Retro Review: Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm is an interesting first-person shooter that Epic Games and People Can Fly delivered to us in 2011. Gears of War’s Cliff Bleszinski designed the game and it definitely shows in the armor, the attitude and the weaponry. Fan-favorite comic book writer Rick Remender pens this game, and man does he let loose with some of this dialog. If people thought Gears of War was over the top with the curb-stomping and the chainsaw guns they’ve got another thing coming with Bulletstorm. I believe that I was the only person in my group of friends that purchased this game, so in 2011 and again in 2016 I had no one to enjoy the online with. Hopefully with the upcoming Full Clip Edition I can enjoy some gory leashing with my buddies all over the country. The Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is one of the few remasters that I can get behind and honestly cannot wait for!

This story begins as all great stories generally begin with a couple of drunk scoundrels torturing a bounty hunter, all while in space. During this torture you meet the game’s protagonist Grayson Hunt and his crew of merry men. A few flashback scenes reveal to the gamer that Grayson and his buddies were a black ops group called Dead Echo, who find out that their murder missions were not exactly on the up and up. Once back in the present Grayson’s ship encounter’s his arch-enemies’ ship, the Ulysses and he plans to attack. His target is Star General Sarrano who deployed him on all those fake missions to kill Sarrano’s own enemies. During the space battle both ships are gravely damaged and both crash land on the planet Stygia. Your mission is to get you and Ishi off of the planet in one piece ,all while killing Sarrano who somehow survived his crash. To get off the planet you must kill, maim and destroy thousands of baddies, and I can say that you will have a friggin’ great time.

The controls take some getting use to, especially if you are a frequent first-person shooter player. Usually aim and shoot are the back triggers; in Bulletstorm aim is L1 and shoot is R1. I found myself using the L2, which is the energy leash and R2, which is alternate fire on your guns. There were times when I was flailing and changing ammo over and over until I got into the groove of the controls. The left and right stick are the usual move and look around in the game, circle is kick and I cannot impress upon you how important kick is for you. Get used to pressing circle a lot; you can kick the bad guys into the air and then trap shoot them with your guns. You can also kick them into huge cacti, fences, off balconies into electric wires and so on, all for Bullet Points. When you’re running toward the gunfire you can press X and slide into your enemy as you shoot at them, or your force upon impact can shoot them into an environmental kill. Reload is square and you will need to do that constantly, triangle changes your weapon and D-Pad lets you scroll through them until you find the right kind of destruction you need.

Bullet Points are earned by accomplishing some amazing “skillshots.” The first time you do a “skillshot” you get the most amount of points, then it drops to a standard point score for each additional time. This is what makes the game entertaining, figuring out goofy ways to kill your foe which will allow you to upgrade your weapons and buy ammo at “dropkits.” Most of these kills are hilarious. I kicked a guy into a giant cactus and received 500 points for skillshot “pricked.” This game is so out there, it’s amazing; think of it as first-person Shadows of the Damned. The weapons are a huge draw. At first you start out with a typical automatic rifle, then you find a revolver, and then you find the best weapon ever conceived. This weapon shoots out a chain that will loop around your enemies which allows you detonate it and kill that enemy and all of his buddies. It’s great for the game albeit a little over powered but man, nothing is more satisfying than blowing up a group of baddies because they rushed over to their buddy.

Steve Blum leads a stellar voice cast in the game and I cannot tell you the amount of times I had to pause the game and put the controller down so that I could laugh. If I didn’t I would have perished from the tears in my eyes. The lines that Rick Remender gave to the characters and their overall delivery was just so perfect. I will offer this caveat though, if you are easily offended, don’t like dick jokes, dislike gratuitous violence and overall just hate having a good time I’m sure you’ll love Cooking Mama. I simply cannot gush more about this game, I want to get my hands on it in super HD and I’m going to implore my friends to join me on Stygia. I will say this if you want to get a version before the remaster comes out, get the Xbox 360 version, I’ve played both and the Xbox 360 version holds up graphically better. On the PS3 I experienced a lot of digital tiling and slower frame-rate. So if you simply cannot wait to kill some primitive screwheads and laugh your ass off as you play, pick this game up – it’s the game that keeps on giving, or in the immortal words of Grayson “it’s persistent, like Herpes.”