Bulletstorm, a wild and unique, first person shooter from the now very defunct People Can Fly studios is a game I cannot say enough good things about it. I have replayed this game many times already and it is as satisfying each time as it was the first time. Why is this game so much fun time and time again … well let me break it down.
The game puts you in the boots of Grayson Hunt, Elite Special Forces soldier Space Pirate, who in a single stroke of brilliant revenge manages to get his crew killed and ship destroyed. Grayson ends up on this supposedly abandoned planet with the last surviving member of his crew and working together they attempt to get rescued off the planet by way of their former Commanding Officer. A General who used Grayson and his former Special Forces team to cover up heinous crimes the General had committed and framed Grayson’s team for.
Honestly, on the surface, not that complex of a story … and then you start to find out the story of this “abandoned” planet – a former pleasure retreat built and staffed by convicts … that have been mutated by hazardous waste and radiation from ion storms on the planet. The player, as Grayson, now has to fight through these waves of mutated enemies for a chance to get off the planet and help your last crew mate, and friend, who was seriously injured in the crash landing. `To fight through all the mutations on the planet you are given a fairly standard compliment of weapons – pistol, shotgun, automatic rifle, etc all with a primary and secondary fire mode.
However, there is one weapon that made Bulletstorm truly unique at the time – an energy tether called a “leash”. This weapon allows the player to grab items like ammo from a distance and pull it closer or pull environmental blockers out of the way, a very useful trick. The “leash” also allows the player to grab enemies and pull them closer to be shot or kicked into other enemies … or grab explosive cylinders and throw them into enemies … or grab enemies and kick them into spikes … or any combination of these grab and kick combinations for interesting kill combinations that reward the player with points that can be used for weapon upgrades or ammunition for the other weapons.
The whole game is a profanity laced, ‘turn off brain and play’, action movie disguised as a video game. The original PC version was released with Live for Windows integration and has been removed from Steam, but was re-released as “Bulletstorm : Full Clip Edition” which appears to have toned down some of the profanity from the original but kept the original story intact.
It required a relatively decent machine for the time (requirements by Can you Run It) –
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon X2, or equivalent, running at 1.6 GHz or greater
- CPU SPEED: Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon X2, or equivalent, running at 1.6 GHz or greater
- RAM: 1.5 GB
- VIDEO CARD: DirectX 9.0c compatible, 256 MB of VRAM; NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS, ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro 256 MB, or greater
- TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 256 MB
- PIXEL SHADER: 3.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 3.0
- HARDWARE T&L: Yes
- OS: Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista (SP2), or Windows 7
- FREE DISK SPACE: 9 GB
- SOUND CARD: Yes
And for the Full Clip edition (requirements by Steam store page) –
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 x64
- Processor: AMD A8-3850
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon HD 6850
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible