There are one hundred and thirty-one ways to kill a bad guy in People Can Fly’s Bulletstorm. You can fling them into spiked walls and electrical sources, kick them off cliffs and bridges, set fire to them then fill them full of holes or just good old slo-mo shoot their heads off. You can slice them, dice them, explode them and de-choad them, or, preferably, all of the above mixed together in quick succession.
This is a first-person shooter that boldly encourages you to do anything other than boringly aim down your sights to shoot at the enemy and, a full eight years after its original release, we’re pleased to report it’s lost none of its charm. It may be puerile, it may be crass, but this is still one of the most enjoyable, ingenious FPS experiences you’ll find anywhere, and it arrives on Switch in the form of one of the technically strongest ports we’ve seen on the console so far.
For those who have yet to experience the delights of Bulletstorm, you assume control of Grayson Hunt, the leader of Dead Echo, a group of foul-mouthed 26th century bounty hunters who find themselves marooned (not to mention down a few members) as they fight for survival on the planet of Stygia, where they take on some rather angry locals as well as the forces of the evil General Earl Sarrano across seven hugely inventive acts.
It’s a story filled with cheesy banter, childish humour and ultra-naff dick-joke dialogue all wrapped up in a game so fiendishly clever and addictive that all of these things can easily be overlooked because, first and foremost, Bulletstorm is a hell of a good time. This is a shooter whose central strength lies in the combination of an ingenious Skillshot system, inventive level design and constant drip-feed of excellent weaponry that all mesh perfectly together, cleverly pacing the expansion of your arsenal and abilities in order to keep gameplay kicking along at a fresh and frantic pace all the way to the finish line.
Starting out with a simple energy leash which allows you to pull enemies towards you in slow motion, you'll go on to gain access to Flailguns, Bouncers, Screamers, Penetrators, Bonedusters and heavy-hitting melee attacks, providing you with an almost inexhaustible number of ways to put paid to anyone, or anything, dumb enough to run in your general direction.
The game’s Skillshot system sees you earn XP for being inventive in the ways in which you employ its arsenal to dispatch your foes, combining your lethal assortment of weaponry with all sorts of deadly background scenery to chain together stylish kills as quickly and fluidly as you can for maximum XP gains, which can then be traded at caches for upgrades and powerful alternate fire modes.
Your Skillshot codex keeps track of each and every way in which you manage to off enemies, and slowly revealing each of the 131 combinations of comical death on offer gives the game a hugely moreish and addictive core that is lacking in so many first-person shooters; it gives you a reason, beyond just campaign progression, to bust out the big guns and get creative.
Adding to all of this is some stellar level design filled with hazards with which to snuff the life out of Sarrano’s forces. Everywhere you look you’ll find busted electrical outlets, giant fans, spiked walls and chasms just begging you to kick someone in their direction. The set-pieces also never let up, from an early turret sequence which sees you outrunning a giant spinning wheel, to a shootout through an awesome miniature city or taking the controls of a robotic laser-shooting dinosaur to pound your way through your enemies. It’s pretty amazing how People Can Fly decided that the wild amount of weapons and ways to kill your opponents wasn’t enough and layered all of this level variety on top like so much delicious death gravy.
There are Newsbots to kick to pieces and swarms of Electro-flies to hunt down as a half-assed nod to the usual boring collectables that pad out your run-of-the-mill shooter, but it’s filling in every missing entry in that Skillshot codex that keeps Bulletstorm from growing stale, and watching XP scorestreaks and zany death descriptions fill the screen as you decimate your enemies never grows old. It’s really beyond us as to why the game wasn’t widely imitated upon after its original release.
In terms of this port, what you get here is the 2017 remastered version which updates the graphical side of things nicely from the original 2011 offering and also comes complete with the Duke Nukem campaign mode, which adds not just Duke’s visage but a whole bunch of his inane dribbling to proceedings. The game runs at what seems to be a solid 1080p docked and employs a dynamic resolution solution in handheld mode which does a phenomenal job of keeping things smooth whilst remaining barely noticeable for the most part. Capped at 30fps – as it was for its original 360/PS3 release – the game didn’t drop a single frame for us in docked mode and stutters were infrequent and mild enough in handheld to be hardly worth mentioning.
