While this game was not a smashing success, even back in the day, I had heard good things about it. I was able to get the base game and Duke Nukem DLC for a total of $5 and a fun FPS game sounded good.
I was playing the Full Clip Edition, which has Gearbox Software’s logo on the intro screen, so I assumed they made this game. It’s actually an Epic Games production, Gearbox just published the re-release. I bring this up because while I was playing it under that assumption I though “Yeah, this is like if Borderlands was a bit more bro-y and like a military shooter.” The game’s art style does invoke Borderlands with, what looks like, light cell-shading on the characters. You’ll hear me compare this game against Borderlands a lot.
This is an FPS game, so you do a lot of shooting. The first gun you get, your rifle, feels a little too wobbly for a rifle. The sights on it aren’t the best either. It’s not a reliable & accurate battle rifle that it would be in most games. Unlike Borderlands, there’s not a whole lot of weapons in this game. They went more for ‘quality over quantity’. You get your standard heavy revolver, shotgun, & rifle. The sniper rifle fires bullets you then guide through the air. There’s two explosive weapons; one is a bouncing grenade launcher, the other a chain shot launcher that ties up an enemy then explodes him. The final weapon you unlock is a gun that shoots huge drill bits. It’s not a BFG, but it’s definitely the strongest weapon to end a fight quick. The shotgun seems a bit underpowered, but I may be spoiled by DOOM. All of them feel a little loose in their accuracy, but overall the shooting is fine. The gameplay kinda looms in the in between of a frenetic “always be moving” shooter and a move smart and use cover type of shooter.
But this game isn’t a straight shooting game. You can also kick people with your boot, or in my case, Duke’s Mighty Foot. There’s a power glove that lets you whip out and drag enemies towards you, while also slowing them down, like a sort of localized version of bullet time. You get one upgrade for it that allows you to pound the ground, sending all nearby enemies flying up in slow-mo. While the glove is a handy tool, I feel there was some missed potential. I was hoping as the game went on I’d unlock abilities to make it a force power glove able to hold & reposition enemies. The reason being this game is about getting the stylish kills. The closest thing I’d compare it to is Wii’s Madworld. You are encouraged to use your environment to get creative in dispatching foes. There’s plenty of bottomless pits, sharp objects, and explosive barrels to toss enemies into & doing so nets you more skill points than just shooting them to death. Each weapon has it’s own set of skill shots to pull off as well. Like shooting an enemy a certain way, killing them indirectly, or doing it while intoxicated. Some involve shooting an enemy up in the air, but your power whip doesn’t really lift enemies, just pulls them towards you, making those skill shots challenging to pull off. Just shooting your enemies makes you feel like you’re playing the game wrong. I think the shooting was purposely a little sloppy to encourage using other methods.
The story of this game is not the main selling point, the skill kills are. It’s fine the story is pretty predictable and cliché. The game is going for a sci-fi dumb action movie vibe & I think it nails it because there does appear to be an honest attempt at worldbuilding and lore, they just don’t beat you over the head with it. While there were never any knee slapper moments, this game doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s all played very tongue-in-cheek. There’s some witty back and forth and B-movie grade antics that make this game fun to play. For the most part, you are a space pirate captain who in a drunken stupor attacks an evil empire ship, leading to you crashing on an unknown planet and all but one of your crewmates dying. Turns out the commander of the evil empire ship survived, and you’ve got a revenge boner for him, so off you go. Your crewmate, who is half-robot now, does not approve of your impulsive behavior. They also set up that he’s losing control of his mind to the AI in his robot part. It led me to assume he would be a late game boss when the AI takes over totally, but no. Later on you meet the token ‘tough girl’ character. She’s a good foil to our hero, but not much else. The bad guy is a pompous asshole who likes to belittle others, swear, & brag about himself. He's a perfectly done jerk villain. I hated him, but not in a grating way, I loved hating him, just knowing at the end of the game his death was going to be spectacular. Unfortunately the game ends with a cliffhanger, so no grand death for the villain. I get every studio wants to set up a game that could launch a series, but I think Bulletstorm was a game best meant to be a contained, one-shot thing. It just has that vibe to it.
The planet you crashed on turns out to be a deserted resort planet. This does lead to some unique arenas that you wouldn’t see in a Borderlands type game, like a discoteca, fancy hotel, and Godzilla-esque theme park. Those unique locations do start to fade away towards the game’s final chapter. They’re replaced with bombed out buildings, sewers, a prison, and industrial starship. The game feeds you backstory about this planet and the evil empire as you play through the game. The resort was foolishly built in an area with gamma storms, so they built shields that turned the storms into disposable toxic waste and had it run by prisoners. It’s very much an “empire too dumb to actually survive” type of deal. Speaking of the empire, this game kinda feels like it’s in a future where the South won the Civil War. The evil empire is called the Confederacy, their leader, and several other characters, have twangy accents, and it seems like slave labor is still a thing in universe. I don’t know if that was an intentional bit of subtle background lore, but I did notice it. You spend most of the game fighting dudes with guns. The first set look like Borderlands rejects & the second set look like the inspiration for Fallout 76’s Scorched. There’s you standard riflemen, a few melee goons, and some snipers. Sprinkled throughout are minibosses that are just big guys with heavy weapons. They are a bullet sponge, but by late game they aren’t a huge inconvenience. Toward the end you are pitted against mutant monsters. These are a fun skill enemy, even if there design is pretty standard “not-too-scary” monster. To kill them by bullets you have to shoot certain weak points, else they just keep coming…and they don’t stop coming. They are still susceptible to the many types of environment kills, which is usually the best way to dispose of them.
Now, I played through Bulletstorm not with the usual main character, Grayson, but with Duke Nukem. He’s a fun character & I like John St. John’s performance. When watching stuff on Duke Nukem Forever, most people will mention that the real modern Duke is Bulletstorm. The King is a natural fit here, the original main character was already written with a bit of that cheesy Duke bravado, so slotting him in was easy. For the most part, the game just gives Grayson’s lines to Duke, with a few tweaks here and there. He’s much less insufferable here than in Forever, helped by the fact all the other NPCs aren’t constantly fawning over Duke. During the prologue I almost pulled chute and restarted as the normal protagonist. A lot of Duke’s initial dialogue is just “My name’s not Grayson, I don’t even belong here.” type stuff and I was worried that was going to be Duke’s only joke through the whole game. Luckily once you hit planetfall Duke seems to have accept the circumstances and goes along with the plot. There were a few good chuckles when the NPCs would call him Grayson, because they didn’t rerecord their lines. My favorite response from Duke being, “How many guys do I have to kill for you to get my name right?”.
All in all, playing a pseudo-Duke game set on a unique world with gameplay that was focused on fun and getting creative kills was an enjoyable experience. All of the characters are cliché in a good way and the dialogue was humorous enough without being too grating. The cliffhanger ending was a bit of a rug pull, and the game may have went on for one level too long, but if by the grace of God there ever were a Bulletstorm 2, I’d probably pick it up, especially if they bring back the Duke mode.
