Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

Ruined Hotels on Ravaged Alien Worlds? A Bit of a Gray Area...

- Robert Douglas

Us gamers do love looking backwards, don’t we? When we’re not salivating at the prospect of landscape-altering new technology like Project Scorpio, we’re going all misty-eyed at ’80s era point-and-click resurgences or a fresh wave of pacey shooters which lean haughtily back upon the tenets laid down by Doom way back when.

Be fast, be brutal and be awesome seem to be three of the pillars that Bulletstorm aimed for upon first release, during an era synonymous with tertiary military shooters. Now, with a current gen re-do, it’s time to see if its take on super-violent explodery has diminished with age. And we don’t think it has.

It’s easy to imagine an alternate universe where Bulletstorm, and not Gears Of War, is the poster boy for a generation of console owners. It certainly shares a lot of the same DNA, as you step into the thick boots of Grayson, a hairy and broad shouldered anti-hero who’s also the leader of a band of outlawed space mercenaries. This merry gang has found itself in a bit of a pickle at the outset of the game, with a juicy sci-fi revenge set-up involving a maniacal general and some unsavoury political assassinations unknowingly committed at the hands of Gray and his crew. After a suitably blowy-uppy intro sequence, the boys and an army of adversaries are marooned on a once opulent holiday resort planet, now dilapidated and packed full of mutants, bandits, foliage monsters and other such delights.