Gears of War Trishka Novak Bulletstorm Trishka Novak Art

The rising sunday paints the sky in chemic shades of aureate and bronze, streaked here with bloody crimson, in that location with the grey of baneful smoke; great plants wrap the distant mural in emerald tendrils brindled with spores of yellow and blood-red. Here and there the scars of industry mar this one time-paradise: the rusted husks of derelict factories jut from the earth similar cleaved teeth, while burned-out pleasure resorts blacken the bright horizon. All around are the signs of revolution: bullet holes, scorch marks, gutted buildings – and silence; a deep, unsettling silence.

This is Stygia, one time the greatest paradise known to man, a new Eden among the stars to which thousands would flock every twelvemonth to experience life at the peak of man excess. At the time of Stygia'due south hey-day, a labour-force comprised of bedevilled prisoners maintained the various complexes, and dangerous chemicals siphoned from the temper were stored below the planet's surface, away from the public eye. It was a pulverisation-keg waiting to be ignited, and when that happened the whole planet went to hell on a rollercoaster; the prisoners revolted, the dangerous chemicals got into the atmosphere and the population mutated, losing their minds and their humanity in the process.

This is the setting of People Can Fly's brutal and irreverent first person shooter, Bulletstorm, and one of the most unsafe and cute game-worlds of recent years.

PARADISE LOST: It's sometimes easy to forget while staring at still images of Stygia's landscape that Bulletstorm is a loud, crass and wilfully over-the-top FPS. Information technology's also easy to forget that it was congenital using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3, a platform more oftentimes associated with grit and grime and several hundred shades of brown. In bodily fact, it was People Tin can Fly's interest in using Epic's proprietary game engine that led to the nascence of Bulletstorm in the first identify.

The Smooth developers (previously famous for creating 2004's PC-only blaster, Painkiller) had approached Epic virtually licensing the Unreal Engine iii, and the demo they built was then impressive that Epic hired them to do some of the work on the PC port of Gears of State of war. It was a move that led to the collaboration of both companies on Bulletstorm, a new shooter that was to exist published by Electronic Arts.

While the game put People Can Fly on the map, it's the influence of Epic that is well-nigh keenly felt throughout. The graphic symbol models and the art fashion scream Gears of War; the armour worn past the soldiers in Bulletstorm has the same gun-metallic grey colouring, blueish neon lights that may also be at that place purely for ornament and the same ability to prove off bulging, grease-smeared biceps. The showtime-person character movement is familiar too, almost as if yous've been slammed into Marcus Fenix's caput but had your cosy encompass mechanic ripped abroad. The weight and heft that made controlling Gears' Marcus and Dom and so satisfying is just as prevalent in Bulletstorm; the guns – here far more than outlandish and unreal – are just equally meaty, the impact of their shots just as solid. Fifty-fifty the scriptwriting – while somehow managing to be even more profane in Bulletstorm – has a similar cadence, its themes of vengeance and redemption shot through with hilarious one-liners and heartfelt bromance.

A SUDDEN PLUNGE IN THE SULLEN Bang-up: While on the outside Bulletstorm seems crude and unrefined, in that location is a level of humanity beneath all the snarled oaths and exploded heads that's piece of cake to miss fifty-fifty while you're playing. The prologue mission sets the scene perfectly, beginning with a covert assault on a civilian building by Expressionless Echo, an elite mercenary unit working under the command of Star General Serrano. Led by Grayson Hunt (voiced by the ever-dependable, wonderfully gruff Steve Blum) and his straight-laced partner Ishi Sato, Expressionless Echo's job is to wipe the most despicable and immoral scum from all the corners of the galaxy. Or so they believe.

The horrific truth is that Sarrano has been lying to them from day i, using them every bit his personal hit squad to eliminate anyone who might uncover the more sordid details of his squalid military career. Commencement with a vertical stroll upwardly the side of a building, the prologue mission culminates with an innocent reporter meeting his end at the hands of Dead Echo – and leaving his immature daughter fatherless. When Hunt discovers the truth he rebels, goes rogue, gets the hell off World, and spends the next ten years drinking, whoring and pirating effectually the solar arrangement trying to forget the claret on his hands rather than make an honest try to launder it off.

Right off the bat in that location's a reason to like the biting, foul-mouthed, Wolverine-haired Chase – rather than simply shrugging off the innocent lives he'due south been tricked into snuffing out, he takes it hard, crashing and burning over and over again in an attempt to escape the horrors of his past and find peace. Information technology's non that his intentions are bad, it's just that he's not a subtle human, and climbing into a canteen while taking his crew (the other 3 sometime members of Dead Echo) on one suicide mission afterwards another is an easier way to deal with what's gone down than simply asking forgiveness.

