Shooter genre is very crowded, understandably so. There is something profound and intriguing in shooting one's face clean off or blasting a guy's torso with a direct shotgun blast. It's just timeless, but a game needs some edge over its competition to stand out from the sea of other similar games, Bulletstorm has just that. If the recent Vanquish is acrobatic GoW, then Bulletstorm is FPS take of the same game with added leash and doused in profanity fumes.
What seems like a mash of confusing carnage is actually intricate ways of inflicting much pain to your enemies tender areas. From early on, you will be introduced to the leash. It's pretty self-explanatory, you leash and pull stuffs with it, such as people, explosive create, people's head etc. This simple yet almost bordering on magical tool is the bare bone of the game and you'll be hurling enemies up and down, launching them into air and demolishing their poor souls in a blinding spectacular visage like a drunken Marcus Fenix.
This game rewards each kill with points which also serve as monetary, they are called "Skillshots". Practically everything you can think of on how to kill a person in extremely brutal yet creative ways is present. The simpler ones like Headshot, Gag Reflex (shot in the throat), Trip Wire (shot in the legs), Mercy (in the balls, then in the head), Rear Entry (in the butt hole) can be done with any weapons. But then it gets interesting fast, you can factor in the environment too, Environ-Mental (the usual red crate), Vertigo (kick them off a cliff), Voodoo Doll (Impalement).
Add that with weapons' special skillshot, Fan-tastic (shoot a man with a drill to the ceiling), Topless (blast everything from waist up with shotgun), X-Ray (Use one charged shot to penetrate two enemies), the possibilities are endless. It's just the tip of the iceberg. You can burn someone, drag him with a leash, launch an exploding flail to his body, kick him in mid-air to use him as a flying bomb into a group of enemies next to an exploding barrel, then watch the symphony of chaos that ensue.
The gameplay is just pure fun. It's flexible, diverse and pure adulterated unapologetic mayhem, the campaign story is not so much. The story is filled with swearing, it becomes old fast. This is not the same as Mafia, Scarface or even Nier (Oh, I love how Kaine swears), but simply obnoxious and disturbing. There is limit on how tolerant one can be to distasteful barrage of f^uck, sh^t d^ck before one cringes in agony. I appreciate the take on more mature theme on killing spree, responsibilities and the intertwined fate of the chars, but the presentation is a bit shallow and undermining those values.
The graphic is great as the game sets in exotic tropical planet of Stygia. View of the planet, bright sunset that serves as the background for your explosive genocide looks phenomenal. Its vibrant tone and color palette make it almost comical like Borderland, outlandish yet surprisingly fits to the game's ridiculous tone. The characters' animation looks a bit stiff though, it hampers the cutscenes' effect a bit as the facial expressions sometimes fail to deliver.
The enemies themselves are pretty diverse, although you can categorized them as the guys with guns, guys with melee, and some bigger guys. The game masks this well by facing you with different tribes, soldiers and mutants along the way, but aside from the clothes and whether you have to trip them before you can leash them, there is little to differentiate them. Framerate doesn't drop even though many enemies and things exploding at the same time, the load time is also pretty short considering some of the levels are quiet long.
On sound department, the game works well. If you ever wonder how would a person minced to death, head speared to wall or burned by hot dog cart sound like, this is probably it. Other than the sound of your roaring weapons and enemies' cry, the profanity reigns supreme. Its dialogue leaves something to be desired, I kinda hate the characters for it. Simplistic abuse of stupidly placed profanity hurts my ear, this is not funny nor it is entertaining. The soundtracks are heart pumping upbeat tones, but you will probably too busy killing to notice.
I had fun this game. It's very generous on giving points away, simple actions such as looking, climbing, drinking, shooting bugs etc are rewarded with plenty of points. I finished it on Hard with about 90% skillshots, it is definitely possible to get all skillshot in one playthrough if you know what you are doing. So what should you do with that many points? Easy, buy upgrades and lots of ammo then use it to cause more catastrophes, gains more points ad nauseum. Just have fun with it.
The story will last 10-12 hours, quiet long. And you can do the Echoes, basically the free mode in which you aim for fastest time with as many Skillshots as possible. Bulletstorm doesn't take itself too seriously, or it actually does, but the misplaced profanity ruins it. As far as FPS goes, this one has surprisingly deep gameplay. Trust me, when the first Skillshot appears in your dead enemies, you'll want more. It's simply addictive.
Graph - The scenery and mutilation look great, but the characters animation are a bit sluggish. 8.5/10
Sound - Loud bang with tons of ear-rupturing swearing and cheesy lines. 8.5/10
Gameplay - Brilliant gameplay caters to your killing need. 10/10
Presentation - The setpieces are great, plenty of explosion, adequately long albeit campy story. 9/10
Overall 9/10
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