Bulletstorm Review

In the 2000s and early 2010s, many shooters were about brave soldiers fighting a just war for their marvelous country. It was all very serious, very bombastic, and also very dull. One game that broke this monotony was Bulletstorm. Developed by Polish studio People Can Fly, this shooter was released in 2011 for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

From the get go, Bulletstorm was marketed as an alternative to the drab military shooters of the time. The studio even went so far to release a parody version of Call of Duty. While the game itself isn’t available anymore, YouTube has documented the five-minute experience. The parody wasn’t subtle.

While Bulletstorm has some characteristics typical of the time, chiefly the limited weapon inventory space and the health regeneration mechanic, it’s very different. This is immediately apparent from the game’s setting.

Rather than a semi-realistic setting, the game uses a rather vague sci-fi setting. We assume the role of Grayson Hunt, a disgraced former soldier who was betrayed by his commanding general, Victor Serrano. Following a desperate attack on the general’s spaceship, Grayson and the rest of his crew crash-land on an abandoned planet and need to find a way off world.

As a result of the mentioned attack, their former commander and sworn enemy Serrano is also stranded on the planet. Naturally, Grayson sees this as an opportunity to get his revenge. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of this particular planet are extremely hostile. To reach the general, he first has to get through them.

Grayson is accompanied by Ishi, the single surviving member of the crew. Things are tense between Grayson and him, as Ishi rightfully blames Grayson for the death of his comrades and for their crash-landing on this deadly backwater planet.

However, there’s little time for a therapy session as we’re too busy shooting things.

At first glance, Bulletstorm looks like a regular shooter. However, the game has quite a few tricks up its sleeve that elevate the gameplay. The first is our ability to kick enemies and small objects. Not only does this allow us to keep enemies away from us, it also allows us to let the environment do our killing for us.

For example, kicking an enemy into a spiky surface will kill him immediately. Not only is this faster than shooting him, the game also rewards such creative kills with the skillshot system that I’ll explain in more detail later. The kick can also be used to move deadly items towards our enemies. Here’s a short video clip where I kick an explosive container into a group of enemies.

The kick is not our only tool for manipulating the world. In addition, we also have a very handy leash. We can use it to drag enemies and items towards us rather than away from us. Enemies will die when they hit a deadly object while getting pulled towards us by the leash. We can combine the leash and the kick like you can see in the video below.

The kick and the leash add a dynamic to the shooting that was extraordinary at the time, as comparable shooters were chiefly about shooting and taking cover. Even today, I can’t think of a similar game (if you can, please let me know in the comments).

The weapons range from rather conventional, like an assault rifle or a shotgun, to highly exotic, like the flail gun, which shoots two grenades connected by a chain that wrap themselves around enemies. We can only carry three weapons at a time, and one slot is strictly reserved for our standard assault rifle. All weapons have in common that they feel weighty and powerful. The game is very violent, which underlines the potency of our armory.

Bulletstorm has a very cool take on the sniper rifle. When using the scope, the game allows us to control the bullet directly. In fact, we have to manually direct the bullet as our enemies will try to dodge it. Here’s a video of the sniper rifle in action.

Each weapon has a charged firing mode. For example, the shotgun can fire a cover-penetrating shockwave instead of the regular shells. Even our leash has a charged mode that we can use to launch enemies in the air.

To use the charged firing mode, we require charges. Charges are a special kind of ammunition that we need to buy. But how do we get the money? It’s time to talk about another unique feature of Bulletstorm: the skillshot system.

Bulletstorm gives out skill points for every kill. These skillpoints are used to buy ammunition, including charges, to upgrade weapons and to get access to new weapons. The more skillfully we kill an enemy, the more skillpoints we earn. The game is very transparent about this, as it displays the name of a skillshot as well as the earned points when we trigger one (you might’ve noticed that in the videos). There are general skillshots as well as weapon-dependent ones. The full list can be found online.