There are a few flies in the ointment, however. The multiplayer portion of the game, including co-op Anarchy mode, has gone AWOL, which is a shame. It certainly isn’t the strongest part of the game’s overall package but is something we would have expected to see retained, and it’s always good to have a bit of multiplayer for longevity purposes. Another omission, and something we really hope can be patched in at a later date, is the lack of gyroscopic controls for fine-tuning those headshots. There's still aim-assist at work, which helps, but gyro really does add to the FPS experience on Switch by giving you the ability to line up those tricky shots just how you want them, and it's a shame it hasn't been implemented here.
With its multiplayer offering still intact it would have been hard to fault any aspect of Bulletstorm: Duke of Switch Edition, and it's a shame it's been strangely omitted here, but the campaign still holds up as one of the best shooters on Nintendo's console, easily sitting alongside DOOM and Wolfenstein II, and, in many ways, surpassing them in delivering a consistently smooth and eminently playable experience.
Conclusion
Bulletstorm was positively received by critics on its initial release all the way back in 2011 but it didn’t sell anywhere near as well as it really should have – a wrong that should hopefully be corrected with this Switch version. This is easily one of the most inventive and straight-up fun shooters of the past ten years; its fantastic Skillshot system, tight combat and ludicrously OTT levels of violence effortlessly make up for any problems it has in the cheesy dialogue or story department. Yes, it’s missing its multiplayer component here and we’d love to see gyroscopic controls patched in pretty sharpish, but overall this is a technically top-notch port of a stellar first-person shooter that you should really check out – especially if you missed out on it the first time around.
Comments 38
Hail to the king, baby.
Sounds great, shame I've too much on my plate at current.
I love FPSs, especially on the Switch so this is a definite buy for me when I have some more time and I've cleared out more of my backlog.
"Until support for multiplayer is patched in or addressed in some shape or form, we’re forced to give this N64 classic a score it doesn’t deserve."
I'm assuming that this has been marked down the same way Turok 2 was for doing exactly the same thing? Apparently not
Inconsistencies aside I've only ever played this game briefly but it sounds like another good FPS game on the Switch, I'll have to pick this up soon
DOOM (2016) pretty much ruined games like this for me, though I did enjoy some of the more unique weapons and abilities. Still, more of a 6.5/10 in my book.
I have had this game on several platforms by now and I have never thought of it as a standout FPS. In fact the only reason I bought it a second time was because of how they released this Duke Nukem content and I am a big fan of that classic character. Well it turns out that Duke is just lazily thrown into the game, with all the same lines and story being thrown his way the only difference being his one-liners. I gotta say that it makes it more enjoyable but at the same time I still didn't think much of the game.
It's time to kick bubblegum and chew anus, and I'm all out of anus
Anyone know if they are planning on releasing this in physical form? If not guess I’ll have to buy a bigger SD card.
@senorwoohoo DOOM 2016 ruined slow paced RPGs for me. 😂
I love this game. Yet, this period is insane with all these releases..
@koekiemonster This period...It's whole year, every year for me.
I own Switch, Xbox One X, PS4, Gaming PC and Wii U from this gen alone + 3DS and VITA when it comes to handhelds which is both dead now anyway.
With 360, PS3, Wii, Gamecube, Dreamcast +++ i have 1000's of games in backlog.
One of my favorite ps3 games! I'm definitely double dipping on this gem of a game. I love that Steve Blum does the voice of Grayson. Icing on the cake.
No multiplayer = no buy.
Its a shame this game came out in 2011. If it came out nowadays it wouldn't have the slow, boring parts and mediocre needlessly linear levels. I like Bulletstorm, quite a bit, but its still so pointlessly limited by stupid trends of shooters during that era.
also make bulletstorm 2 you cowards
no bethesda sign-in ? a big plus !
It was great on the 360. Just abit expensive for me currently. With the Duke mod and when it goes on discount I will have to pick this up. Another great fps for the Switch.
