UPDATE: We Rate Stuff’s full Bulletstorm Review

EPIC Games has certainly carved a nice little niche for themselves, to say the least. To say the most, their games can be too similar, both in substance and in style. Their gritty, hardcore aesthetic makes any game of theirs instantly recognizable, for better or worse. When the trailer for Bulletstorm came out a few months back, the consensus seemed to be that if it was as good as it looked, EPIC and co-developers People Can Fly would have a hit on their hands. Now that the demo is out, we can at least get a taste of what the game will be like, and whether or not it’s more of the same from Clifford Bleszinski and co.

The demo begins by introducing Grayson Hunt, an ex-member of Dead Echo, the mercenary group that the characters are fighting against. He’s voiced by veteran anime favorite, Steve Blum, who has dubbed for legendary characters such as Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop), Mugen (Samurai Champloo), and the main character in the Wii game Madworld, which I’ll come back to later. Once he explains the situation and how to play, pick two guns guns and get started. Picking them shouldn’t be too hard, since there are only two and you can use both.

The only game mode in this demo is Echo, which as far as I can tell is a blend of traditional campaign and multiplayer modes. Once you get going, it’s up to you to kill people. Further, it’s up to you to kill them in varied and badass ways. You get to choose two weapons as well as the Energy Leash and the Peacemaker Carbine, the two default weapons. In the case of this demo, the two guns you can pick are the Flail Gun (grenade launcher) and the Screamer (a type of pistol). Each gun has two shooting modes: normal shot and “charged shot,” which is basically a power-up shot. The Energy Leash can grab enemies and even bounce them into the air, if you hold the button down. If you kick or grab an enemy with the Energy Leash, it freezes them in midair for a short time allowing you to kill them in various ways to get more points. Holding down the A (or X for Sony fans) button will make the character run, and pressing it twice and then holding it will initiate a slide mechanism much like we saw in Vanquish.

In many ways, Bulletstorm lived up to my expectations. It’s a super fast-paced game, and if you’re going to have a linear FPS experience like this, speed is a good way to enhance that. It’s just as over-the-top, graphic, and gory as one would imagine. The game’s “skillshots” give you points for blowing up hordes of enemies, slicing them all in half, throwing them into walls of rebar spikes, shooting ‘em in the nuts, popping their heads off, and more. One of the main attractions is finding new and more skillshots to combine with others. Enemy art is just as over-the-top as the violence; these guys look seriously detailed and seriously deranged. Their AI isn’t bad, either, although this is a case where they really don’t have much thinking to do. Map design is great, and it had better be if you’re going to make them highly linear. Last but not least, it’s fun. For a while.

I enjoyed Bulletstorm, but it is extremely short. Obviously I recognize that it’s a demo, but we’re talking five to ten minutes at the most. However, the developers anticipated this. Their solution is to ask the player to go back and repeatedly play the same thing, getting more points and different combos. They give us one single map to play, and two guns to play it with, but there are only so many different ways you can do this stuff, and I definitely didn’t get through them all before I decided to quit. The decision to limit the content so significantly almost makes me think the developers realize that there’s only so many times gamers will play these repetitive and linear environments, so they kept as much out of the demo as possible. One big gameplay issue for me was the fact that you can’t change your sensitivity while scoping.

Bulletstorm is a pastiche of different games, and it doesn’t quite cover it up well enough. It’s exceedingly obvious where EPIC pulled influence from – Madworld’s kill-anyone-anyhow-you-can gameplay and raw, edgy attitude, Borderlands’ enemy aesthetics, Unreal Tournament’s fast-paced gameplay (of course), The Club’s linear, challenge-based scoring system, and maybe even a smidgen of Left 4 Dead. All these and more come through in the gameplay. The Club did much of what Bulletstorm does, and though it was a fun game that was relatively well-received, ultimately it failed to break through and nowadays is largely forgotten. However, The Club’s campaign mode is closer to Bulletstorm’s Echo mode; Bulletstorm has a full campaign and a full multiplayer mode to fall back on, as well as Echo mode. While I may have a few concerns right now, the full game promises much more content, so it’s definitely a bit premature to count this one out. I have a feeling when the rest of the game is accessible, I’ll be much more impressed than I was with this little taste. Anyway, you don’t have anything to lose by trying out the free demo, so give it a download.