Ten FATHOMS DEEP ON THE Route TO HELL: So, when a stinking drunk Hunt comes across Serrano's flagship, the Ulysses, in deep space, he does the only affair that makes sense at the time: He takes it on, regardless of its vastly superior size, strength and firepower. Ultimately, the only course of activeness is to ram information technology, head-on, crashing both ships and stranding Dead Repeat and several squads of Serrano's armed forces personnel on the corrupted paradise planet of Stygia.

With ii of the coiffure dead, and the gravely wounded Ishi now a tricked-out cyborg barely retaining his humanity, Hunt sets out to discover Serrano and finish his life once and for all – hopefully commandeering an escape capsule from the downed Ulysses in the procedure. However, as with all good activeness yarns, problems ascend with frightening regularity. For example, it soon becomes apparent that Serrano has been using Stygia as a training ground for Concluding Repeat, the successors to Hunt's squad. Honing their skills killing the mutated remnants of Stygia's population has turned Final Echo into a fighting forcefulness to be reckoned with – an inconvenient obstacle on Chase'due south road to revenge and redemption.

And so in that location'south Trishka Novak (Mass Effect's Jennifer Hale), an elite member of Final Echo and, as luck and fate would have it, the girl of the man Hunt killed in the prologue. Her shocking potty oral cavity and abrasive attitude aside, it's Trishka'southward interplay with Hunt that provides most of the tension. She doesn't know that Hunt killed her male parent, but in one case she finds out Serrano was responsible information technology's only a matter of fourth dimension before Hunt's office in it is revealed – and she'due south not the sort to let sleeping dogs prevarication. At that place'south a surprising and unappreciated depth to Bulletstorm'south chief characters – particularly Hunt, Trishka and Ishi. A moment late in the game when Ishi tells Hunt that he doesn't hold him accountable for the shit they've gone through to go where they are is really touching, and adds to the bear on later on when a reprogrammed Ishi is trying to murder Hunt, whereby Hunt tells him the same thing.

Serrano might exist a caricature bad guy, just it's excusable, mayhap fifty-fifty original, in that Bulletstorm's writers don't even attempt to make the player empathise with him. Serrano is no sympathetic villain, he harbours no deep-seated emotional scars that force him to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty – he only is evil, through and through; a despicable, twisted individual who happens to occupy a position of great power and authority. Even the knowledge that he raised Trishka and trained her doesn't soften his image, as the first time she challenges him, he throws her off a building. He's there to detest; the "heroes" are dingy enough without disruptive the role of the antagonist, and Serrano is exactly the type of villain that a hero similar Grayson Chase needs to maintain balance.

KILL WITH SKILL: But permit'south not pretend that Bulletstorm is all about the story. While the plot is compelling and worthy of more praise than many have given it, Bulletstorm'south greatest strength is undoubtedly its gameplay. Like Gears of State of war on an LSD trip, Bulletstorm's campaign is an explosive journey from set up-piece to set-piece, taking in everything from chases through the desert with a skyscraper-sized cogwheel begetting down on y'all, to jumping in a rickety gyrocopter to battle a Godzilla-sized dinosaur that your clumsy donkey has awoken from its slumber, or facing off confronting a giant mutated found that's smothering the complex with its creeping roots. But even though the big fights are full of graphic symbol and bombast, the combat is always at its best when you're engaged in firefights with the enemy infantry. Why? Because of the Instinct Ternion, that's why.

Designed as both an free energy-based weapon and a tool for monitoring and recording a soldier's functioning in the stringent tests to which Last Echo recruits are subjected, the Instinct Leash is one of the greatest gadgets in whatsoever sci-fi game ever. Able to pull enemies and objects towards you or "thump" the ground to launch them upwardly into the air, the Leash is an indispensable weapon and absolutely vital if y'all want to find all of Bulletstorm's incredibly addictive Skillshots.

At a very basic level these are trick kills, found by being experimental and creative with your weapons and the environment. Although Bulletstorm has a relatively small choice of guns, each comes with an alternate, charged fire mode, and information technology's often these that will help yous unlock Skillshots. For instance, the pistol's secondary fashion causes information technology to burn down explosive flares – blind an enemy with ane and then kill him and you'll accomplish the Blind Burn Skillshot; kick an enemy onto a spiky environmental characteristic and unlock Voodoo Doll; kill two goons with one Flailgun explosion and earn a Gang Bang… You lot get the picture. Each Skillshot earns you points that can be used at "dropkits" to buy ammo and unlock new weapons. Improve guns cost more points, so the best killers get access to the best weapons.

