I wanted to play Bulletstorm, and I wanted to play Dragon Age. I had to go ahead and stifle myself on getting the games when they came out and instead worked the system. And it all came up milhouse.
Here's what happened, I kept hearing such great things about Bulletstorm, but we kept getting copies traded in, the general consensus being that the game is good.... not great.... but not terrible. The whole package is decent enough, but not any one in particular thing could keep your attention for much longer than a week.
So fine, I says, I didn't even want to get it. But I did want to at least try it out. So I pick up a used copy, the week Dragon Age 2 came out. I didn't get DA2 because I hated, HATED, the first one. Something about a WoW combat system on a console bored me. To death. I got, and beat the Bulletstorm in the week, brought it back and put that money towards Dragon Age 2. And in the end it was the right decision.
First on the block is Bulletstorm. Talk about a game with more publicity and hype, this thing was so proud of itself and what it had planned. Too bad it didn't quite keep up. I firmly believe the publishers didn't actually play the game, simply pegged it to be more awesome and bad-a than COD. The commercials, the jokes, the references, all to show how ridic the COD series had become.
So then we get into the storyline of Bulletstorm. You and your ethnic partner (who has a serious personal problem), are stranded on a planet where they're hunting an evil general, with the help of a tough-as-nails girl. Scroll down, it's the Killzone 3 review. Scroll down really far, it's the Gears of War 2 review. Now there's nothing wrong with the same story over and over, if the game is good the story won't come into play much. (Although I do like that Game Informer complained about the storyline of Dragon Age 2, but hailed the Bulletstorm story as smart).
I've played all of Fallout:New Vegas, and I ran into more bugs with Bulletstorm than I did Fallout. Just saying. The general concept is a decent enough theory, you get skill points for killing people in interesting ways, and you can push, pull, and drag the people into different traps and pitfalls.
Problem is, at least for me, I ran out of interest in doing so quickly, and the game simply became a fight to the finish. There were skillshots I could easily pull off, and others that seemed so daunting and complex that I didn't even want to attempt them. The biggest draw of the game now is the Echoes levels, which are essentially re-playing each individual level on a time-run for top scores. Meh.
What really bothered me about this straight forward shooter (which is yet another one that would have done wonderfully had it been released on the PC back in the day) was that it was made by Gears of War people. Gears, known in a wide amount because of their cover and shoot from cover systems. Bulletstorm? You could crouch, crouch next to a barricade, and people could still shoot at you, over the debris. So... what's the point of crouching? The game is actually intending on you to be so fast and awesome that you don't have to worry about getting too injured. I took 4 screw-shots (a drill into the stomach) in a row, and my guy didn't die, but 2 sniper hits and I was face down. This was on normal. When you die in the game, be prepared to make an audible sound of annoyance, sometimes it just doesn't make sense.
The game overall seemed somewhat rushed, but was released the same time as Killzone, a week before Dragon Age 2, and two weeks before Homefront. So I'm not sure why the rush. The current appeal of Bulletstorm now? The Gears Beta (which you have to have the Bulletstorm disc for *cheap*) and the Echoes levels. Beat your friends scores. Woo. Most of the people I work with have already done so. And shockingly they're already bored with the game, they just won't admit it.
The game essentially is a run of the mill shooter with some interesting elements (See Metro 2033, STALKER, etc). It's a decent game, but like I said, I beat it over a weekend, 7 hours to finish the storyline on normal, died twice, and another 2 hours to beat some of my friends rankings on Echoes. All of my friends however, had stopped playing, so leashing a fish in a barrel isn't that much fun. Rent it, give it a whirl, but don't make space for it on your shelf.
Dragon Age 2 to follow.
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