Fun. Bloody, violent, vulgar, mindless, ridiculous, juvenile, fun.
Gray is angry. So angry that he's sacrificing the life of his crew aboard his ship to take out the Ulysses, his ex-commander Sarrano's ship. Sarrano has been using Gray and his squad of Dead Echo to carry out assassinations of innocent people, targets of the Confederation. Gray's alcohol-imbued impulsed idea may have worked in taking down the Ulysses, but it failed in killing Sarrano while killing everyone aboard Gray's ship, except for Ishi. Having undergone massive cybernetic implants to save his life, Ishi is now more computer than he is human. Feeling guilty for what happened to Ishi, Gray now has another objective aside from getting to Sarrano: to get Ishi off the Godforsaken planet they've crash landed on. There's going to be a storm of bullets along the way!
Bullestorm may not seem that special when you first begin, but once you pick up your first toy, the Leash, things get interesting very quickly. The Leash is an energy whip that can grab objects and enemies and yank them your way. As enemies get closer to you, they slow down due to an anti-gravity field that surrounds them. By kicking them with your gravity boots, you also produce the same effect, except they start to slowly move away from you. This allows you time to aim at different parts of their bodies and perform what it called Skillshots, and oh boy, are there a ton of different Skillshots!
Skillshots are how you earn points in the game, which you'll use to upgrade weapons and purchase ammunition at different drop boxes. To get Skillshots, you'll need to do such things as shooting an enemy in the privates and then finishing him off in the head, wrapping a flail grenade around a baddie and then kicking him into a group of his cohorts to act like a human bomb, flinging enemies into cactus, into spinning fans and broken wires, and much, much more. There's also a slide kick that helps you set up Skillshots, while also allowing you to cover ground quickly and safely. There's so much variety to slaughtering that the game never, ever gets old.
Your arsenal is full of fun toys as well. There's the standard assault rifle, the quad-barreled shotgun, the sniper rifle, the flare gun, flail gun, a crazy grenade launcher that shoots bouncing bomb balls and the vicious drill gun that impales enemies with spinning drill bit spikes. Each gun also has a secondary fire option that requires purchased charges to use. They can come in really handy when you're up against a group of foes or a particularly nasty individual. Also, you can even steer the shots you fire from the sniper rifle to ensure you get that critical skill shot. And yes, every gun you unlock also unlocks an entire set of unique Skillshots.
What makes the game even more fun is the massive levels that you'll traverse through. There are deserts outposts. subterranean prisons, overgrown botanical gardens and dilapidated skyscrapers with gaping holes in their walls. You'll need to stop from time to time just to enjoy the beautiful but bleak scenery of the game, as the desolate world is quite captivating in its own way. The levels are chock full of all sorts of environmental hazards as well, from the basic rebar spikes jutting from broken concrete walls to crackling electric storms that blanket the many war-torn buildings. One of the game's most exciting levels has you controlling a giant robotic dinosaur, complete with laser shooting eyes.
And when you're running from point A to point B with nothing to shoot, you're treated to some really well-written dialogue, in a very crass and cheesy sort of way. If you take this game in any serious way, you'll find the lines to be painful and cringe worthy, but if you accept the game for what it is, then you'll laugh at the ludicrousness of the dialogue. To be forewarned, there are a lot of references to male genitalia and many jokes that could be construed as homophobic, so if you're at all bothered by content like that, you should avoid Bulletstorm. For the nature of the game, and considering Gray is a scruffy war-hardened mercenary, the dialogue actually fits perfectly.
When you finish the campaign, there's always multiplayer, but of course it's a ghost town with the game being two years old at the time of this writing. There is, though, Echos which lets you play segments of previous levels over and over again to get higher scores. This is where you can hone your Skillshot abilities to rack up some really high scores and unlock access to new levels. Your scores are also ranked, so if you love to climb leaderboards, you have that much more incentive to keep playing.
Graphically, Bulletstorm is a looker. There's a lot of great texturing, lighting and shadowing, but the game's color pallet is a bit limited. There's a lot of usage of browns and blues and oranges and grays, so when the game mixes nature with urban areas, it isn't as impressive as it should be. Still, the artistic direction is something to behold. They've done an excellent job in making the world seem like it's been through complete and utter hell, and the feel and scope of the game is just massive. There's also the matter of blood, and there's lots of it. You'll see heads implode and bodies get impaled. Torsos separate from legs when shot at pointblank range with the shotgun and bad guys light up like the Fourth of July when shot with the shotgun's molten rounds.
If there's one thing Bulletstorm does well with its sound design is make you squeamish when you're killing people. Hearing your first body get impaled on a cactus is just nasty. Bones being broken and flesh being pulverized establishes quite well that this is a violent video game. Each gun has its own unique report from the cracks of sniper rifles to the firecracker whistlings of flare guns to the metallic banging of the Bouncer balls. The music is well-composed and is as perfect for an action game as any other soundtrack. Fans of MadWorld and Anarchy Reigns will also recognize Steve Blum, as he voices the main character Gray. He gives a fantastic performance, and his gruff voice is perfect for the rogue soldier.
Bulletstorm will not win any awards when it comes to class. It knows that and is proud of it. It flips conventional FPSs a middle finger and goes about its merry way. It doesn't care if you're offended by its language, or if the thought of skewering three people with one drill bit spike repulses you. You're going to play this game and like or it's going to put its size 15 gravity boot up your backside. Bulletstorm is quite the ride, and the fact that it's so unique and so outlandish is the game's best feature. If you're tired of the same old FPS, you'll really want to check out Bullestorm, especially now that it's super cheap.