REVIEW: Bulletstorm

There is something vaguely familiar about all of this. I feel like I've been here before. You know, they say nothing is original anymore, and you see it everywhere. Music samples from earlier music (which usually ends in the new music sucking). Newer music samples from the music that just sampled the older music (also sucks). Movies are being 'rebooted' (sucks). American television shows are being either rebooted, or are directly ripped off from British Television (the result of which is pretty sucky in nature). With video games, its more there is a trend that gets set and is repeated and then variants are built from it. The side scroller. The first person shooter. The RPG. The JRPG. The MMORPG. 3D. Even with that, I think video games can differ from other media in that although they follow a certain predictable pattern, if done properly, they can stand out as unique through milieu, presentation, and gameplay.

Bulletstorm doesn't.

I could just end things right here and simply tell you what this game Frankensteins together. However, that wouldn't be fair and that lets me off the hook way to easily. So I'm going to show you but also say a couple of good things as well. I will start of by saying that Bulletstorm is not a bad game. There shouldn't be points taken away because a game isn't extraordinary, or redefines a genre, or is life altering. Which is good, because this game isn't extraordinary, genre definitive or life altering in anyway.

You are Marcus Fenix Grayson Hunt. You're a wayward mercenary, seeking revenge on the commander that you feel betrayed you and cast you out of your elite military unit. In the attempt to take revenge, you crash land on a once populated resort planet that is now overrun by mutants, convicts, and indigenous creatures.  Your mission is to escape the labyrinth of dilapidated buildings, cavernous terrain, and war-torn urban chaos, and figure out a way to exact your unpleasant reciprocity.  You aren't alone in your run of terror; your main companion from the get-go is Ishi, a fellow crewman who, during the first engagement, suffers a catastrophic injury and must become half cyborg in order to sustain his life. You will also gain another companion about a third of the way in that knows the ropes of the city and will help you get through (though she doesn't trust you much).

C'Mon, Sal. The Tigers are playin'...to-night!

Early on you will acquire your trusty machine gun, and...what I can only describe as your "power whip". Its an attachment that you'll use to grab either items or people. As you move through the game, you are able to grab more weapons, upgrade them, and enable their special abilities.

You earn your upgrades and are able to buy ammo through points you accumulate through kills. You just shoot a guy a billion times until he dies? Ten points and boring. You aren't buying a lot of bullets with that. Kick him into a a mutated cactus? How about a hundred points. Blow up that explosive object next to four guys? Fifty points each (times four). THAT is how you accumulate your experience currency. Its simple to grasp, and pretty fun to toy around with, trying to pull of 'kill trick shots' just because you can. Its very arcade-like, and something that you may have experienced before.

Whoops, wrong game. But do you see what I mean? 

One thing I do want to point out that is an overwhelming positive about the game, and something that is praised in almost every review I've read, is that the environment and look of the game is totally gorgeous. Though the controls are somewhat clunky (you can't jump, buttons can be slow to react when you want to change weapons or target something), but the landscape, the action, the characters, movement, all just fantastically rendered. There are times where it almost has a Borderlands feel to it, some have that cell shaded feel, but there are definitely elements that are staples of Epic games style animation.

If you had honestly told me that Bulletstorm was a 'Gears of War' side story, part of the cannon, just sans the main characters I would have believed you. Its first person instead of third, but when you run, the camera gets that familiar blur. When you shoot, you need a hailstorm of bullets to take someone down, if you can get in a good decap, that feels the same.

Ishi the Killer. 

Even the banter and speech in which Grayson carries himself is all very...Gearsish. That banter, among other things, landed the game under a little bit of scrutiny from our resident mega media squeaky wheel. They felt that the crude sexual comments Grayson (and later on General Serrano) makes, the names of some of your killing moves, extra bonus points awarded for shooting enemies in their nether parts, all made Bulletstorm the beacon that summons young children to mischief.  Trust me; there are better other games more vulgar, more gratuitous, and more gore-laden than Bulletstorm. This is not the pole in which to waive the "video games corrupt children" flag. The game is rated M for a reason: and honestly, its not really even a very good one. The crudeness is forced. The gore isn't anything new. You've seen it before, you've heard it before.

