Short Game Review: Bulletstorm

As the name suggests, the game will make you go guns blazing and corpses flying. In first person. It’s made by people who delivered us Painkiller and it’s also heavily inspired by it. It’s powered by Unreal Engine and it delivers some really amazing visuals. People behind world design really delivered the most breathtaking environments I’ve ever seen. They are massive, bright, colorful and just look absolutely jaw dropping. Story in this game is there just so you can’t say there isn’t one. It’s OK I guess, but don’t really expect much from it. Combat is also fun in a way, particularly in the second half of the game when you get slightly more powerful and interesting weapons to work with. Doing combos, kicking enemies around and leashing them becomes really fun. But there is always that “however” and in this case, it’s quite big one…

The only thing that holds this game from grabbing “really fun game” title are the weapons. For the love of god, why have they designed weapons in a way you can only carry 3 of them at a time (out of which, the basic rifle is non-configurable) and that they only hold 20 or 30 rounds of ammunition when they are fully upgraded. 30 in a game where you’re expected to blow shit up, constantly!? This forces the whole game tempo to slow down, you’re constantly dependent on fiddling with moronic Drop Pods. Completely unnecessary. Sniper rifle with guided bullets is fun as hell, but they yet again ruined it by enemies instantly knowing bullet is flying at them and they always start to run sideways. ALWAYS. Why!? It’s so annoying and kills the fun of being creative with the sniper rifle.

Bulletstorm is an example of a game with huge potential ruined by silly game design decisions and when you manage to mess up one of the most important core elements of this kind of game, the desirability drops dramatically. More enemies, more ammo to carry around, elimination of silly Drop Pods, ability to carry all the weapons at once and the game would kick ass. People Can Fly, if you’re making Bulletstorm 2, make sure you’ll address this! Otherwise, don’t even bother releasing the sequel…

Oh and stop being bloody lazy with the FOV settings developers. This game is almost unplayable without FlawlessWidescreen tool. Instant headache guaranteed with its idiotic narrow FOV…

Verdict?

It’s OK when you want to admire amazing levels while shooting and blowing stuff up, without worrying about complex game mechanics. But all those bad weapon design decisions really ruined it for me. It’s a real shame, this could have been an amazing Serious Sam/Painkiller inspired game… I still recommend it, if you can overlook the silly weapons limitations and you’re willing to wait for a decent discount deal…