Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition

It’s not too hard to see why Bulletstorm is regarded as a minor cult classic. On the one hand, it’s yet another brown-and-grey shooter from an era that was rife with them. On the other hand, it’s extremely competent and packs just enough charming flourishes to set it apart. It underperformed at launch but later gained a reputation as a solid shooter via word of mouth.

While its story won’t win any awards, Bulletstorm does offer up generous helpings of plot and worldbuilding. You take control of down-on-his-luck mercenary, Grayson Hunt, and go on a mission that’s part revenge against an evil warlord, part escape from a collapsing planet. Accompanying you are loyal sidekick Ishi and later a third party member. While your pals do provide some extra firepower, they primarily exist to deliver banter and keep the story moving forward. Thankfully they can’t die and thus require no babysitting.

The game feels like a first-person take on Gears of War, with the biggest twist coming in the form of skillshots and skillpoints. By disposing of enemies with special trick shots you can earn points that let you upgrade your weapons and purchase ammunition. Unfortunately, it’s a clever idea that never reaches its full potential, because skillpoints are too easy to earn and there aren’t enough interesting ways to spend them. Skillshots usually involve tossing enemies into hazards like electricity and thorns, or just straight up shooting them in their *ahem* manly parts. There are many variations on these concepts, with each weapon having its own unique skillshots, but they don’t feel different enough to meaningfully change the gameplay. Likewise, skillpoints don’t let you upgrade your weapons in any interesting ways, so most of your points will be spent increasing your ammo reserves and buying spare bullets. For a concept with so much potential, the execution fails to impress.

What the game absolutely nails, though, are the pacing and sense of scale. It flows almost like a light-gun shooter, as you run from area to area and blast through hordes of bad dudes. The gunplay is fast, ammo is abundant, and the set pieces are epic. You venture through huge caverns, run-down future cities, and mil-sim spaceships, and no two scenes feel alike. While the game is basically a corridor shooter, the massive backdrops ensure it never feels tiny or cramped. By limiting the space of play, the developers are conversely able to create environments that, in some ways, feel more immense than the open worlds that have been in vogue for the last decade plus.

While it didn’t push the first-person shooter genre forward as it undoubtedly hoped to, Bulletstorm is still a solid early ‘10s shooter with a fun campaign and high production values. If you’re looking for a palate cleanser to play between bigger games, you could do a lot worse.