy and get 10 points when you can grab them with the leash, pull them in, kick them away and blow them away in the air? After all that will net you 250 points.
Graphics
The graphics in this game are quizzical for me. There are times when the environments are breath-taking, and other times when the characters and cut scenes look more like something a player would expect to see on the original Xbox. The game is built on the Unreal engine (don’t even fake being surprised) and there are times when the graphics show it, but there are quite a few times where the engine isn’t done justice. The graphics simply suffer from inconsistency; they look great a lot, but seem to lack in the important areas.
Sound
The music is something one would expect from a game made by Epic, there are moments with sweeping orchestrals and grinding heavy rock, but once the game’s turned off you can’t really remember any of the melodies.
The music isn’t bad by any means, but as I sit here all I can recall is that it wasn’t bad, but not a single progression is coming to my memory. The music suits the moods and environments, but it won’t be winning soundtrack or original score of the year.
The voice acting is, well, it’s Epic Games. Gears of War has become known for little in the intellectual scripting department but widely recognized for manly screams and creative uses of the F word. That holds true for the most part in Bulletstorm as the first 15 minutes of the game drops more F bombs than a Richard Pryor roast.
The main character’s voicing is done by, I believe, the same fellow who voiced the dwarf Oghren in Dragon Age Origins. It was neat getting to hear him again, and it’s always fun recognizing a voice from another game, especially if it’s a game you love. The chatter of his character doesn’t stray far from Oghren, there’s still drunken banter and toilet humour that’s sure to make any pre-pubescent lad or underdeveloped frat boy giggle, but it feels very hollow; oh yeah and he swears every other line so it proves that he’s hardcore. The voice fits the character, and some of his wisecracks are pretty solid, but there are a lot of misses and too few hits in his dialogue; this is more the fault of poor writing than bad voice-acting. All in all the man for the job does fit the bill since Gray’s kind of an Xmen Wolverine knockoff but oh wait the guy who voiced Wolverine also voices Gray, convenient.
Other characters voice-acting is forgettable and over-the-top. The evil General Serrano is stereotypical military crossed with white trash southerner to the bone, leaving his contribution to the conversations less than memorable; as the game progresses you’ll actually forget why exactly you’re after this guy other than the obvious end goal to kill him. Others are forgettable roles of forced southern accents saying predictable redneck catchphrases; I was shocked there was no mention of Nascar at some point.
The only other character whose voice acting really takes precedence is the character Ishi, your companion. He has some great lines but they’re not delivered as well as they could be. Great scripting but poor execution has left this character as not so much tragic, but more forced angst. Ishi’s character is suffering from a tragic situation, much like Dom in Gears of War 2, but poor delivery of the lines takes away from his pathos and makes him more the prototypical “emo” character; I swear every time he starts talking I wait for How Could This Happen To Me to start playing in the background.
Multiplayer
Again much like Gears of War, the online modes don’t vary much. There are different mode names, but at the end of the day it’s basically different forms of Death Match. However you cut it, the multiplayer comes down to just spraying and praying with your firearms. I don’t care much for the online communities in many shooters, as they seem to be the gamers that are the most unbearable (whining about lag, accusations of cheating and network manipulation every time another player does well etc etc) so with the watered-down variety and the obnoxious online community, I think I’ll pass on playing this game online too often.
Though in this game’s community’s defence, I made it three whole games before someone on an opposing team questioned my sexual orientation! And five games before someone sent me a message calling me a disgustingly inappropriate racial slur!
What I Liked
Some cool new mechanics that aren’t found in many other shooters make this game stand out a bit from other shooters and could lead to some awesome highlight videos.
What I’d Change
The forced machismo and contrived angst grate my nerves, I don’t need a character spouting on about how hard life is every minute only to be interrupted by unnecessary profanity; swearing happens in games, I understand that, but this game just swears for the sake of swearing and it just feels juvenile.
This game just feels like it’s trying too hard, many times it comes close to becoming a parody of itself and at the end of the day I can’t see this game being taken as seriously as other shooters found in gaming libraries around the globe.
Final Thoughts
This is a game full of bad writing with good voice-acting, bad acting with good writing, forced emotions and dead emotions, and humour on a level of poopy jokes one would hear from a pack of third graders; yet this game holds an odd charm about it.
Despite all of the shortcomings this game has, the gameplay is solid, possibly some of the best we’ve seen so far in 2011. The different mechanics can led to some very creative and entertaining moments and everything feels great as you play. This game looks like an old beater but it handles like a Porsche.
This game is physical evidence that, even when just about everything in a game can be subpar and uninspired, great gameplay can still prevail. Chip away the potty language and the barbaric macho man front and beneath there’s actually a good game to be experienced.
I wouldn’t call this a Game of the Year nominee, but it’s an oddly charming shooter with a lot of terrific elements that makes for a unique and entertaining blast through intergalactic savages and rednecks. If you’re a shooter fan then give this game a try, you’ll get some good enjoyment out of it, especially if you’re killing time waiting for Gears of War 3, this will sate your appetite. If you’re not a shooter fan, give it a rent, if you can tune out the flaws and get swept away in the great gameplay you might find yourself with a late fee back at Blockbuster.
