Showing posts with label Video Game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Game. Show all posts
Friday, March 09, 2012
Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Group Review
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Mass Effect: Hair Salon Edition
If you’re at all in touch with the videogame world and haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve heard of RPG developer Bioware’s flagship Mass Effect franchise. If you don’t meet those criteria, I shall summarize (skip to the third paragraph if you know what’s going on): in the future (~22nd century), humanity discovers an ancient relic of alien technology buried on Mars. It turns out to be the key to faster-than-light travel, resulting in humanity’s entrance onto the stage of galactic politics, where it is immediately disregarded as a younger sibling by the elder alien races. So when humanity discovers evidence that even older aliens are coming back to essentially eat everyone and everything, the rest of the galaxy shrugs them off as paranoid conspiracy theorists. The Mass Effect series stars Commander Shepard, a covert operations officer from Earth’s elite “N7” branch of space military, and his friends as the fly around the galaxy in their super-secret spaceship and shoot bad guys. It’s a significantly more complex than that, but you get the gist.
Both Mass Effect games released so far have allowed the player to customize Commander Shepard pretty freely; the player chooses gender (and accompanying voice acting), appearance, and tactical specialty, and then as the game progresses, can lean towards Paragon (basically “good”) alignment or Renegade (basically “evil” or, perhaps more precisely, “jerk”) alignment. Shepard’s alignment affects the way he or she talks, solves problems, and interacts with other squad members and NPCs in the game world. However, despite all that, Bioware has maintained a “canon” Shepard who is the default character (for players who chose not to customize) and appears on most box art and promotional material. It would seem, however, that Bioware has finally realized an important truth about their game: no one plays as buzz-cut John Shepard.
There are probably a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which is the abundance of “face codes” available online that allow you to create Keanu Reeves-Shepard, Jason Statham-Shepard, and Obama-Shepard, just to name a few. Many folks also cite the vastly superior voice acting of veteran videogame actress Jennifer Hale, who speaks the lines of female Shepard, compared to the deadpan, uninteresting delivery of Mark Meer (disclaimer: I’m sure Mr. Meer is a fine actor, but it takes a certain kind of talent to translate your acting without your facial expressions and gestures. There’s just a higher bar when a series employs talent like Martin Sheen, Jennifer Hale, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tricia Helfer, and Seth Green, just to name a few).
Whatever the reason, Bioware has finally conceded to developing a canon version of a female Commander Shepard, and recently held a vote on their Facebook page allowing fans to choose between possible versions by “liking” whichever picture they wanted.
Before I broach my ultimately cosmetic topic of hair color, I would like to take a moment to point out what an important step this is for Mass Effect, Bioware, videogames, and popular art and fiction in general. When we talk about action heroes, we increasingly mean both men and women, with such iconic female badasses as Lara Croft, The Bride from Kill Bill, and countless television detectives (SVU’s Olivia Benson and Castle’s Kate Beckett come to mind), coming to prominence in the last decade or two. However, most women in action roles are heavily sexualized in order to appeal to the genre’s target audience, which I admit I cannot quote but I would define as males between the ages of 14 and 40. Much of Bioware’s recent work has hinted at a willingness to challenge the primary “gamer” demographic, which is more or less the same. In its Dragon Age series, we’ve been seeing a similar open-mindedness about protagonist gender as well as significant diversions from heterosexuality in the protagonist as well as supporting characters. By creating an “official” female protagonist who walks around in powered body armor instead of a skintight catsuit and gets her way with leadership, courage, and guns (the bullet-shooting kind) instead of seduction, manipulation, and guns (the non-bullet-shooting kind), Bioware has taken an important step towards equalizing gender in this genre.
