Warning: Bulletstorm will make you rape people. So says Fox News, that bastion of fair-and-balanced reporting, its experts dourly citing completely unrelated and often debunked studies to that effect. To my knowledge no rapes have been connected to the recent demo release, but likely the law hasn’t been looking for said connection. Bulletstorm is going to make you rape stuff, not because there are any rapes in it or because it endorses rape or even uses the word rape (though it does use the word “dicktits”), but because… um.
Assuming what we can from the demo, Bulletstorm is juvenile toilet humor with liberal amounts of gore and NSFW, often sexually-charged achievement names for killing things by pumping shells up their rectums or what have you. Sometimes juvenile toilets can be kind of awesome.
Now, it’s taken some flak for this. In addition to making you rape people, a lot of other writers have said that Bulletstorm reaches a level of puerility that is simply undesirable… a Human Centipede of gaming, maybe. But people are saying this without having played the game, which comes out today on PC, 360, and PS3.
What’s my biggest problem with Bulletstorm? Whether to get it on PC or PS3. Because as childish and exuberantly gory as the demo was, if pulling a guy toward you with an energy leash, then kicking him in the face and blowing off his testicles before wrapping a grenade bola around his neck and tossing him into a bottomless pit is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
I had a very bad time at the office last week. I was fighting with people I usually get along with, scary deadlines loomed, and I was just in a generally shitty mood. I got home in a shitty mood and stayed in that mood all night, night after night, not even having the energy to fire up New Vegas and beat people to death with a nine iron – something that would, arguably, have improved my mood greatly. You can imagine anyone’s face, you know, when you’re pummeling pixels with a golf club.
I don’t care if it says “REAR ENTRY” when you buckwheat an enemy, or if it howls “FACIAL” when you… well, presumably shoot them in the face; I never got that one during the demo. It’s not going to make me rape anything.
It’s going to save my sanity.
Contrary to claims that such violent material induces us to come into our places of employ with shotguns, they in fact allow me to murder my coworkers from the comfort of my home, as brutally and as often as I want. To be blunt, there are a few people I know who could use a good rear entry, and I’m gonna give it to them.
The demo had a console “feel” to it. The PS3 controller felt right in my hands, which is uncommon for me when you’re dealing with an FPS. The four shoulder buttons, given the game’s unique focus on skillfully and creatively gibbing your foes, allow for control options that are made more difficult with the mouse, simply because of a rodent’s shape. But I’ll get the higher resomolutions and shadings on the PC.
People Can Fly, Bulletstorm’s heavy-lift developer (they worked in conjunction with Epic, they of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament fame), also gave us Painkiller, a game I praise to the skies. Not just for the awesome kineticism of its hyper-violence, but for the stunning art direction, particularly its morbid visual rumination on the afterlife and what Hell would truly be like. Bulletstorm looks like it’s going to continue the trend, albeit in a more zany and less morose manner. Panties are already bunched about this game; personally, though, I have a feeling it’ll save more lives than it takes.
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I won’t be playing Bulletstorm, partly because I’m broke as hell, but mostly because I don’t want to end up in prison for raping everything I see. Goddammit… was looking forward to BS, too.
An aside, this is one of the best things I’ve ever seen written (in erasable internet text, that is): “if pulling a guy toward you with an energy leash, then kicking him in the face and blowing off his testicles before wrapping a grenade bola around his neck and tossing him into a bottomless pit is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.”
Thank you, xtal, I was thinking of a specific co-worker I’m looking forward to imagining being the recipient of said attack. Again and again and again.
Maybe video games do make you violent.
Anyway, Steam is vacuuming up the requisite bytes even as we speak. I only belatedly realized that this is a GFWL title, so I may live to regret not purchasing for PS3. Stay tuned.
Picked this up this morning. Looking forward to trying it out tonight. Hope to resist the urge to go on a raping-spree. Seriously though, the promise of mindless violence and childish humor is very welcome right now.
Naargh. The notion that this is an Xbox and PS3 title is the only thing encouraging me that my elderly rig has a hope in hell of running it on two gigabytes of RAM.
Tell me, folks – what’s your opinion on Necrovision, by the ex-PCF studio The Farm 51? I think it has a hell of a lot more in common with BulletStorm than Painkiller, being essentially the same core design of kicking enemies into the air while comboing special attacks involving every weapon and special function you have, while the character howls catchphrases and pops score multipliers for ‘Farmer’s Revenge!’ or combining a melee stab with a shotgun blast resulting in ramming your handheld bayonet through something’s face and wiggling it around inside their head, then blowing it in half.
Jakkar, I’ve got a Q9450 with 8GB and it does slow to a crawl from time to time. I’ve managed to keep the resolution high (1680×1050) by turning down the AA and reducing some of the other effects to medium. No real visual difference.
It does look GREAT. People Can Fly have always understood spectacle, and the things they’ve done with Unreal 3 are really amazing.
I never played Necrovision, not being an MMO-er, but I know it had a small following. Is it still out there?