Bulletstorm's combat system is then pop that people are however logging on today attempting to perfect the Echoes, bite-sized portions of the single actor missions wherein the objective is to score equally many Skillpoints as possible in the fastest time by mixing Skillshots and environment kills. There's something cathartic about the Echoes with which the shallow, tacked-on co-op mode only can't compete. It's almost using the right weapon for the right moment, making quick switches and quick decisions where kills are concerned and acting every bit much on instinct as forethought. The Echoes are what give Bulletstorm its legs (the entrada clocks in at simply a little over 7 hours), and their appeal and replayability are immense.

WHAT We Practice IN LIFE: Unsurprisingly, Bulletstorm was the centre of a mild controversy storm concerning the sheer book of profanity in its script. This is the game that spawned the insult "dick-tits", and sent upwardly Halo: Reach's "Believe" diorama with a slow move video of Hunt murdering mutants and having a long, noisy pee – just it too prompted Fox News to run an commodity debasing its use of gratuitous bad language and over the summit violence in its Skill Kills. Psychologist Carole Lieberman joined Pull a fast one on News' panel, challenge:

"Video games have increasingly, and more brazenly, connected sex and violence in images, deportment and words. This has the psychological impact of doubling the excitement, stimulation and incitement to copycat acts. The increase in rapes can be attributed, in large part, to the playing out of such scenes in video games."

Others came forward with like claims, suggesting that the game was targeted at adolescents or even "children as young as nine", but all were dismissed without a single 60 minutes in court. Bulletstorm's black humour and mature affair were ever going to generate controversy, simply such claims were clearly aimed at the video games industry in general with People Can Fly's game as a likely, and convenient, proxy.

"Bulletstorm is a work of entertainment fiction… The game and its marketing adhere to all guidelines set along by the ESRB; both designed for people 17+… Much like Tarantino's Kill Beak or Rodriguez's Sin City this game is an expression of artistic entertainment for adults." – EA'due south response to the Bulletstorm controversy.

ECHOES IN ETERNITY: So why no sequel? Well, although one was in the planning stages for quite a while, People Can Wing appeared to abandon it to instead work on the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment, a prequel to Epic's bestselling sci-fi franchise. Evidently, poor sales killed the chance of a direct Bulletstorm sequel – all the same another example of a neat game getting neither the pre-release hype nor the mail service-release coverage it deserved.

If y'all've never dipped into Bulletstorm'southward colourful, frantic and violent world and so you lot're missing out, but you're non alone. Many were put off past an overly-shouty trailer featuring muscle-bound dude-bros whooping and cheering while reducing bad guys to bloody fragments, and non nearly enough was made of a story that actually is far more than only a reason to swear and kill.

Bulletstorm is not a work of art, despite the undeniable dazzler of Stygia's corrupted surround, merely as a game it's a genuine masterpiece of madness and commotion, taking something that's become as mundane equally shooting a bad guy and turning information technology into something similar to a circuitous competitive sport requiring forethought and planning to perfect. The decaying majesty of a world like Stygia might have been lost on a fan-base who really but wanted to smash through an enemy'southward backside with a giant drill gun, merely actually that'due south ok too, because Bulletstorm is a game that revels in its contradictions: cute nonetheless corrupt, tonally shallow yet morally deep, vulgar and advised yet surprisingly well written, simple and uncluttered all the same complex in its various gameplay systems.

Bulletstorm deserves to be played, if only because there will never be a sequel, and and so there volition never be another game quite like it.

Bulletstorm was developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games and published by Electronic Arts. It currently holds a Metacritic score of 84/100.

Mick Fraser

Senior Content Editor Mick has been playing games for over xxx years and writing nigh them for around 12. After drifting from site to site for a while, settling briefly at the now-defunct Made2Game and freelancing for the gone-but-not-forgotten NintendoGamer Magazine, he came at concluding to rest at Godisageek. Mick has been a reviewer, staff writer and content editor here for some time, while also moonlighting a little for Red Bull Games. He has iv kids, has written 2 novels, and sometimes even manages to pay a bill or 2. Y'all'll usually find him defending the galaxy in Destiny 2, battling evil in Diablo iii, or lurking in the groundwork on Twitter. Find him in that location @Jedi_Beats_Tank, or on XBL (JediWaster247), PSN (Jedi_Waster) or Nintendo (JediWaster).

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Source: https://www.godisageek.com/2013/01/replayed-bulletstorm/