Now, back to the very serious business of Commander Shepard’s hairdo. Unsurprisingly, the only blonde candidate (evidently based on Uma Thurman in her Kill Bill days) won by a landslide (though I hasten to add that Bioware has not announced any official results at this time). Also unsurprisingly, this generated an uproar among Mass Effect fanatics. Some highlights from the comments on Bioware’s album (censored, since we purport to be a family-friendly, or at least safe-for-work, blog):
“Thirty thousand people are ****ing retarded. Shepard should have a proper practical god damn military haircut, anything else is... **** you people are dumb.” --Blaine
“Great now were going to have this dumb blond **** who doesnt know how to do anything anymore.” --Drew Olando
Also, to segue into my next point:
“If I recall correctly, from one of the novels they mentioned that natural blond hair had become extremely unusual at this point in the timeline. Speaking demographically, a dark-haired Shepard is the best representation of what humanity would be at that point.” --Eli Kaplan
I don’t know anything about the novels, but it seems reasonable to me that blonde hair is a minority trait that will be eventually selected out, though certainly not entirely in only another 200 years or so. And, in space / the future, I’m sure you can have whatever color hair you want. Still, Shepard is supposed to represent the best of humanity, and while hair color (and, for that matter, race, which was also a hot point in the debate) is ultimately irrelevant, one would like to see aesthetic as well as ideological representations of the human race in our champion.
Some have called for the model female Shepard to be based on the voice actress, Jennifer Hale. I don’t know what Jennifer Hale looks like, and even if I did, I don’t believe that videogame characters need to look like their actors; indeed, that is one of the strengths of the medium, allowing casting directors to select solely for voice quality, acting ability, and finesse of inflection. Of course, Mass Effect 2’s Miranda Lawson was based on actress Yvonne Strahovski and the recurring David Anderson character is a passable representation of the excellent Keith David, but in both cases I knew the actor after the character, and both deliver their lines excellently and within the bounds of their character.
To conclude, I personally am fairly indifferent to the chosen female Shepard, who still may or may not end up on the box. Mass Effect’s rich character import feature will ensure that I will be playing with the Shepards I took through the first two games, and while I will doubtlessly tinker with new ideas, I probably won’t take many of Bioware’s suggestions. I am pleased that the franchise has finally confessed that Commander Shepard is not “just as easily” female as male, but perhaps should have been that way all along. Having the choice is crucial, and I would never advocate the removal of the option, but as far as I’m concerned, Commander Shepard was, is, and will be a woman.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Bioware's Dragon Age 2, a.k.a. Dragon Age: Kirkwall Edition
When I say I recently finished Bioware’s “Dragon Age II” (henceforth “DA2”), I don’t mean that I’ve thoroughly explored all of the game’s content. Harking back to the company’s origins as Black Isle Studios, their games have always been so massive that it would take an addict of even greater caliber than I to do every sidequest, create every playable character, and experiment with every combination of allies. But I did complete a game, for better or worse, and reached this installment’s narrative conclusion; again, for better or worse. And while I am not done with DA2 (and given their recent DLC fetish, I doubt Bioware is either), what I have to offer is a resounding “meh.” Is the dialogue system improved? Yes. Is the interfaced streamlined? More or less. Did combat get less clunky? Hell yes. Does it have dragons? Of course, and they’re aged appropriately. Is it a better game than its predecessor, “Dragon Age: Origins” (henceforth “DA:O”) or its expansion, “Awakening”? Meh.
Without framing this entire review as a comparison to DA:O, it’s worth saying that DA2 is a different game in the same series, but might not deserve the title of successor. As I read in another review (I wish I could remember which), the game would have been better framed as a full-sized expansion pack entitled “Dragon Age: Kirkwall” rather than “Dragon Age II.” It feels more like something that goes on in parallel to the first game rather than decisively afterwards. Granted, much more story time passes in DA2; somewhere in the neighborhood of six years compared to DA:O’s handful of months, but the Blight (primary plot device of the first game) has such little effect on Kirkwall (primary location of the second game) that there is very little sense of continuity. It’s not a problem, but anyone expecting a consecutive story akin to Bioware’s “Mass Effect” series will be disappointed. DA2 delivers its own narrative, and well, but it doesn’t maintain strong ties to its predecessor.