This is where I talk about the multiplayer aspect of the game, but instead of deathmatch or anything like that, we get a co-op horde mode. I played a few games, and was pretty much done with it. I've mentioned in years past that games with good stand alone single player campaigns really don't need multiplayer. Bulletstorm needs multiplayer. Although I usually suck at Epic games that have multiplayer (Gears, Unreal Tournament), I think I would have enjoyed what they could have thrown together in close spaces or a large landscape using the weapons from the campaign. While I won't count the lack of true multiplayer against the game, the fact the single player campaign clocks in under seven hours playing on normal difficulty, it would have been something nice to extend what is otherwise a rental at best.

Bulletstorm is what it is. Short and unoriginal. But what it also is, honestly, it is fun. Its a quick ride, but despite what you may think reading the words above, I didn't hate the game. Its a quick, not very frustrating (at least at the level I played), sometimes smirk-inducing, mindless game thats fun to look at and fun to play. In short...

TL;DR -

DLC REVIEW: Borderlands Claptrap New Robot Revolution

If you had told me that so far I've played more Borderlands this year than Modern Warfare 2, I would have thought there was some sort of game crashing bug, Gearbox was handing out free candy, or told you that you are a complete moron. In May, I threw a quick post together about how I was still enjoying Borderlands, but things didn't really kick into full gear until over the summer when I was determined to finish the third downloadable episode 'Armory of General Knoxx'.

I was in full Borderlands mode when the fourth installment of Downloadable Content released a few weeks ago. "Claptrap New Robot Revolution' takes you to a few new environments and introduces you to a few new (and some old) enemies. Quick summary: The Claptraps are getting kind of sick of being the 'Butler Bot' of Pandora and have risen up to overthrow everything and kick some ass.

No matter what playthrough you begin this episode, everyone is going to be tough. I played through on a level 61 character and all the baddies were at least level 60. If you play alone, prepare to die a few times. Claptraps have taken over all the bad guys so all the humanoid enemies hey are imbued with cybog-like abilities in terms of strength and weapon skill. There are also a few varieties of Claptraps that will kick your ass, roll up on you and kamikaze you into a quick death. As with everything Borderlands, Co-op is the best way to go; I suggest having characters that have good up close weapons, some rocket launchers that do electrical damage, a guy who can sustain damage and heal, and someone who goes around and collect dropped items.

Speaking of collecting, you will do a lot of it. We never really found a large amount of really good weapons that you can find in General Knoxx's Armory, or ones that Crawmerax drops when killed. You do have to collect a bunch of bits and pieces of Claptrap entrails as a mission, and it gets a little tedius. Its not really as entertaining as the 'Braaaaaaaaains' mission in Dr. Ned's Zombie Island, maybe because Dr. Ned was more entertaining in that you can line up four zombies, blow their heads off and ...brains!

I honestly felt underwhelmed when completing this DLC. Its much shorter than either Dr. Ned or General Knoxx, and I think its shorter by a long-shot. I played through the whole thing, went back and brought a few friends up to speed and finished all withing 5-6 hours? I didn't feel that it added much in terms of story, or even humor. I know that may be nit-picking but humor is something that I really enjoyed about Borderlands. There are some funny bits toward the end but it's not really all that entertaining.

There also isn't a lot of re-playability in the game. Dr. Ned is good because Zombie's are fun, and The Armory is really really good because you can go back and kill Crawmerax unlimited times to find good loot; or you can enter the Armory up to three times, as well as traverse a very large map. Upon completing the DLC's main storyline, all there was really left to do was gain a few collectibles that claptraps dropped and even at the time of this review, the Xbox 360 Achievements associated with getting things like pizza boxes, 3-D Glasses, bobbleheads and oil cans are glitched.

At 800 Microsoft points, you get much less than you did with the like-priced other DLC's. At 560 or so Points, this would be a good deal. At 800...eh...

TL;DR- Unless you are a fanboy (which I profess I am), pass.

