Bulletstorm

Publisher: EA Games
Developer: People Can Fly
Price: £38.99
Format: Xbox 360 version tested

Bulletstorm is a FPS that brings humour and carnage in equal measures to a genre that can often be accused of taking itself a little too seriously. From its opening moments in which you drunkenly interrogate a bounty hunter before booting him out of an air lock to a moment which sees you threaten a homicidal cyborg with a moment of homoerotic bonding, a vein of puerile and sardonic humour bombards you with reasons to avoid taking its hackneyed sci-fi revenge plot too seriously.

You play as the leader of an elite military assassination squad who have found themselves exiled to the outer edges of the galaxy following some undiplomatic comments about your CO – imagine a chunkier version of ‘Wolverine’ with a drink problem... Following another rash and drunken decision, you find yourself crash-landed on a planet that would be paradise if it weren’t for the ravening hordes of psychopaths and criminals which have taken it over and don’t intend to share it with you. The only surviving member of your crew has been emergency welded to a ‘warbot’ and, under constant assault from both the pain of his injuries and the CPU of the robot he’s joined to, he doesn’t seem to like you very much either... Your mission therefore, is to survive long enough to get him off the planet and get some payback against you old CO while killing as many of the Mad Max rejects who call this hell-hole ‘home’ as you can.

As soon as the killing starts, Bulletstorm’s true colours begin to fly... Instead of snap headshots and a quick, clean death being the order of the day, here you are awarded for inventiveness in your killing. Armed initially with an electronic whip called a leash, a heavy right boot and a carbine, the game positively encourages you to get crazy with your killing tactics. A snap of the leash will grab the goon hiding behind cover ahead of you and whip him towards you in slo-mo – from here, you could shoot him in the head or the balls as he flies past – or you could deliver a boot to the face which sends him sailing into the convenient wall of spikes nearby for extra points. As you progress, those points you earn are used to unlock extra potential for mayhem by upgrading your weapons. The weapon-set you acquire throughout the game gets more interesting in later levels too – there’s the sniper rifle which, once you have loosed off a round, allows you to steer the bullet towards your target; there’s a flail gun which fire explosive bolas rounds that wrap around your enemies – catch one, let him run back to his mates and then detonate the bolas for maximum points. However inventive you think you can be in reducing the gangbanger population, you can guarantee the game developers have thought of it and come up with a reward for it...

Graphically stunning thanks to the latest version of the Unreal engine, laugh out loud funny thanks to a razor-sharp script from some Marvel Comics writers and riotously entertaining and addictive thanks to a gaming mechanic that makes you feel like you’re playing it wrong if you just simply shoot someone to death, Bulletstorm is a proper kick up the arse for a genre that has needed such medicine administering for some time now. Unreservedly recommended by this reviewer.

9/10