Setting DA:O aside (a difficult proposition for some of us), DA:2 stands nicely on its own. Combat is streamlined and fairly idiot-proof at the lowest difficulty setting, although to get the most out of your party you still need to micromanage a fair amount. The tactics configuration has been improved with more useful conditions, especially as it pertains to “cross-class combos,” a new game mechanic that allows a certain class (say, a mage) to induce a certain effect (say, freezing, or ‘brittle’), which can then be exploited by one of the other classes (say, a warrior) to obscene effect (say, damage bonuses north of 600%). However, the tactics sheets still do not have enough ‘slots’ to allow for every circumstance, nor for the obsessive “if-then” needs of anyone who has ever taken a programming class. That said, the constant pausing necessary for safely negotiating most encounters gives you plenty of time to admire your party in action, and the game impresses visually (provided you have the hardware, of which it demands something in the neighborhood of current market average). Encounters can get repetitive, but there’s enough variety in enemy types that you probably won’t notice you’re fighting the same class combinations over and over.
Bioware’s strength across its games has always been the construction of rich worlds, the diverse characters who populate them, and the use of that setting to tell an engaging story. DA2 does not disappoint, delving even more deeply into the universe’s allegory-fraught lore of religion, deviance, and government. The conflict between magic users and the templar knights who would police them for consort with demons is central to the setting and, eventually, the plot, although what was probably meant to be ominous foreshadowing just came across as “gosh, those darned blood mages are at it again.” The game provides diverse and interesting characters with a nice plethora of tactical capabilities, personalities, religious views, and criminal histories. Unlike many of Bioware’s games, however, the companion characters do not necessarily become utterly devoted minions of the player’s character, Hawke. Because of the game’s stationary geography, these characters are instead able to live their lives and pursue their own goals in Kirkwall, which can lead to their temporary or permanent absence from your team, depending on how events play out. My only disappointment here was the reduction in racial diversity among companions. Aside from two elves (a Dalish mage and Tevinter warrior) and a dwarf (the wise-cracking, crossbow-naming Varric), the rest of your friends are regular old humans. I know I said I wouldn’t compare anymore, but it’s worth remembering that though DA:O only had one elf and one dwarf, you could also recruit a qunari, golem, and mabari war dog. Despite a well-written and engrossing sidequest involving an escaped qunari mage, DA2 does not permit the recruitment of the newly-behorned, Qun-quoting warrior-philosophers, though a summonable mabari minion does become available in optional DLC.
Similarly, the fully-voiced Hawke can only be human. Though you can choose to play a male or female of any class, DA2 offers only one real “origin” story, as its predecessor phrased it. Hawke’s family is on the run from their home in Lothering as it is overrun by Darkspawn. You can’t be an elf, because then your family would have to all be elves. Also, think of all those extra voicelines they would have to record, even if they used the same actors for the alternate races, which would be a little absurd. To complement the player character’s voice, “Dragon Age II” exchanges the old-fashioned ‘list o’ sentences’ for the radial conversation wheel from the “Mass Effect” series, adding symbols to help indicate the tone of a particular response (usually choosing between Nice, Funny, and Mean). Traditionalists will feel restricted, but at the end of the day it’s an important improvement for the series.
Briefly, because it’s already been plastered all over Bioware’s boards, and beaten to death from all perceivable sides (you can read more about it on the Dragon Age boards, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku, among other sites): it’s worth noting that among the game’s companions, four (excluding the downloadable Sebastian) are susceptible to romantic advances from Hawke. Of these four, all four are available to a Hawke of either gender. I have always supported Bioware’s decision to embrace diverse sexuality among its characters, but this feels like they’ve dug a trench right along the lines of compromise from which they may never emerge. As I mentioned, this is a highly charged issue and not something I’d like to address in depth, but it’s worth knowing about the game and video game culture at large.
