This Sci-Fi shooter is not the best game you will play all year, but it's fun enough to warrant a purchase.
The skillshot system is what distinguishes Bulletstorm from the crowd, and is by far the game's best asset. Underneath these creative killing opportunities, Bulletstorm is a short and rather linear shooter with irritating dialogue and a poor story. It is a testament to the game's one gimmick, then, that it makes something that could have been incredibly mediocre, great. The skillshot system is essentially a reward system. The game has a database of all the different ways you could dispatch an enemy, and each one will supply you with precious experience points. This constant flow of reward is part of what makes Bulletstorm so fun, because the multitude of skillshots at your disposal make you feel like the greatest gamer ever when the XP flows in. In a normal FPS, the most skilful shot is one in the head; in Bulletstorm this is, of course, available, but when compared to the other lethal methods on offer, a simple head shot (which incidentally decapitates people) becomes a tad mundane. All of this crazy killing is made possible with the inclusion of the leash, an energy whip that you can use to fling enemies up into the air and towards you. This makes for interesting combos where you can position several enemies where you want them for glorious multi-kills, or simply leash them into a deadly environmental trap. On top of the leash you have your foot, and instead of the usual knife or swift hit with your gun, your melee weapon is your boot. This is a more old school approach to melee combat, and is made even more enjoyable by your boot's ability to put all kicked enemies into slow motion (the same is true with the leash). This gives you a good amount of time to line up some impressive skillshots and makes for a very satisfying experience.
The level design in Bulletstorm may be rather linear, but it is well designed. Enemies are well placed in order to set up massive combos, and deadly objects are littered all over the place; with electric surfaces, metal spikes, giant cacti, and man eating plants liberally spread throughout the levels. Each new environment seems to be set up as an elaborate death trap, and there are enough environment specific hazards to make each new area just as fun as the last. The world of Bulletstorm is a very dangerous one, and this only adds to the fun. You travel through dangerous deserts, the usual cramped corridors (that have sadly become a genre staple), cities and some great sci-fi jungles. The art design is not the best, nor the most imaginative, but the game is certainly quite attractive; it is very bright, and colorful, and full of some really wonderful vistas. The one thing that lets the game's visuals down though, alongside some generic touches in character design, is texture pop-in. The texture pop-in in the game is by no means horrific, the real problem is that it doesn't seem like a necessary issue; Bulletstorm is an attractive game but there are several better looking games without this problem.
The main appeal of Bulletstorm is the outrageous fun you can have, mostly due to the skillshot system, but it also has its fair share of drawbacks. The principle issue is the storytelling, which can be completely dreadful. Bulletstorm is a very violent and bloody game, but the real disgusting part is the dialogue. The bloody combat is truly satisfying, whereas the dialogue is just crass and irritating. The dialect of each of the characters is almost entirely based around stringing as many swear words together as you can in one sentence and coupling them with unrelated nouns. This is slightly amusing at first, but it gets very annoying very quickly, mostly because the dialogue just makes no sense. The phrases they come out with make no sense at all and usually have no relevance; it is just crass for the sake of being crass and is rarely amusing. This of course makes the characters incredibly unlikable, and that is quite a large issue, purely because the game has a surprisingly large emphasis on its weak story. Bulletstorm is purely a revenge story, the protagonist Grayson Hunt and his elite team were betrayed by a foul mouthed General, so Grayson wants to kill him. When they run into the General's flag ship, the then drunk Grayson, decides to carry out his vengeance there and then and takes down both the flag ship and his own spaceship. This drunken decision results in a giant death toll on the General's giant ship and the death of all of Hunt's crew apart from himself and his 'friend' Ishi. Ishi was just left gravely wounded and had to be patched up with robotic parts, making him your new part-man, part-robot buddy. This premise makes it feel more like you are playing the bad guy and the game does little to help Grayson become anything like a sympathetic character. This is evened out, however, when you realise that every character in the whole game is completely unlikable, apart from Ishi whose inner conflict between the robot and human sides of his mind makes him far more interesting than the rest (though still not amazing, he only stands out in comparison). One character isn't enough though, and the horrible characters really have an impact on the story, which the game is determined to tell you through numerous grating cut scenes, full of visual spectacle but nothing else of interest. There is some interesting development later on which fleshes out the world in some slightly interesting ways, but nothing redeems the terrible opening, or the bad characters.
The opening to Bulletstorm does not only have issues in the story department, its relatively slow pace may turn a lot of players off. The opening section before you get the skillshot system is rather dull, and the limited armoury at the start takes away the great variety that the game offers you later on. The weapons are the real stars of Bulletstorm; they facilitate for the skillshots and are just a whole lot of fun. There isn't a huge amount of weaponry on offer, and they unlock slowly, but each weapon has a secondary fire and all have a large list of unique skillshots. Skillshots usually come out naturally in Bulletstorm, it is great when you are just experimenting and find them by accident, and that is the best way to play. Looking at the list of the shots and trying to pull of specific ones can be quite frustrating, on the other hand, and detracts from the experience; more often than not you will try hard to pull off a specific one only to fail and do it by accident later. More skill shots become available with progression and this is why the game just gets better as it goes on. Over time you learn the ins and outs of each weapon and how to pull off the most damage possible. Bulletstorm takes its time to heat up, but when it does, it is a great experience and pure bloody fun. One odd decision is the limited ammo. In Bulletstorm, ammo is either found or bought, and XP is currency. This gives an incentive to pull off skill shots, but in reality XP is so easy to get that you don't have to try that hard in order to purchase all the ammo and upgrades you need. This makes purchasable ammo feel rather pointless.
As well as the campaign, Bulletstorm has a bunch of challenge missions, called Echoes, which are small parts of the story you play through with the sole aim of getting the highest score possible. This is where Bulletstorm is at its best, and it makes you wonder why a level based game such as Bulletstorm didn't incorporate scoring into the campaign. Getting money is one incentive, but topping leader boards is more of one, it means you need to think tactically to get the top score and just makes the game better. XP makes a good currency, but an economy seems unnecessary, as end level scoring seems like a more natural fit for this kind of arcadey shooter. This is an odd design decision on the part of the developers, because after playing the story there isn't that much incentive to play chopped up bits of it again. It would have been a much wiser choice if scoring was incorporated into the main campaign rather than a pointless economy.
Bulletstorm has its issues, but the amount of fun you can get from the basic premise of killing with skill saves this shooter. The skillshot system is constantly rewarding and gives the game a unique feel. If you want a story based epic then Bulletstorm is not the game for you, however, if you want some violent, bloody, fun then Bulletstorm deserves a definite recommendation. The numerous ways you can murder give the game some much needed variety and raise it above the shooter clichés it relies upon. It won't be the best game you play all year, but if mindless fun is what you are after then it is well worth a purchase; and you can always skip the cut scenes.