Bulletstorm: Understanding the Hype

Violence in videogames is an hallowed insitution, even the most ardent puritanical nay-sayers can't touch it. The entire industry is built on it, from Mario's genocidal feud with the Goombas to Call of Duty Black Op's (sigh) 'envelope-pushing' Gulag scenes. The makers of Bulletstorm (with help from the creators of Unreal Tournament & Gears of War) are well aware of this and aiming to capitalise on it. To IGN, Edge and other reputable critics this is somehow a step forward, but to me, it's several strides back.

The basic premise is that you play as a recently-made-freelance mercenary exiled on an abandoned utopia-gone-a-bit-wrong planet that's conveniently swarming with mutants. Sound familiar? Or even remotely interesting? Because in terms of plot that's it. That's fair enough I guess, it's unfair to immediately dismiss a game for having no storyline but this isn't exactly the first team to whip together a thinly-veiled excuse to paint their gamespace with grey matter, what's disappointing is that other studios have managed to build games with compelling narrative and still deliver some satisfying shooter gameplay: Mass Effect being the obvious example, or Enslaved.

Pictured: Storytelling.

So you're not going to buy this game for the means of creative escapism. Why would you then? Well all People Can Fly are putting their energy into is their 'kill with skill' ethic. Think of Criterion's nitrous mechanic: do some cool shit and you shall be rewarded. Well instead of temporary speed boosts Bulletstorm's currency is points. Not experience, not game currency - there's a fledging character advancement system but what you're really doing with those points is hoarding them, purely for the sake of hubris. What's interesting is the potential for creativity in your carnage. The key to this is you're energy leash, (pretty much just a dominatrix version of Half Life's Gravity Gun) which you can use to lasso objects and enemies and toss them around at will. Enemy hiding behind cover? Toss an explosive barrel over to him and blow it up in his face. Bored of headshots? Impale that guy on a spiny cactus then.

Gaming journalists are working themselves up into a semi-erotic fervour over all the variety Bulletstorm is offering but I just can't shake the feeling I've heard all of this before. Oh yes, that's it, didn't The Club have exactly the same idea? Of eviscerating your opponents in imaginative ways for cash? Now that I think about it, didn't Madworld do the exact same thing? Just from a Beat-'Em-Up angle? Hell, even 50 Cent's second game followed the same premise. I can be fairly certain that the only reason Bulletstorm is rallying this kind of hype is because it's a first-person-shooter. So if you weren't convinced of the stranglehold the genre has on the videogame industry, there you go.