The game compartmentalizes its story nicely into acts of a sort, separated by hearty dividers of one to three years. Once you begin the quest that takes you out of a particular act, any unaddressed quest or business in that act becomes unavailable to you (even, as I learned the hard way, if that quest leads to a recruitable companion. Ah, Fenris, I never knew ye). The game is usually pretty good about warning you when this is going to happen, but frequent saving is recommended, as always, in case you accidentally fall down a slippery slope. There’s no appreciable adjustment in difficulty between acts, each of which has its own mini-climax, but the actions of Hawke and his/her companions gradually rise in political profile until you’re splattering blood all over the viscount’s shiny throne room. And then it gets worse. Disappointingly, it would appear that regardless of the “side” you chose in the game’s final conflict, there’s no significant difference in the trials you will face. There are two bosses, and you will face both of them, regardless of whose side you’re on. It’s one of the rare but noticeable parts of the game that smells ever-so-slightly of deleted content, cut in order to finish the game by a deadline.
In all, “Dragon Age II” is definitely worth playing, especially if you’re into the RPG genre but would rather maintain the illusion that you don’t, and never have, played Dungeons & Dragons or any variant thereof. When most games that sell for $60 offer six to twelve hours of single player content, DA2 will keep you antisocial for upwards of forty hours. And that’s if you only play a single character through the game once, which is virtually impossible. We won’t talk about the number of characters I’ve already created, nor how many I have yet to imagine.
Without framing this entire review as a comparison to DA:O, it’s worth saying that DA2 is a different game in the same series, but might not deserve the title of successor. As I read in another review (I wish I could remember which), the game would have been better framed as a full-sized expansion pack entitled “Dragon Age: Kirkwall” rather than “Dragon Age II.” It feels more like something that goes on in parallel to the first game rather than decisively afterwards. Granted, much more story time passes in DA2; somewhere in the neighborhood of six years compared to DA:O’s handful of months, but the Blight (primary plot device of the first game) has such little effect on Kirkwall (primary location of the second game) that there is very little sense of continuity. It’s not a problem, but anyone expecting a consecutive story akin to Bioware’s “Mass Effect” series will be disappointed. DA2 delivers its own narrative, and well, but it doesn’t maintain strong ties to its predecessor.
Setting DA:O aside (a difficult proposition for some of us), DA:2 stands nicely on its own. Combat is streamlined and fairly idiot-proof at the lowest difficulty setting, although to get the most out of your party you still need to micromanage a fair amount. The tactics configuration has been improved with more useful conditions, especially as it pertains to “cross-class combos,” a new game mechanic that allows a certain class (say, a mage) to induce a certain effect (say, freezing, or ‘brittle’), which can then be exploited by one of the other classes (say, a warrior) to obscene effect (say, damage bonuses north of 600%). However, the tactics sheets still do not have enough ‘slots’ to allow for every circumstance, nor for the obsessive “if-then” needs of anyone who has ever taken a programming class. That said, the constant pausing necessary for safely negotiating most encounters gives you plenty of time to admire your party in action, and the game impresses visually (provided you have the hardware, of which it demands something in the neighborhood of current market average). Encounters can get repetitive, but there’s enough variety in enemy types that you probably won’t notice you’re fighting the same class combinations over and over.
Bioware’s strength across its games has always been the construction of rich worlds, the diverse characters who populate them, and the use of that setting to tell an engaging story. DA2 does not disappoint, delving even more deeply into the universe’s allegory-fraught lore of religion, deviance, and government. The conflict between magic users and the templar knights who would police them for consort with demons is central to the setting and, eventually, the plot, although what was probably meant to be ominous foreshadowing just came across as “gosh, those darned blood mages are at it again.” The game provides diverse and interesting characters with a nice plethora of tactical capabilities, personalities, religious views, and criminal histories. Unlike many of Bioware’s games, however, the companion characters do not necessarily become utterly devoted minions of the player’s character, Hawke. Because of the game’s stationary geography, these characters are instead able to live their lives and pursue their own goals in Kirkwall, which can lead to their temporary or permanent absence from your team, depending on how events play out. My only disappointment here was the reduction in racial diversity among companions. Aside from two elves (a Dalish mage and Tevinter warrior) and a dwarf (the wise-cracking, crossbow-naming Varric), the rest of your friends are regular old humans. I know I said I wouldn’t compare anymore, but it’s worth remembering that though DA:O only had one elf and one dwarf, you could also recruit a qunari, golem, and mabari war dog. Despite a well-written and engrossing sidequest involving an escaped qunari mage, DA2 does not permit the recruitment of the newly-behorned, Qun-quoting warrior-philosophers, though a summonable mabari minion does become available in optional DLC.
