Critical Reception: People Can Fly's Bulletstorm

This week's edition of Critical Reception examines online reaction to People Can Fly's first-person shooter Bulletstorm, which reviews describe as "an intelligent, nuanced design with fathoms of depth." Bulletstorm currently earns a score of 86 out of 100 at Metacritic.com. David Houghton at Games Radar scores Bulletstorm at 10 out of 10. "Bulletstorm," he begins, "is a very intelligent, highly intricate, and sumptuously nuanced design masquerading as a big dumb action game. In fact it's such an evolution of the FPS experience that it's very probably destined for that pantheon of rare games to be deemed worthy of the word 'important' in a couple of years time." "Bulletstorm is not just a shooter," Houghton explains. "In fact, once you've taken the time to really explore its depths, you'll realise that being a shooter is just one small part of what it's about. It's just as much a 3D puzzle game, high-speed strategy game, and even, if you really get into it, a bit of a maths challenge too." Bulletstorm's combo system proves to be a compelling mechanic. "You're constantly judged on the complexity and inventiveness of your kills, and scores decrease with repetition," Houghton says. "The points you score for clever killing are the currency you use to buy new weapons, as well as functionality upgrades for your existing ones. Every gun and additional perk is meticulously designed to integrate with and balance against the others, opening up a pantheon of new options with each one that's added to the mix. "These options make up Bulletstorm's comprehensive list of Skill Shots, a line-up of circumstantial kills and stacked combos detailed in the pause menu, which comprise every possible violent interaction you'll concoct and plenty you won't. We're talking well over a hundred individual 'moves' here, with an accessible freedom of blendability that evokes the glory days of Tony Hawk's combo system." This ultimately defines the experience, according to Houghton. "None of this creative killing is any mere gimmick. It all serves serious purpose," Houghton says. "The kind of interactions most games save for their most inventive Achievements or Trophies, Bulletstorm builds its core game around. And when you really start plumbing its depths you'll discover a sense of personal involvement and purpose within its world that genuinely is groundbreaking." "Forget your preconceptions of Bulletstorm as a foul-mouthed big dumb action game," Houghton writes. "It's an intelligent, nuanced design with fathoms of depth, which marks a return to the importance of player creativity in shooters and simultaneously evolves the concept of interactivity in an FPS world. And with two cleverly complimentary secondary modes, it will have serious legs for a good long while to come." IGN's Arthur Gies rates Bulletstorm at 8 out of 10. "At face value I shouldn't like Bulletstorm," he begins. "It comes off as obnoxious and crass, full of toilet humor, emphasizing a sort of dickish boldness and attitude that's been driven into the ground by countless shooters over the last few years." "So it's a surprise then that Bulletstorm is actually something kind of special," Gies says. "Sure, it's still brash, and it's still full of toilet humor, but with context, Bulletstorm is a violently charming popcorn shooter that plays well with some great design." Gies praises Bulletstorm's Leash weapon, in particular. "The Leash allows Grayson to snag enemies and fling them into the air in slow motion, and its AI has been designed to evaluate combat performance – it rewards balls-out combat bravado in the form of points that can be redeemed at Confederate resupply pods scattered around the planet," he explains. "By combining shots to specific appendages and/or bathing suit areas with standing and sliding kicks, the Leash, and various environmental hazards, you'll discover a variety of named kill combos that reward more points than standard shots." Gies continues: "The Leash AI takes all of Bulletstorm's unique and genre-defying mechanical elements and makes sense of them within its own particular reality. It's... smart. Who'd have thought, particularly given the throwback nature of Bulletstorm's first person shooting? There's no cover, enemies aren't especially smart, and levels are a straight shot from A to B, but Bulletstorm still impresses. In tandem with shooting that feels responsive and meaty, with powerful, interesting weapons, the combo system makes Bulletstorm's combat a success." Bulletstorm disappoints with its omission of cooperative play, however. "The time-and-score-attack Echo mode is a nice enough inclusion with its online-enabled leaderboards, but why isn't there leaderboard-enabled campaign scoring in the main game?" Gies asks. "Campaign co-op also seems like a missed opportunity; you have at least one AI partner at all times in Bulletstorm, which makes the solo-only nature of the main game that much more jarring. Campaign leaderboards would help give replay value to a main game that I finished in less than six hours, and Echo just didn't hold my attention." "Bulletstorm demonstrates the value of 'why' for action games," Gies asserts. "Taken out of the context of its fiction, People Can Fly would have something fun but forgettable on their hands, but the way Bulletstorm fits together results in something cool and memorable. Multiplayer failings notwithstanding, Bulletstorm shines as a single-player shooter." Taylor Cocke at 1UP.com gives Bulletstorm a B- grade. "Billed as the 'antidote' to the modern shooter, Bulletstorm is certainly on a much higher level of ridiculousness than, say, the Call of Duty franchise or the recent reboot of Medal of Honor," he notes. "Even its sister series, Gears of War, which is over-the-top in its own right, can't keep up with Bulletstorm's old school, hyper masculine tendencies. And yet, it doesn't go quite far enough." Cocke finds that Bulletstorm's limp narrative is one of its greatest shortcomings. "Unfortunately, Bulletstorm doesn't manage to escape the pitfalls of those it seemingly attempts to lampoon," he explains. "The story revolves around Grayson's obsession with taking down his former commanding officer Serrano for a past deception that caused Grayson and his covert operations unit, Dead Echo, to assassinate various innocent citizens under the pretense that they were enemies of the state. Of course, upon discovering that fact, Grayson declares that he'll have his revenge. Sound too serious? It really is." Cocke continues: "All the game needed to was a simple excuse to go on a rampage, not a deep motivation to appease some sort of indignant revenge desire. For a game ostensibly based around absurd violence and 'killing with skill', the seriousness of the plot feels like a misstep." This softens the impact of Bulletstorm's over-the-top gameplay. "There's a discrepancy between the Skillshot-heavy gameplay and the overtly serious plot that drags the campaign down," Cocke writes. "While I attempted to have a good time with action and vulgar jokes, the plot intruded. All I wanted to do was kick fools into massive cactus spikes (for the Pricked Skillshot, of course), but I the generic, all too serious plot points simply took my maniacal murderous rage, previously aimed at the on-screen enemies, and redirected it right back at the unnecessarily humorless plot." "Bulletstorm is a game unsure of what it wants to achieve," Cocke concludes. "When it lets itself, it's a fantastic adrenaline rush through well-constructed set-pieces and gloriously fun-to-watch violence. But it too often drags itself down with overly structured situations and restrictive, strategy-heavy gameplay. "It feels like if chaos had been allowed to take the design process over, this could have had one of the most fun shooters of our generation, but as it stands, Bulletstorm is a mechanically enjoyable game that's missing what it needed to be great."