While earning a lot of skillpoints isn’t necessary to beat the game, they add a lot to its appeal. It simply is fun to hunt for a high score, and it increases the amount of attention we pay to our environments. For example, when we spot a cactus, we might want to figure out how to kick an enemy into it to trigger the “pricked” skillshot. Also, the game motivates us to experiment, as we cannot see the full list of skillshots from the get-go, and we get awarded an extra 500 skillpoints when we trigger it for the first time.

The skillshots are a big reason why Bulletstorm feels unique. They are great fun and elevate the shooter to something bold and fresh. The names of the skillshots (e.g., “gag reflex”) also hint towards another defining feature of the game: the questionable writing.

Bulletstorm has a very pulpy tone. This is not only apparent in the names of certain skillshots but seeps out of every line of dialogue in the game. While this is clearly intentional and also occasionally entertaining, it makes it very difficult to actually care about the characters. There is also absolutely no depth to the writing.

For example, the big antagonist of the game, Serrano, is completely one-dimensional. His most noticeable quirk besides being cartoonishly evil is the enormous number of insults he includes in his lines. Also, it’s really hard to take the tension between Grayson and Ishi seriously or feel any sympathy for Grayson.

I think a good example of the game’s tone is the infamous “kill-your-dick” dialogue that we encounter relatively early. Take a look at this:

Now, I don’t expect a good story from a shooter and hence am perfectly fine with Bulletstorm’s pulpy and juvenile approach. I even find it fun at times. That said, I don’t think that it’s particularly well done, especially when compared to something similarly pulpy like Max Payne. A more grounded and well-executed approach would have resulted in a better game. Alternatively, the developers could’ve gone the Quake route and cut the story down to the bare minimum. It also doesn’t help that the game fails to properly resolve the story.

The main campaign of Bulletstorm is about eight hours long, which is adequate for a single-player shooter. The game strives to keep things interesting by frequently changing the environment as well as the enemy types.

While most enemies in the game are humans, the various gangs of the planet have different abilities. For example, members of the Creeps gang are so fast that they will dodge our leash and kick. We need to rely on our weapons to deal with them. In addition to the human enemies, we also get into trouble with the fauna and flora of the planet. For example, the first boss fight of the game is against a giant mutated plant.

The game also likes to interrupt the shooting with short climbing passages and by timed sequences in which we need to escape some place before a timer reaches zero.

There’s also a section in an abandoned amusement park where we remotely control a mechanized dinosaur and use its giant lasers to kill our enemies. This section is a bit too long for my taste, but I applaud the creativity. In terms of level design, the game sticks to small corridors and some medium-sized open areas. There are no big open areas where we have to find our own path. Exploration isn’t a factor at all.

All in all, the game does a good job at keeping boredom at bay. It’s also quite good at creating cinematic moments. For example, at one point in the game a dam bursts thanks to our actions while we’re on top of it.

I don’t think that the game is either too long or too short. The pacing is good as well. Sadly, all of this wasn’t enough to turn the game into a hit.

The game received generally positive reviews on release. Critics praised the game’s combat, setting, and pacing. Unsurprisingly, the game’s writing and high level of violence weren’t universally loved.

In Germany, the game was only released in a highly sanitized version. The original version was promptly banned. Fortunately, this ban was lifted again in 2017 thanks to shifting sensibilities.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the game caught the attention of the infamous TV station Fox News. Fox News employee John Brandon wondered whether Bulletstorm was the worst game in the world due to its violence, profanity, and sexually charged writing. Funnily enough, this added publicity seems to have helped the game. However, it wasn’t enough.

Bulletstorm was a commercial failure. It sold under a million copies, which wasn’t enough to make a profit. As a result, the plans for a sequel were scrapped, and the brand was mostly abandoned.

Bulletstorm is a very good shooter that didn’t get the attention it deserved on release. If you haven’t played it yet, I highly recommend giving it a try. Fortunately, the game received a remaster in 2017, which slightly improved the graphics and made the game available on current-gen consoles, including the Switch.

Thanks for reading. Please consider subscribing to the Substack. Also, please share it with a friend. You can do both with these handy buttons below.

Share