Similarly, the fully-voiced Hawke can only be human. Though you can choose to play a male or female of any class, DA2 offers only one real “origin” story, as its predecessor phrased it. Hawke’s family is on the run from their home in Lothering as it is overrun by Darkspawn. You can’t be an elf, because then your family would have to all be elves. Also, think of all those extra voicelines they would have to record, even if they used the same actors for the alternate races, which would be a little absurd. To complement the player character’s voice, “Dragon Age II” exchanges the old-fashioned ‘list o’ sentences’ for the radial conversation wheel from the “Mass Effect” series, adding symbols to help indicate the tone of a particular response (usually choosing between Nice, Funny, and Mean). Traditionalists will feel restricted, but at the end of the day it’s an important improvement for the series.
Briefly, because it’s already been plastered all over Bioware’s boards, and beaten to death from all perceivable sides (you can read more about it on the Dragon Age boards, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku, among other sites): it’s worth noting that among the game’s companions, four (excluding the downloadable Sebastian) are susceptible to romantic advances from Hawke. Of these four, all four are available to a Hawke of either gender. I have always supported Bioware’s decision to embrace diverse sexuality among its characters, but this feels like they’ve dug a trench right along the lines of compromise from which they may never emerge. As I mentioned, this is a highly charged issue and not something I’d like to address in depth, but it’s worth knowing about the game and video game culture at large.
The game compartmentalizes its story nicely into acts of a sort, separated by hearty dividers of one to three years. Once you begin the quest that takes you out of a particular act, any unaddressed quest or business in that act becomes unavailable to you (even, as I learned the hard way, if that quest leads to a recruitable companion. Ah, Fenris, I never knew ye). The game is usually pretty good about warning you when this is going to happen, but frequent saving is recommended, as always, in case you accidentally fall down a slippery slope. There’s no appreciable adjustment in difficulty between acts, each of which has its own mini-climax, but the actions of Hawke and his/her companions gradually rise in political profile until you’re splattering blood all over the viscount’s shiny throne room. And then it gets worse. Disappointingly, it would appear that regardless of the “side” you chose in the game’s final conflict, there’s no significant difference in the trials you will face. There are two bosses, and you will face both of them, regardless of whose side you’re on. It’s one of the rare but noticeable parts of the game that smells ever-so-slightly of deleted content, cut in order to finish the game by a deadline.
In all, “Dragon Age II” is definitely worth playing, especially if you’re into the RPG genre but would rather maintain the illusion that you don’t, and never have, played Dungeons & Dragons or any variant thereof. When most games that sell for $60 offer six to twelve hours of single player content, DA2 will keep you antisocial for upwards of forty hours. And that’s if you only play a single character through the game once, which is virtually impossible. We won’t talk about the number of characters I’ve already created, nor how many I have yet to imagine.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Game Review: Play Bulletstorm
Since this will be my first review for this blog let me go over really quickly how I am going to do a review. The concept for my reviews will be the same for movies and television as it is for video games. I've done a lot of thinking about how to rate something and gone from extreme to extreme. I wrote out a detailed point based system that rates something out of 100 points. Ultimately I realized that on the most basic level a review does one thing; help you decide whether to watch/play something or not. Working with that in mind I will start my reviews with a simple statement reflecting that. That isn't to say that I wont also start using the point system later on. It still needs some work before I'll be happy with it. I'm not going to let it get in the way of getting out the ultimate point of the review though. Overall the concept of the reviews will be simple. I wont make you jump through hoops to find out my opinion. I'll state it up front and if you want to stop reading there, go for it. After that I'll get into a rough plot summary and a more detailed critique where I'll dive a little deeper into my original conclusion.
