Haven't posted a review before, biting the bullet and prepared for a panning. I have read through the guidlines, but let me know if I'm doing anything against regs... that is, aside from completely ripping escapist-style videos, and my obvious bias. Tips totally welcome.
Written as a video, which covers & expands on the text below.
I'm as mind-numbed as most by unimaginative military shooters and was hoping Bulletstorm would be different, especially after having waved current-gen first-person-shooters in front of our faces and laughed at them for being boring. But it isn't different enough ? same generic campaign structure and level design mechanics, same cover-based combat, same lack of a health bar, same 3 weapon-carry limit, same repetitive humanoid enemies, only with better weapons and in a sci-fi setting. When I recover from the reverberating shock that Bulletstorm isn't Painkiller 2, I'm sure I'll agree that Bulletstorm is an above-average first-person shooter. But it isn't the revolutionary take on FPS's that Duty Calls inferred, which seemed to suggest that Bulletstorm would buck some more trends here.
As far as weapons go, Bulletstorm succeeds and shows some innovation; there's the standard machine gun with a rail-gun type secondary fire, the leash that pulls enemies and objects towards you & with a thump-attack, an accurate deadly pistol with a flare, a quad-barrelled shotgun with a burning blast, a mine-shooter thing that wraps around enemies, a sniper rifle with guided exploding and standard bullets, a grenade-launcher variant, and the drill gun that sticks enemies to walls and twirls them around. This is all good fun but the enjoyment they offer is marred by ammo management.
Ammo and upgrades require 'purchasing' using 'special-kill-points'. I began trying to retain ammo and spent the early passage of the game leashing and kicking enemies, neglecting upgrades because there might have been something super-awesome down the road that required more kill-points. Ammo management is tiresome, serving only as a distraction from the gameplay. I caved soon enough and bought some upgrades that increase ammo capacity and unlocked the second fire modes, and eventually I was able to keep my 3 favourite weapons fully supplied, re-filling at every drop-shop.
It repeatedly dawned on me that Borderlands did all this with more success, with a larger if less interesting variety of weapons and because of it's sandbox nature I could rely on sustainable income and re-visitable vendors instead of being worried about conserving resources for some mythical BFG becoming available later or conserving ammo for potential hordes around the corner.
The mechanics of Bulletstorms level design is like most current-gen 'serious' FPS's out at present. The game is stringently linear, contriving cliched set-pieces, barriers (invisible or otherwise) and reasons to connect points on an over-long path through different environments. Vistas of the path ahead will inform you of the main themes of these environments - from an arid desert headed towards a large derelict future-city, punctuated by stints in sewers, caves, space-ship ruins and an underground complex. Ladders and buttons are highlighted with flashes & instructions explaining how they are used and free-will is curtailed by disabling the 'jump' function in case you should stray from the set path, which is impossible at any rate.
Despite conserving your best ammo for potential hordes, there are none. Every set-piece is a tool to introduce a handful of enemies, and these enemies are largely the same. Angry humans and mutant humanoids, again reminding me of Borderlands, except without the dog-things or the insects-things. Short walls form the basis of combat and you get miraculously healed when behind cover, and there are innumerable quick-time events.
The story and dialogue isn't as terrible as many suggest. There are some needless swears but it's not as puerile or gratuitous as I had come to expect. It's standard fare, elite marines get 'betrayed', and turn into rogue pirates against 'the confederacy'. After a drunken space-battle against their flagship everyone crash-lands on a derelict ex-utopia that's been mysteriously overrun by three warring factions of mutants.
You play 'Greyson Hunt'. It's refreshing that most of your crew-mates are quick to point out what a brash, irresponsible dick he is, and you soon encounter a lady who will definitely drill the point home, and by the end of the game he believes it. The dialogue is marginally better than the banal buddy-cop or army lines from most other games if only because you aren't playing a chizzled-jawed all-American hero.
But is the shooting-part of the Gameplay fun? It's okay. People Can Fly obviously put so much work into the specific ways in which to kill the baddies that they had to keep the types of baddies very limited, with a few unique bosses thrown in. Some of the enjoyment dribbles away as the limiting nature of the arenas make the game feel more like a rail-shooter rather than something in which you can flail around madly killing things. And do the special-kill-points help any? Not for me. I'm not skillful and I was drowning in points by the end, despite having bought everything I could. Additionally, a substantial chunk of points are gained through quick-time events (usually 'looking at things'). While it was occasionally satisfying to have an explosion of multiple points fill the screen as reward for something incredibly lucky I just did, I've never bought into the frenzy around 'achievement unlocking', and they certainly shouldn't form the backbone of gameplay motivation. If a player needs constant 'well done's for kills then evidently the kills aren't rewarding enough in and of themselves, which they probably are here but there were too many distractions for me to enjoy them in the moment, added to which are enforced walking-dialogues and some instances where control is stolen from the player altogether. I found very little sense of cathartic blood-lust in the mayhem.
This is not a revolution in first-person-shooting, and the disappointment would have been easier to swallow had it not been for Duty Calls. It is a good enough first-person shooter with some curious gameplay tweaks, positive and negative, and a reasonably interesting setting with some memorable scenes. It's all very pretty, gleaming with current-gen shininess and there is some great gameplay to be had here but it's drowning in modern FPS tropes to the extent that it rarely shines through.
