Bulletstorm Review

So, I bought Bulletstorm in the Steam sale the other day and I decided to finish it really quickly. Once I started playing it, it wasn't all that hard to do. Bulletstorm is the best shooter I've played in quite a while. Bearing in mind that I have COD fatigue (which is basically just a fancy way of saying that I'm bored as hell of samey military shooters), I was really looking for a shooter that did something different. And Bulletstorm is definitely that shooter. 

When I went to purchase it, I figured it was just a shooter with lots of violence and a cool concept but it turned out to be a really great game. The shooting mechanics are pretty good because you can reload whilst you kick/slide which is very useful and adds to the overall fluidity of the game. That's really what the game is, in a nutshell; fluid. It all blends together seamlessly whether that's the cutscenes or the QTE's, everything flows nicely. I'm not really a fan of QTE's in general. I dislike the Tomb Raider: Legends style QTE where if you miss it, you die but these QTE's 1) reward you with points if you nail them and 2) don't kill you if you miss them. This makes them bearable and pretty useful to the game overall because if you time them right, it allows you to get that little bit more ammo from the dropkit. 

The one thing that I disliked about it was the climbing stuff. Pressing LT, RT, LT, RT in time with the flashing buttons on the screen got a little irritating after a while. If you mis-time and go to quick, you just get 0 points and end up having to press the trigger twice for no reward but if you climb slowly you get 25 points per button press? What's all that about? They do actually address it in the dialogue when Trishka, one of your companions says something along the lines of 'Y U NO CLIMB FASTER?!' 

Overall, the story was also pretty good. Sometimes it was pretty predictable but at least it made sense. They weren't doing stupid things just for the sake of following the plot. The whole concept of the lovable space pirate was a little cheesy but it kind of made sense. He never really did anything out of character so he kept the concept alive. Trishka was a little easy going for some chick who'd just been stranded on a planet by this asshole but suspension of disbelief got me past that one for the most part.

I have only played one of the 'Echo' bits, which I guess are run throughs of levels from the campaign but you have to 'do better,' essentially. I wouldn't know because I haven't actually been told this. There's no message that says 'Hey player! In Echo mode, you do this' so I've just kind of guessed. I might play some more of those, if they keep me entertained. I was also going to play some multiplayer but it doesn't really interest me and it seems like there'd be nobody on there now because it's a pretty old game.

My overall conclusion: Bulletstorm is a great game for what it is, a pretty innovative, different shooter with good gameplay mechanics and an interesting story. Defintely a buy if you're looking for the same things that I was.