Play Bulletstorm
The first thing that you need to know about Bulletstorm is that it comes off like a 9th Grader who has decided that now he’s in high school and its going to curse his head off because it’ll make him cool; it tries to hard. Also it curses a lot. Come to think of it, that metaphor was more literal than it was figurative. To say that Bulletstorm has a lot of profanity doesn’t really emphasize how much profanity is in the game. I’m not someone who is really bothered by profanity. It’s not even the amount of profanity that is the problem, its that it just seems like it’s trying too hard to be cool.
Bulletstorm tells the story of an elite special ops group working as a special branch of the military. We find out through a flashback that they were ordered to kill people. They thought these people were militants and war criminals but really they are reporters and political opponents to the military regime. Understandably displeased with this realization, they go rogue and make it their new life goal to kill the General who lied to them. After that long bit of exposition we rejoin the crew years later as they are about to make an attack run on a new ship of the line that is being commanded by the very General they set out to kill. Ultimately they both crash and end up on a paradise resort planet that has been overrun by mutants. As the surviving members of the crew fight for their lives on the hostile planet the real game play starts.For all of its back story, the actual game play of Bulletstorm seems disconnected. The plot events seem contrived and arbitrary. The back story could have been a number of other archetypes without requiring much change to the game play. Most missions are in the style of get from Point A to Point B kicking down doors and killing everything in between. The story of Bulletstorm is unfortunately a lot like the level design for the game. Simplistic and set on a backdrop of something much more interesting.
The game play is based around your electronic “leash”. This is both a literal leash that you can use to pull and throw enemies around the field of battle and a HUD/upgrade system. The idea of the leash is this. The messed up military places their elite units on the planet and grades each of their kills as they fight for their lives amongst the mutant population. The most creative killers are rewarded with new weapons and ammo and the uncreative killers are left ammo-less to die. The story doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense but the bottom line is that you are graded on how creatively you kill the various mutants. Back story aside this is actually a pretty decent system. Although it does seem forced at times, the list of creative kills you get bonus points for is pretty long and most are simple to pull off.
Where the game really shines is the weapons themselves. You start off with a basic assault rifle. The game includes standard FPS (First Person Shooter) weapons such as a sniper rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. The highlights are that you also get what boils down to a cannon ball gun, a drill launcher, and a “flail gun” that turns enemies into impromptu suicide bombers by latching explosives onto them. In combination with the leash that lets you pull enemies toward you and your ability to kick them in different directions the game-play offers quite a variety of ways to dispatch your enemies. This is good because the level design is pretty bland and once you’ve seen 4 or 5 different areas you’ve pretty much seen them all.
A strangely flat feature of the game are your allies. Throughout the bulk of the game you are followed by Ishi, the only member of your crew to survive the crash. Although your allies do seem to fire at the enemies I routinely felt like I was fighting alone. The upside to this is that your allies to not seem to take damage. This is another case of the back story overshadowing the game play. Ishi, for example, is critically injured during the crash and is rebuilt with robot parts. This causes a lot of story issues, but doesn’t seem to affect the way he fights during the game.
The game has a lot of flaws. Its story is weak and frequently doesn’t stay within the rules of the universe that it has created. The level design, which initially interesting, becomes highly repetitive. The final battle is incredibly anticlimactic. On the other hand where the game shines it really shines bright. The voice acting is fantastic. It features Jennifer Hale of Mass Effect fame as well as blast-from-the-past Steve Blum who was the voice of Tom, the robot host of Toonami on Cartoon Network back in the day. The weapons are creative and even the standard FPS fare weapons have been twisted to make them very interesting. I recommend taking the game not as an overly vulgar Gears of War knock off, but rather as a reasonably well executed tongue-in-cheek poke critics of the level of profanity and violence in video games. While the game is certainly far from perfect I do recommend playing it. For all of its flaws I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Did I mention that there is a section where you get to play a giant robot dinosaur and stomp around a miniature city?
