Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm is a silly game. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's actually a bit of a parody of the FPS genre. It's full of over-the-top violence and F-bombs and campy humor. In that regard, it comes across the same way as the Grindhouse era work of Tarantino and Rodriguez. Which is to say, the game leans hard into the stereotypes of the genre, but is also totally in on the joke. An outsider might see it as a b-movie, rather than a knowing homage to b-movies.

Because of all this, I think the game was mostly overlooked at release. I mean, the title and the packaging are totally nondescript. You've got a super generic title. Bulletstorm might as well be Bonestorm. And that cover? Whoever was hired was obviously told "just make the most generic and macho action game cover you can," succeeded. But that comes at an expense. "Wow, look at that cover art! I MUST buy this game and see what it's all about," said nobody ever.

I assume that most anyone who did play this game did so because of word of mouth. I told a buddy about it and he said that he'd owned multiple copies of this game by accident. They had come in multiple game lots he'd picked up. He's sold Bulletstorm at least four times without ever having an interest in giving it a try. 

Those of us who did try it were in for a bit of a treat. Now, please don't think I'm raving about this one like some long lost hidden gem. It's not. But it is good in a fun and somewhat shallow way. The same way I might enjoy putting on the Comet channel and watching an old unknown horror movie late on a Saturday night. Bulletstorm is full of dumb dialogue and insane action sequencese. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's fun as heck.

Speaking of heck - in a welcome addition you can actually turn off the the swearing and blood. So it's like you can make your own TV syndicated version of Machete. Y'know? I left those things in and played the full-fat R-rated version. But my buddy has some young teens that he'd rather play a PG-13 version of this one.

Okay, let me back up briefly. The plot is your usual kind of space marines stuff. There's a betrayal from the upper brass. Then there's a revenge mission. Oh, and a cyborg dude. Kind of imagine if The Asylum made a bootleg version of Halo or something.

But trust me, you're not here for the plot. The gameplay is what elevates this game up enough to keep you interested. The best way I can describe it is a fast paced arcade take on the FPS genre. If anything, this feels forward thinking in a pre-Doom (2016) world. Early on you'll receive a sort of grappling hook device, which you can use to grab enemies and bring them toward you. When you do this, things go into slow motion bullet-time and that's where things get interesting. 

You see, using the grappling hook and slowing down time allows you to do some pretty interesting things. You can grab dudes and headshot them in the air. You can grab explosive barrels and blow them up as they're flying through a mob. You can slow-mo a dude and kick him off a tower to fall to his death. And so on. And the more creative your kills, the more points you earn towards upgrading your weapons and skills. It turns the game into a bit of a bloody ballet.

While a bulk of the settings feel uninspired - think generic space craft level; generic desert planet level; and so on - and while much of the maps feel like corridors your herded down until you reach the next checkpoint, there are some totally incredible maps as well. One map finds you inside a movie studio that's shooting a kaiju movie. Thus, you're walking on a set made up of a recreation of a metropolis that you tower over. Oh, and then instead of fighting a kaiju, you CONTROL it! 

These are the kinds of curveballs that make the game worth checking out. It's a short game as well. A true popcorn flick FPS.