Objectively 8/10, but totally disappointed.
Written as a video, which covers & expands on the text below.
I'm as mind-numbed as most by unimaginative military shooters and was hoping Bulletstorm would be different, especially after having waved current-gen first-person-shooters in front of our faces and laughed at them for being boring. But it isn't different enough ? same generic campaign structure and level design mechanics, same cover-based combat, same lack of a health bar, same 3 weapon-carry limit, same repetitive humanoid enemies, only with better weapons and in a sci-fi setting. When I recover from the reverberating shock that Bulletstorm isn't Painkiller 2, I'm sure I'll agree that Bulletstorm is an above-average first-person shooter. But it isn't the revolutionary take on FPS's that Duty Calls inferred, which seemed to suggest that Bulletstorm would buck some more trends here.
As far as weapons go, Bulletstorm succeeds and shows some innovation; there's the standard machine gun with a rail-gun type secondary fire, the leash that pulls enemies and objects towards you & with a thump-attack, an accurate deadly pistol with a flare, a quad-barrelled shotgun with a burning blast, a mine-shooter thing that wraps around enemies, a sniper rifle with guided exploding and standard bullets, a grenade-launcher variant, and the drill gun that sticks enemies to walls and twirls them around. This is all good fun but the enjoyment they offer is marred by ammo management.
Ammo and upgrades require 'purchasing' using 'special-kill-points'. I began trying to retain ammo and spent the early passage of the game leashing and kicking enemies, neglecting upgrades because there might have been something super-awesome down the road that required more kill-points. Ammo management is tiresome, serving only as a distraction from the gameplay. I caved soon enough and bought some upgrades that increase ammo capacity and unlocked the second fire modes, and eventually I was able to keep my 3 favourite weapons fully supplied, re-filling at every drop-shop.
It repeatedly dawned on me that Borderlands did all this with more success, with a larger if less interesting variety of weapons and because of it's sandbox nature I could rely on sustainable income and re-visitable vendors instead of being worried about conserving resources for some mythical BFG becoming available later or conserving ammo for potential hordes around the corner.
The mechanics of Bulletstorms level design is like most current-gen 'serious' FPS's out at present. The game is stringently linear, contriving cliched set-pieces, barriers (invisible or otherwise) and reasons to connect points on an over-long path through different environments. Vistas of the path ahead will inform you of the main themes of these environments - from an arid desert headed towards a large derelict future-city, punctuated by stints in sewers, caves, space-ship ruins and an underground complex. Ladders and buttons are highlighted with flashes & instructions explaining how they are used and free-will is curtailed by disabling the 'jump' function in case you should stray from the set path, which is impossible at any rate.
Despite conserving your best ammo for potential hordes, there are none. Every set-piece is a tool to introduce a handful of enemies, and these enemies are largely the same. Angry humans and mutant humanoids, again reminding me of Borderlands, except without the dog-things or the insects-things. Short walls form the basis of combat and you get miraculously healed when behind cover, and there are innumerable quick-time events.
The story and dialogue isn't as terrible as many suggest. There are some needless swears but it's not as puerile or gratuitous as I had come to expect. It's standard fare, elite marines get 'betrayed', and turn into rogue pirates against 'the confederacy'. After a drunken space-battle against their flagship everyone crash-lands on a derelict ex-utopia that's been mysteriously overrun by three warring factions of mutants.
You play 'Greyson Hunt'. It's refreshing that most of your crew-mates are quick to point out what a brash, irresponsible dick he is, and you soon encounter a lady who will definitely drill the point home, and by the end of the game he believes it. The dialogue is marginally better than the banal buddy-cop or army lines from most other games if only because you aren't playing a chizzled-jawed all-American hero.
But is the shooting-part of the Gameplay fun? It's okay. People Can Fly obviously put so much work into the specific ways in which to kill the baddies that they had to keep the types of baddies very limited, with a few unique bosses thrown in. Some of the enjoyment dribbles away as the limiting nature of the arenas make the game feel more like a rail-shooter rather than something in which you can flail around madly killing things. And do the special-kill-points help any? Not for me. I'm not skillful and I was drowning in points by the end, despite having bought everything I could. Additionally, a substantial chunk of points are gained through quick-time events (usually 'looking at things'). While it was occasionally satisfying to have an explosion of multiple points fill the screen as reward for something incredibly lucky I just did, I've never bought into the frenzy around 'achievement unlocking', and they certainly shouldn't form the backbone of gameplay motivation. If a player needs constant 'well done's for kills then evidently the kills aren't rewarding enough in and of themselves, which they probably are here but there were too many distractions for me to enjoy them in the moment, added to which are enforced walking-dialogues and some instances where control is stolen from the player altogether. I found very little sense of cathartic blood-lust in the mayhem.
This is not a revolution in first-person-shooting, and the disappointment would have been easier to swallow had it not been for Duty Calls. It is a good enough first-person shooter with some curious gameplay tweaks, positive and negative, and a reasonably interesting setting with some memorable scenes. It's all very pretty, gleaming with current-gen shininess and there is some great gameplay to be had here but it's drowning in modern FPS tropes to the extent that it rarely shines through.
Objectively 8/10, but totally disappointed.
