Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a system judge your every action? If you have, now’s your chance to live it! Bulletstorm is back for more foul-mouthed – and at times creative linguistic hilarity – with even more creative ways of taking out your enemies. The better you do? The more the systems rewards you by allowing for an easier time in dispatching the rest of the enemies headed your way.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is an enhanced version of Epic Games’ different take on manly men with manlier guns. Bulletstorm took/takes some of the ideas from Gears of War and puts them into a first person shooter with ideas that make the Ratchet and Clank series so amazing. Crazy weapons that make you question “how” followed along with foul mouthed dialog (that have an ingame sensor), brutal and possibly horrifying gory graphics (which also have an ingame sensor) and Bulletstorm is essentially a good marriage of both Gears of War and Insomniac’s masterpiece.
This really won’t be for everyone even with the filters applied. For me however? I’m regretting not having played this on the previous generation because it’s simply over the top and ridiculous. This “maybe should have started off sober” adventure soon turns… nah. It never turns “really” serious and the gameplay is creative keeping things interesting until the credits where most FPS would have gotten fairly stale halfway through. Without the complete over the top dialog and gameplay I don’t think Bulletstorm could have pulled it off.
From start to finish Bulletstorm is a fast paced thrill ride with crazy guns, a energy leash and your boot. How often can you really say that your boot is not only a legitimate option in a shooter but also required and just as useful at the beginning as it is at the end? If you spend your whole time shooting all your enemies then you’re doing it wrong which is why it was fun.
Each situation can be solved in a variety of ways from the obvious shooting your enemies over to using your leash to pull them closer, use it to pull them out of cover, use it to pull them towards and passed you off of a cliff or simply use your boot to do that instead. Spiked walls, a variety of cactus, electrified billboards, propane tanks and much more are all littered around each area just waiting to be leashed over so that you can kick it at your enemy. If that doesn’t work you can simply kick the object or kick your enemy into the object.
However you decide to go about this, prepare to be judged. Defeating an enemy will yield a grand total of ten plus points in order to spend on ammo and upgrades. Kick them off a cliff? You’re looking at fifty. Pull or kick them into spikes? That’s about one-hundred. These are the easy ways but that’ll only buy you a bit of ammo. Being more creative with throwing a gas tank and blowing it up in a crowd will gain you fifty points per person as well as a bonus for having tagged them all at the same time. Kicking a barrier into your enemies will do the same.
All of these points can be spent at what are really re-supply points in which ammo and upgrades can be unlocked. Upgrades unlock over time in order to be able to carry more ammo in a clip or give the weapon a charged attack. Charged shots require their own ammo counts but can be worth it especially when there’s a large crowd and your shotgun has a incendiary blast. It’ll clear up a good portion if not your entire set of attackers allowing you to move on quickly.
Bulletstorm is not meant to be taken slow. Everything is designed to move fast, shoot fast, kick fast and slide fast. Stay still and you’re basically toast. Sometimes literally. This is why there are two aspects that could get in the way. The first is that hopping over barriers in order to move forward was sometimes a hassle as the prompt would not come up right away and trying to get over would instead send me sliding. Other times when going through a narrow space you could get caught on your AI partners going through as they don’t need to worry about the space that you are taking up but you need to worry about theirs.
Finally the sniper fights were a hassle and felt slow and clunky with you being able to guide the bullet but the enemy could dodge it having you miss quite often by nothing more than a hair. They went under cover? You missed again because your bullet had no view. Your bullet was too far to the right or left because you wanted to make it around that cover? Forget about it as it once again went out of range and destroyed itself. Having to rely on a target lock was a pain and slowed things down significantly. Thankfully there are only three real sniper fights over the entire course and it can be easily made up with the fact that there was a remote controlled “mini-Godzilla” with a turret that you get to unleash on your enemies.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition was a blast. It’s ridiculous, fast paced, you have to wonder how much of the dialog was scripted and what was ad libbed and it just works. The variety of over the top weapons alongside the energy leash and being able to kick objects or enemies keeps things interesting. Anytime that the lull that can happen near the end starts to come in or starts to feel like it’s getting close, there’s a change up in the style to throw some spice back into the mix. I know that it’s been almost six years since its original release but I hope that this gives enough push for a sequel.
Score: 8 / 10