@senorwoohoo
It’s true all the constant cutscenes and playable bits of just walking and talking gets tiresome, it doesn’t help that the limited two weapon system and scarce ammo makes the gameplay more constrained than it needs to be, this was also during the period in FPS where weapons lacked omph; shotguns that shocked at anything but point black range, pea shooter automatic rifles and limited ammo rocket launchers with no useful splash damage. Doom 2016 fixes all this those issues.
The Duke addon is really bad if you have any love for the character, they don’t change the cutscenes and voice acting beyond having Dukes new dialogue but this means Duke is often portrayed as weak and allowing other characters to just threaten and push him around which is simply bizarre, editing of the cutscenes to actually show how the personification of balls of steel would respond would have been hilarious and lots of fun. The bright side is Switch users won’t have to pay for this addon.
@senorwoohoo may I ask you why is that? I’m genuinely curious, as I’ve played DOOM but not Bulletstorm and was thinking of buying it
Edit: kinda ninja’d by the reply above lol
@Draken18 There are no plans as of yet.
Bought it on day one and completed it in one run. It's absolutely gorgeous on Switch and plays so nice! I'm more impressed than with Wolfenstein or Doom even if these are newer games and much more complicate to run them on Switch. Bulletstorm is just so much more fun. Hail to the King Baby!
No mention of the game's disappointing ending...or am I the only one silly enough to have played this for its story?
Really happy to see this on Switch at last, but because I have too much on my plate right now, it'll have to be at a later date.
I’ve heard good things about this game. A lot of people seem to really like it. All it’s missing is gyro and it would be an A-tier Switch FPS. As it stands, it’ll remain in B-territory. But that’s still a good place to be. Full 1080p and rock solid framerate from what I saw, so that’s great if you want a shooter with a little more crispness and stability.
@carlos82 I would assume that the review score would just depend on whether the reviewer felt that the lack of multi in ‘this’ game, hindered their personal experience.. I never understand calling for consistency when you have different people reviewing.... GENERAL consistency is nice and it exists in the sense that similar things don’t get rated 2 by one person and 10 by another, or that good graphics, gameplay or otherwise is recognised reasonably, but direct consistency cannot exist as gaming is largely about an ‘experience’ and that can differ depending on who is playing.
No multiplayer = buy ASAP.....
Lack of gyro aiming is a bummer, would have been sorely tempted but without that just mildly tempted
I enjoyed this game when it originally released. The humor got old, but I loved the inventive ways to kill the bad guys. I never really made it more than halfway through the game for whatever reason, but I also don’t feel the need to go back to it.
Still, People Can Fly did some great work and I also loved how they handled Gears of War with GoW: Judgement. It was the first real shakeup to the series, but sadly a lot of Gears fans didn’t care for it.
Hate gyro controls and primarily play games solo, I see no cons here
will get it, when I get the chance.
The lack of gyro aiming means it's much less than great.
@psychoBrew Yea, I'd love to give this game a shot but gyro has been such a luxury that I can't see myself playing any console shooters without it at this point.
Fps with split screen, all i friggin want people. Jeez
Great game. Finished it on Steam and Xbox a few years back. Will definitely triple dips later day. Have too many backlog now and Gear of War 5 is just a few days away.
@FTL in that review they said they marked it down because the multiplayer was in all other versions of the game and not the Switch version. If you've ever played Turok 2, the multiplayer was just a tacked on addition at the last moment and was always a primarily single player game. So my point is the reason given was lack of parity with other consoles but there are many examples of other games on Switch which don't have feature set parity, whether it be price such as the Resident Evil games, Doom 2016 doesn't have the snapmap mode and obviously this is missing its multiplayer. By all means mention these in the pros and cons but I see no reason why one is deliberately marked down and none of the others are
8 years. OMG, I'm so old.
I know this sounds crazy but I just stopped playing Astral Chain and FE3H because I tried this hidden gem out "just for a few minutes". I just can't stop playing it.
Wow, I bought this on PC when released. Still have the box and everything. Its still on my backlog of games. LOL
"Gears of War meets Doom in a stupid colorful way." I had a lot a fun with this game. A must play if you like fast paced FPS.
Graphycally it's the Switch port that has impressed me the most. Very polished and smooth.
People can Fly should work on a Devil's Third remake.
Tap here to load 38 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...