Bulletstorm is yet another FPS that seems to have taken elements from Duke Nukem 3D (the mighty boot), Metroid Prime: Corruption (the grapple beam), and Mad World (odd future world combat for entertainment). If you've played any clever FPS in the last 10-15 years, you've played part of Bulletstorm.
The demo starts out by trying to get you in the mood squad-based combat in a post apocalyptic future, however your goal of survival is secondary to entertaining an audience. You're a post-modern gladiator. I understand that I'm playing a demo so I have to cut the game a little slack and sit through some videos and dialogue showing me how to play the game; I patiently wait for it to finish. After a few minutes I skip it, because it is incredibly boring. Most games since the SNES give you an interactive tutorial, but not Bulletstorm. It's sort of like sitting next to your older brother, watching him play, waiting for your turn, knowing that it won't ever come, and if you ask too much you'll get a wedgie. He constantly turns to you and says, "So to do a lasso-boot-shoot combo you..." then he does it and starts showing you how to do something else, but never surrenders control. I wasn't interested in that sort of waiting, so I sucker punched the computer and skipped the video and got right to the action. I don't know if I missed some sort of storyline or not, because I was just asked to equip some weapons. There wasn't any choice, select everything and get killin!
I wasn't sure why it was trying to sceam how awesome it was until I realized it wasn't awesome at all. If it had a story, the demo failed to deliver. It reminded me of every toy commercial directed at children, if they didn't scream at you, you wouldn't know how much you wanted, no needed the Beach version of the Ninja Turtles, or for the ladies out there, NASCAR Barbie. The game did not appeal to me at all, and I love games filled with senseless violence (Mad World!!!).
Okay, the actual game. You start off as a member of a three person squad, running through a bunch of wreckage. Your purpose? Score points by shooting things that are in the red reticule in new and interesting ways. However these ways were completely limited to the use of your grapple beam -er- leash, gun, and boot. The leash is literally the grapple beam from Metroid Prime Corruption and it flies out and pulls enemies to you so you can either shoot them or kick them back where they were. It's pretty useful for pulling enemies across pits and kicking them back down the pits.
There were a few guns available in the demo. An SMG, grenade launcher and a bola-grenade launcher. The latter would shoot a double grenade that would wrap around an enemy and detonate on your next trigger pull. Naturally instead of progressing the story I continually attempted to use the leash to grab a guy, kick him away, and hit him with the grenade lasso so he'd blow up his buddies, but all the enemies were too weak and would die or their buddies would move too fast for the blast radius.
Like I said before, every aspect of Bulletstorm was taken from a previous FPS and thrown into the game. When you lasso or kick enemies you get a bit of bullet time to fill them with surplus ammunition. The B button (Xbox version, obviously) is solely dedicated to the Mighty Boot -er- kick button. Which replaces pistol whipping and the like, but I'm cool with that, if not entertained. Even the environment seems like it was borrowed because I honestly thought I was playing Enslaved: Odyssey to the West's demo.
It's pretty common for me to be bored with a game long before the demo is over and Bulletstorm is one of the games that has given me that feeling... The single player experience was a snooze fest and lost its charm within seconds, and new charm or interest was nowhere to be found. By the time I finished the demo I was contemplating whether or not it would be okay from the bargain bin, but I don't think I'd ever want to play through it.
I thought multiplayer would be fun but then I realized that bullet time doesn't translate well to multiplayer AT ALL, so one of its key mechanics is useless. Now, it's just the demo but I'm totally sold on completely ignoring this game. It doesn't hold up in single player and its multplayer is crippled from the get-go. Do yourself a favor and if your really want to play this game, go alternate levels of Mad World and Turok Wars on the N64. Yeah, I just went there.
