Storm's a Brewin'

I bought Bulletstorm last Thursday. I have since, finished the game.

TWICE. The second time being on Very Hard mode.

It is rare for me to finish a game twice nowadays - I have so many games to play that usually once I finish one, I'm done with it, unless its multiplayer is good, in which case it becomes a fallback MP game.

Bulletstorm's multiplayer isn't that good. It had an interesting idea - team up with other people to aim for as many cool "Skillshots" as you can. However, it is implemented via Games for Windows LIVE, which is a piss poor excuse for an online platform. This immediately removes the possibility of dedicated servers, or even getting a choice of server to play on. There is no chance to select a server with a low ping - you just hit connect and hope like hell you don't get screwed. Not to mention the login kerfuffles. I kind of feel sorry for the people who bought the game on Steam - they probably have to log in TWICE to play the game.

I hate Games for Windows LIVE.

Once you get the game running though, its quite fun. You spend the majority of the game running around looking for the most interesting and awesome ways of killing the mutants that are hunting you. Typically that involves things like impaling them on giant cacti, kicking them into exposed electrical wires, using your electric leash's "thumper" attack to send everything sky high before impaling multiple enemies using your drill gun - a gun aptly named the "Penetrator", and other such atrocities.

Quite a brutal game in terms of body count, graphic violence and potty mouth. Every character in this game has a bad case of potty mouth. Admittedly, its what you expect when you play as a Space Pirate, and I don't have a problem with coarse language in the slightest, but it can get tiresome sometime. Especially when, take away the word pirate and replace it with marine, and your character suddenly becomes ridiculously generic again. Who am I kidding, the character is very generic. There is even the sequence early on where you flash back to his time as a space marine!

However, where the game shines is the gameplay. Admittedly, the levels are linear, but I'm fine with that. Too much freedom tends to result in my getting lost anyway. In this game - the goal is clear. Follow the path to where you need to be - killing everything in your path in the most inventive way possible with the environment around you. Blow up that hot dog cart, with the resulting explosion killing nearby mutants, for the "Sausage Fest" skillshot. Find a bottle of booze, down it and kill a mutant while drunk (which can prove quite difficult sometimes due to blurry-screen and the game refusing to aim where you want it to) to get whatever skillshot you just earned, with the addition bonus "Intoxicated". Find some enemies in the cargo bays of a spacecraft, pull the level that opens the door behind them for the skillkill "Ejeculated".

Yes, very crude, but oh so enjoyable.

Also, at one point you get to control a giant robot dinosaur. And it shoots lasers out of its eyes. It gets the best name ever too.

Waggleton P. Tallylicker.