Bulletstorm is like the freaky girl that would be hotter if she was even freakier. And we’re talking freaky. Then your friends wouldn’t ask why you’re with her. They’d just think to themselves, “He’s into some freaky shit.”

Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Don’t buy it for more than about $20 used. It’s fun, but it’s more like pop video gaming. You’ll have fun with it, but the fun is fleeting. Like a Britney Spears song. Except Toxic. We still love that song.

Synthetic Ending
Without spoiling the ending, we must vent a little as to what we believe to be a weak ending. Picture Buster Douglas mid-knock-out-punch on Mike Tyson, then pulling back, and prancing around the ring bit.

If a coup de grace is going to go horribly wrong, at least set the story up so the recovery is at ungodly occurrence. Like Beatrix Kiddo or Jesus Christ. That way, upon the return, you just got to give it up them by being so overtly badass that you can’t help but be amazed.

We Smell A Sequel
Epic Games left a few different loose ends for us to ponder. We know it’s to leave the series an avenue for a sequel or possible trilogy. And we hope they do – even though we don’t urge you to rush to your nearest Best Buy, ransack the video game section, and bruise an old lady or three on your dash to the checkout counter.

Another reason we are happy for a potential sequel is because the first game has a low propensity for replayability. This sounds contradictory, and it very may well be, but we were hoping to start from the beginning with all of our hard earned kick ass gear. Want to know how that worked out? It didn’t. So we stopped playing it.

The Greater Scheme
We see what Bulletstorm is doing with the FPS genre. They are making attempts to break the banal mode of the point-and-shoot system. The simplistic point scoring system renders a nostalgic arcade feeling when whomping someone to death with a leash charge. Kicking an explosive barrel into the midst of five charging enemies and detonating it almost betrays the genre to a certain extent, making it feel almost hack and slash as five enemies die with one button stroke. Epic is taking steps forward, but we’re not sure the boot prints are going to end up blazing any major trails.

The storyline, while dissonant at times, does achieve an overall coherence that can propel a sequel or series. The problem with the characterization isn’t that Epic is struggling building empathy, but it’s almost like they don’t know what to do with it when they get it. We imagine that’s a narrative issue, and it hints to the larger issue of Epic Games as a whole: they can make a damn fine shooter, but they struggle to reach an ultimately unifying narrative. For a game like Bulletstorm, narrative has to just be good enough to be ignored.

Final Thoughts
Play it. Have fun with it. Turn up the volume and get excited. Just don’t plan to be immersed for longer than a weekend.