Bulletstorm Preview - 360/PS3/PC

Bulletstorm Preview - 360/PS3/PC
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An Over-the-Top FPS - Bulletstorm Preview

Epic Games-owned developer People Can Fly is nearing completion on its upcoming over-the-top first-person shooter, and so far it looks pretty darn promising. Featuring frantically paced FPS gameplay and pouring loads of insane elements and off-the-wall intricacies onto it, Bulletstorm is not your typical shooter. Sure, there are big guns and an emphasis on actually putting bullets through your enemies, but the way the game approaches the killing requires you to think a bit and get creative, two attributes which aren’t commonplace in FPS games at all.

You Get to Play As a Space Pirate!

From mercenary to drunk space pirate.

The story in Bulletstorm is based on a band of space pirates. This group is lead by Grayson Hunt who was kicked out of a federation of mercenaries and exiled. Hunt finds himself in a world full of cannibalistic beasts and deadly mutants and decides to do what all main characters in most FPS titles do: kick some mutated monster behind.

What Does a Cat Do When It Catches a Mouse?

Kill with skill.

At its core, Bulletstorm is a creativity-inspiring FPS. People Can Fly and Epic Games have developed the game so that it stands out among the realistic brand of shooters such as Call of Duty: Black Ops and even sci-fi games such as Halo: Reach. You are armed with an energy leash that allows you to grab hold of your enemies. Once captured, you can fling them around and toss them up into the air. From here, you can go to town on those mutants with a wide variety of guns.

If you’re feeling sensible, you can simply kick an enemy back and then unleash your fury with some crazy attacks. Of course, Bulletstorm isn’t about being sensible, and you are rewarded for your creativity. You can juggle enemies in the air by shooting at them repeatedly, use weapons that slice and dice them after you’ve pumped them full of lead, or send them careening into a giant cactus (memories of the rosebush kill from MadWorld just came rushing back to me).

Bulletstorm is about letting loose and having fun in a more off-the-wall manner. By that I mean that you can literally toss enemies off a wall and then play around with their mangled, dying bodies until you’ve racked up a nice combo which awards you with points that can be used to upgrade your abilities. Bulletstorm doesn’t encourage you to play realistically as if you were on the battlefield, it begs you to come up with the most outlandish kill you possibly can only to outdo yourself later. Oh, and if you’re wondering, there are definitely giant bosses that require you to get nasty.

Multiplayer Modes

You can team up with other players online and take on hordes of enemies.

What would a first-person shooter be without a set of multiplayer modes? Bulletstorm features a number of modes that allow you to get creative while playing with others. Two of those modes are Anarchy and Echo, and from the way the developers have described them, it’s evident that the craziness of Bulletstorm isn’t tethered solely to its single-player campaign.

Anarchy is a mode where you and up to three friends take on wave after wave of enemy forces. There is a set number of points that you need to accrue, and these can be earned individually, by performing environmental kills (such as tossing an enemy off a high platform to perform the vertigo kill), or as a team by juggling enemies around between you and your partners.

Echo is a more streamlined leaderboard mode where you play on your own and try to get your name on the online ranking system. While this may not be too inventive itself, it allows you to be, and your efforts will show online. Because Bulletstorm is a game about being creative and trying to accumulate a high score by killing your enemies in outlandish ways, it’s going to be interesting seeing how insanely high the scores get.

Visual Design

Bulletstorm is gritty, but it is also colorful.

FPS gameplay and extremely colorful visuals. No, I’m not talking about Borderlands. Bulletstorm has a unique graphical design that uses a wide variety of colors rather than sticking with earthy tones like other shooters. The graphics are definitely impressive, and they go hand-in-hand with the frenetic gameplay design of Bulletstorm.

Bulletstorm Preview - Kill with Skill

Bulletstorm isn’t your ordinary FPS title. Don’t expect to be overly tactical. Don’t even expect to just show up to the battle with guns blazing. This is an FPS that rewards you for how inventive your kills are. You can put a bullet through an enemy’s head; just make sure you tossed him around and inflicted some cruel and unusual punishment first. Bulletstorm is headed to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on February 22.