Bulletstorm
Preview
Play with the prey!
by Davneet Minhas
previewed on PC
Creativity, not efficiency (cntd)
As a result, you have to be creative and focus on your immediate environment, pay attention to what new object you can throw enemies into - or throw at enemies, in ways few shooters require. You must constantly come up with new ways, not to end a battle, but to prolong it and toy with your enemies, like a cat playing with a mouse. The FPS genre is undoubtedly saturated year after year, but I can’t think of any game that has departed from the most fundamental of shooter mechanics quite like Bulletstorm seems to be doing.
Every game from Doom to Team Fortress 2 to Call of Duty to Borderlands has efficiency underlying its defining attributes: kill them before they kill you. Bulletstorm has the potential to be different, to break that monotony, and despite the game’s frivolous trailers and ridiculous language, that’s exciting.
Team Skillshots
Bulletstorm’s multiplayer seems to carry over the philosophy of its single-player campaign. Again, most multiplayer shooters are about efficiency, about killing other players as quickly as possible and racking up the most frags in a session. Bulletstorm’s multiplayer is about creativity and racking up the most points, not frags.
The game’s competitive Echo mode allows you to play through different scenarios from the single-player campaign to achieve a personal high score, the most points possible. Your friends can then see your high score and try to beat it. If they do, the game notifies you, and you can in turn attempt to beat their score. It’s apparently very addictive, but the cooperative mode, Anarchy, sounds much more interesting.
Anarchy mode pits you and three friends against waves of enemies of increasing difficulty. But you don’t get to the next stage by simply surviving each wave; you do so by reaching the necessary point total by executing team Skillshots. Where you would flick a baddie up in the air and then shoot him out of the sky in the single-player campaign, in Anarchy your friend can leash and you can shoot for a team Skillshot. Playing with a friend creates many potential Skillshots that wouldn’t be possible playing alone. Hopefully developer People Can Fly delivers on those.
No More Vomit
Yes, I want to play Bulletstorm. At the very least, I’m excited to see how many ways this cat can toy with its mice. But even with that excitement, the more trailers Epic releases, the harder it is to keep sight of that interesting, thoughtful game I expect Bulletstorm to be. I think I might go listen to the excellent Irrational Interview with Cliff Bleszinski again. Maybe that will drown out the Bulletpoint's punch lines and sound of projectile vomit. I mean, vomit? Seriously? Does anyone over the age of nine think that’s funny?