Play Bulletstorm
The first thing that you need to know about Bulletstorm is that it comes off like a 9th Grader who has decided that now he’s in high school and its going to curse his head off because it’ll make him cool; it tries to hard. Also it curses a lot. Come to think of it, that metaphor was more literal than it was figurative. To say that Bulletstorm has a lot of profanity doesn’t really emphasize how much profanity is in the game. I’m not someone who is really bothered by profanity. It’s not even the amount of profanity that is the problem, its that it just seems like it’s trying too hard to be cool.
Bulletstorm tells the story of an elite special ops group working as a special branch of the military. We find out through a flashback that they were ordered to kill people. They thought these people were militants and war criminals but really they are reporters and political opponents to the military regime. Understandably displeased with this realization, they go rogue and make it their new life goal to kill the General who lied to them. After that long bit of exposition we rejoin the crew years later as they are about to make an attack run on a new ship of the line that is being commanded by the very General they set out to kill. Ultimately they both crash and end up on a paradise resort planet that has been overrun by mutants. As the surviving members of the crew fight for their lives on the hostile planet the real game play starts.For all of its back story, the actual game play of Bulletstorm seems disconnected. The plot events seem contrived and arbitrary. The back story could have been a number of other archetypes without requiring much change to the game play. Most missions are in the style of get from Point A to Point B kicking down doors and killing everything in between. The story of Bulletstorm is unfortunately a lot like the level design for the game. Simplistic and set on a backdrop of something much more interesting.
The game play is based around your electronic “leash”. This is both a literal leash that you can use to pull and throw enemies around the field of battle and a HUD/upgrade system. The idea of the leash is this. The messed up military places their elite units on the planet and grades each of their kills as they fight for their lives amongst the mutant population. The most creative killers are rewarded with new weapons and ammo and the uncreative killers are left ammo-less to die. The story doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense but the bottom line is that you are graded on how creatively you kill the various mutants. Back story aside this is actually a pretty decent system. Although it does seem forced at times, the list of creative kills you get bonus points for is pretty long and most are simple to pull off.
Where the game really shines is the weapons themselves. You start off with a basic assault rifle. The game includes standard FPS (First Person Shooter) weapons such as a sniper rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. The highlights are that you also get what boils down to a cannon ball gun, a drill launcher, and a “flail gun” that turns enemies into impromptu suicide bombers by latching explosives onto them. In combination with the leash that lets you pull enemies toward you and your ability to kick them in different directions the game-play offers quite a variety of ways to dispatch your enemies. This is good because the level design is pretty bland and once you’ve seen 4 or 5 different areas you’ve pretty much seen them all.
A strangely flat feature of the game are your allies. Throughout the bulk of the game you are followed by Ishi, the only member of your crew to survive the crash. Although your allies do seem to fire at the enemies I routinely felt like I was fighting alone. The upside to this is that your allies to not seem to take damage. This is another case of the back story overshadowing the game play. Ishi, for example, is critically injured during the crash and is rebuilt with robot parts. This causes a lot of story issues, but doesn’t seem to affect the way he fights during the game.
The game has a lot of flaws. Its story is weak and frequently doesn’t stay within the rules of the universe that it has created. The level design, which initially interesting, becomes highly repetitive. The final battle is incredibly anticlimactic. On the other hand where the game shines it really shines bright. The voice acting is fantastic. It features Jennifer Hale of Mass Effect fame as well as blast-from-the-past Steve Blum who was the voice of Tom, the robot host of Toonami on Cartoon Network back in the day. The weapons are creative and even the standard FPS fare weapons have been twisted to make them very interesting. I recommend taking the game not as an overly vulgar Gears of War knock off, but rather as a reasonably well executed tongue-in-cheek poke critics of the level of profanity and violence in video games. While the game is certainly far from perfect I do recommend playing it. For all of its flaws I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Did I mention that there is a section where you get to play a giant robot dinosaur and stomp around a miniature city?
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