Bulletstorm First Impressions

Bulletstorm, the game created by the same guys who put out Painkiller in 2004, came out this past Tuesday. Like most brand-new games, I didn’t know much about Bulletstorm, except that A) the graphics appealed to me, and B) the game was surrounded in controversy. Fox News, as an example, pretty much considered it to be the worst game ever, and at the same time, EA marketed it to being better than other popular FPS statures out there, such as Call of Duty. Who wouldn’t want to jump all over that?

One of the reasons the game is shrouded in controversy is because the game rewards you for shooting enemies in the crotch… kind of. While that’s true to some extent, the game has a robust system called Skillshot where you earn Skillpoints (XP) by killing your enemies in interesting ways – of which there are many. One way might include shooting someone in the crotch, kicking them off a cliff, impaling them, and so forth. I’ve only played the game so far for about 90 minutes, and already I’ve killed people in what must be ten or twelve different ways.

As you progress, you earn Skillpoints to upgrade your weapons, and essentially the better you do, the less you will have to worry about things like ammo. That’s where kicking enemies can help as well. If you can kick enemies off of a cliff, or use your “Energy Leash” to grab and pull enemies toward you, you can save valuable ammo so that you don’t risk running out.

At its heart, Bulletstorm feels almost like an arcade game, but with a lot more depth. The faster you kill and the cooler ways in which you kill can become obvious on the screen, as words and Skillpoint amounts will pop up during gameplay. When you start to see a load of these on the screen at once, it feels oddly satisfying.

The story for Bulletstorm seems simple. You’re essentially a marine who is after an old corrupt boss, and along the journey you are accompanied by a long-time friend who is now half-cyborg. From what I hear, the game is about 8 hours long to beat, which seems likely given the current trend of shorter games, but from what I’ve experienced so far, those 8 hours are looking to be quite a bit of fun. You can expect our full review in about a week.