Why I am still playing Borderlands.

Flashback to October of 2009. We were just a few weeks away from the largest game launch in Video Game history, and not much attention was paid to anything else in anticipation of Modern Warfare 2. And then one of my friends picked up a copy of Borderlands, and convinced me to drop on it too. I was rather hesitant at first, because I really wasn't in the mood to drop sixty bucks 2 weeks before I was about to spend seventy, but it turned out to be a pretty damn good investment in the end. The game was played pretty much non stop until that Veteran's Day week.

We are now into the second week of May, and I was up until three in the morning last night playing Borderlands. Granted there were three DLC packs that I was looking to complete which has extended the life of the game, but there are a good combination of things that keep me coming back and a few of my friends that have never left.

Clearance Boddicker Said It Best: "Guns, Guns, Guns". There are tons of 'em, and there is quite a variety. We here in 'Merica love to hold our guns in our cold dead hands, and when you come across a stash of weapons that you can meticulously sift through, the search for the perfect weapon can be down right addicting. Take the "Armory of General Knoxx" downloadable add-on pack. You can go through the mother lode of all mother lodes of weapons. You can also kill a nearly invincible enemy that literally scatters goodies like a mutated piñata. I'm currently at the level 61 cap with my main character, with tons of pimp weapons with heavy damage, and I'm still not satisfied. I'm convinced that the greatest weapon ever is still out there, waiting for me to discover and lay waste to all the other inhabitants of this outworld wasteland.

The Call of Duty control scheme is in tact. This may be as petty as petty can be, but the Modern Warfare games pretty much laid the groundwork for the best FPS control scheme around: Shooting is the right trigger, and aiming is the left trigger. Couch is B button, Jump is A. All the controls you use the most are in the four most conveniently accessible spots for your hands. I hate HATE games like Halo and Bad Company 2 that make almost no use of th B button, but something like zooming in or crouching requires one to click the right thumbsick. 

Borderlands is still FUNNY. "Don't hurt your girl parts" still gets me. Also the ending of Dr. Ned's Zombie island campaign pretty much had me rolling. Very brilliantly executed, Gearbox never really took this game so serious, and that is what is best when you inject subtle humor whether it be something an NPC character says or background chatter when you're in co-op. Also, Nine Toes has three balls. I laughed for like 5 minutes after that animation.

Four Player jump-in jump-out Co-Op. This really needs to become standard; no "special Co-Op mode" *cough*SplinterCellConviction*cough*. You can play on your own, but also if you see a buddy hop on, you can save, go into multiplayer, continue right where you left off, and have a buddy join in. No problems, just enjoy a night of gaming. The more people in your party, the more difficult the bad guys are. You can also have your friends help you level up much faster. My friend starts a level 1 Siren, I can take him up to the last level of the main game on the second play-though and he is level 25 in 10 minutes. I don't even think that is cheap, I think that adds to the fun of the games. I don't mind helping a friend level up, or complete quests, or help kill General Knoxx, Dr. Ned, or Crawermax.

More Expansion is Possible. In the four months after the release of the initial game, Gearbox released three Downloadable Add-On packs, in which two were downright entertaining, and one was decent. I had a lot of fun with Dr. Ned's Zombie Island, which you actually get a quest requiring you to collect a ridiculous amount of zombie brains. I've Armory of General Knoxx for weeks now and have provided hours upon hours of entertainment, even though I've played through some sections over again to help friends get their quests completed, its still fun. Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot is a little tedious, but allows you access to a bank in which you can store all your kickass finds. 

Back in March, Take Two's CEO said that more DLC is possible for this game. You can go in so many directions, you don't even have to adhere to a main storyline. Borderlands in space. Borderlands on a Battleship. Its been hours upon hours of fun, and there, and each little vignette can be its own search for elite weaponry. 

Borderlands is something that completely took me by surprise to be one of the best games of 2009, and the game from last year I am playing the most. You should do the same (although if you read this blog, you likely already are). 

TL;DR - Humorous, control friendly, Weapon-whoring that all your friends can enjoy.