Game Review: Bulletstorm

Billy O'Keefe - Mclatchy -Tribune News Service

Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 Also available for: Windows PC

From: People Can Fly/Epic Games/EA

ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language, use of alcohol)

With respect to the hard-working people who brought "Bulletstorm's" sound design to life, few would blame you for playing this first-person shooter with your sound muted.

"Bulletstorm's" storyline is infested with cliches, and its characters are massively unlikable meatheads who inspire no rooting interest whatsoever. It initially feels like a spoof in the "so bad, it's good" vein, but too many turns for the melodramatic make it clear this wasn't the intention.

"Bulletstorm's" comedic antidote for the encroaching melodrama is to take dirty words that make second-graders giggle and jam them into sentences in ways that intentionally make no sense. Hilarious, right? Nope, and you need not find swearing remotely offensive to be put off by the notion that something's funny simply because somebody blurted out a word you can't print here. It's immediately lame, and hearing the same gag ad nauseam over "Bulletstorm's" six-hour campaign is nauseating. (There's a toggle to disable "mature" language - calling it that is unintentionally funnier than the entirety of "Bulletstorm's" script - but that won't fix everything else that ails the story.)

But "Bulletstorm's" problems go deeper than storytelling. Though the levels look pretty, their construction - too many tight corridors, too little room for meaningful strategy, laughable attempts at "puzzle"-solving - are uninspired. The enemy A.I. occasionally falls apart, with a half-dozen baddies all targeting you despite the nearly constant presence of two allies by your side. Your allies are even worse, regularly standing out of position, blocking your view or just doing nothing while those aforementioned enemies dig in. It makes the omission of online campaign co-op even more regrettable than it already was.

Good thing, then, that "Bulletstorm" at least does some things no other shooter does. If it didn't, the aforementioned roster of problems would be impossible to overcome.

"Bulletstorm's" big hook is the notion of killing with style. You can shoot a guy if you want, but why do that when, for instance, you can pull a gigantic seed toward you with your energy leash, kick the seed so it lands on an enemy's head, pull the enemy in with the leash, kick him into the air and fire a shot that launches him into a gigantic cactus? Doing that nets you more points, which function as currency toward purchasing weapons and ammo. In the game's best move, it gives you an in-game database of every possible stylish kill and challenges you to achieve all 131 of them.

Default weapon aside, "Bulletstorm's" guns are satisfyingly powerful and fun to use, and the leash - which you crack like a whip to yank enemies and objects toward you for additional manipulation - adds a fun, mischievous wrinkle. Your kick, meanwhile, is as straightforward as it sounds but similarly fun to use because it's cartoonishly overpowering.

The moment-to-moment insanity afforded by these abilities does much to compensate for all "Bulletstorm" does poorly, but the novelty also has an expiration date. It starts wearing thin about halfway through, and the final few chapters - which find the A.I. and level-design problems at their worst - are a grind.

It's no mystery why "Bulletstorm" nixed competitive multiplayer, which would have been disastrous with everyone booting and leashing each other constantly.

But whether Anarchy mode - which allows four players to fight cooperatively online (and collect special multiplayer-only skillshots) against up to 20 waves of enemies - provides satisfactory compensation is debatable. Anarchy is "Bulletstorm" at its best - no annoying story, no useless friendly A.I. - but even competing for the high score won't fully scratch whatever itch you might have for human competition.

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