Who said FPS need to be boring?
__ __ __ __ __ Story __ __ __ __ __
Warning, contain mild spoilers:
Team Echo is a hitman crew, taking out powerfull people who had done some awful deeds like planting bombs or killing innocent, team Echo saw to it that these folks could kill no more innocent people. ...So they thought.., one day they stay'ed a little to long on the jobsite and to their horror find out they actually killed a reporter and not a terrorist, opposite to their erlier belif they are the ones killing innocents and they have been all along, now they confront their commander about it, he responds quickly sending in troops to kill the rouge team Echo, In the room of the reporter they also find a child, knowing they just killed her father they deside to save the young girl.
Echo barely get away with their life unwillingly leaving the girl to the troops.
"Gray" witch you play as is the team leader of Echo, mourning all the innocent people they have been killing they will eventually seek revenge for all the innocent lifes they took.
__ __ __ __ __ Gameplay __ __ __ __ __
This is a SCI-FI FPS game so ofc. there will be some interesting wepons, like a gun shooting giant drills, drilling your opponents to the wall or the four barrel shootgun blasting an close enemy into bits, you have the "leash" witch is a electric lasso witch is frequently used.
These are not the entire lineup of wepons but as you see there are some wepons for a action paced game, my favourite action is the meele, you can lasso enemy up in the air and kick them onto sharp edges/cactus/pipes... and gain a "voodo" aheivment, for each action you do you'll gain XP, you are rewarded for doing more unusual kills, pulling a enemy close with the leash and shoot him in the head award you with more XP than a typical headshoot.
The XP is used as a coin, you spend the money you ern (by doing more spectacular kills) on upgrading the ammo capacity of the guns or other small upgrades to your wepons such as fireing a giant amount of ammo in a single blast.
To use the XP you gain you "leash" (lasso) a supply pod and
interconnect to the upgrade screen, there you also re-stock your ammo, these pods are scattered thruout the game, not enough ammo isn't going to be a problem.
Opponents isn't always that strong and the AI seems quite stupid, but the amount of enemys and the wepponery you have make for a very violent and rich on gore/blood experience, as a x.ample you get a "grafitti" acheivment (extra XP) if you splatter blood on the wall.
The language is not particular suited towards kids either, but the dialouge/monolouge is smart and not just offencive because it need too, there is a good amount comic in the dialouge.
__ __ __ __ Graphic and Audio __ __ __ __
The Unreal graphic engine is a very old engine, but this is a good looking game and they show that this engine still got some life in it even 2011, due to a point-to-point map style the amount of objekts and details can be cut down without tamper with the quality of the objekts you actually see, loading times is also affected greatly not needing to load a giant sandbox enviroment.
The esthetical design is great and offer a fair amount of difference to all the postapocalyptic settings seen today, good lush colors to differ to the grey seen in so many other modern FPS titles.
Maps have carefully been built to lead you/Grey forward all the time, you can count on enemy always standing in the "wrong" place to hinder your passage.
Audio is more than respectable, they have the right amount of sounds to enhance the visual experience, nothing seems to point out too much in the mix, overall very good background sounds, music and very neutral gun, enemy, moan sounds.
The Voice acting also keep a good class, sure the actors might sound goofy at times, but they are supposed to be the stereotype and have cheesy comments.
The cut scenes is from the looks of it pre-recorded material taken directly from the gameengine, to be honest the material keep a slightly lower class than the actual gameplay due to small amount of grain and jitter as they are using a bitrate lower than perfect, even if not image quality perfect the cutscenes make a good way of forwarding the game.
__ __ Just an average shooter or what? __ __
Is this a average shooter taken out from the bunch?
-No, I dont think so, Epic games have done what they're best on and deliver a really great game with a good story witch is more than a little goofy at times, but it appeal to my humour anyway.
With visuals and audio effects nicely added and a great gameplay I think this game is one really great game.
I am alreay waiting on the next bulletstorm.