I am burnt out on conventional military shooters. Period. Maybe it’s because I played too much Counter Strike when I was a kid, maybe it’s ’cause I went to boarding school and had nothing better to do with my spare time than play CoD4 constantly, but whatever it is, I’m pretty much done. I’d be very surprised if I bought a CoD, Medal of Honor, Battlefield: Bad Company, or anything else like that for quite a while.

So, if you’re a shooter and you want my precious $$, you need some seriously unique shit going on. Dead Space 2, I was down with. Killzone 3, on the other hand, I will not be purchasing. But Bulletstorm, it caught my eye. I liked the humorous ad campaigns. I liked the callback to testosterone filled shooters like Duke Nukem and Serious Sam. I liked that there was no multiplayer. I liked that the color palette wasn’t brown and grey and dusty. And I like the game. I don’t love it. But I like it.

Coming from Epic, the same team that produces Gears (the Xbox version of the game includes invitation to the upcoming Gears Of War 3 Beta), I was afraid this would more or less be a slightly tweaked clone of that game, one that I’ve never been a giant fan of. But, though some gaming elements remain (such as the roadie run), Bulletstorm is a whole different beast. One that drinks and farts a lot and most likely has one colorful as hell mating dance.

It’s tagline “Kill With Skill” is more than just an easy rhyme. Indeed, the playfulness and content of that little triptych defines Bulletstorm. You play as Grayson Hunt, an honest to goodness alcoholic space pirate, who captains his ragtag bunch of ex-government assassins around the galaxy avoiding the considerable bounty on their heads. Short story shorter, Gray gets wasted and decides to take on the Federation’s flagship vessel, and of course ends up shot down on Stygia, a gorgeous former resort planet gone gonzo.

Stygia itself is definitely my favorite thing about this game, even slightly more than the gameplay. It’s just plain gorgeous, always visually interesting, bright, varied, funny, cryptic, epic, and just generally awesome. So nice to see all the colors of the rainbow in an FPS again. The character models sort of remind me of Borderlands (a game I really love), but whereas that game ran out of visual ideas very quickly, Bulletstorm keeps your retinas on their toes.

You’ll find yourself in desolate deserts, abandoned hotels, former brothel/Costco smut superstores, underground caves, a supersized Chuck E Cheese-esque children’s area, and much more. It’s awesome. The game, which still (still!) runs on the Unreal 3 engine, never looks less than amazing and fresh. So what about the gameplay? The hook here is the skillpoint mechanic, which rewards you with points (that can be redeemed for ammo and weapon upgrades) for dispatching your foes in increasingly creative ways.

In short, it’s a very smart and fun mechanic. The skillshots are very creative and usually humorous (throw someone into a cactus, guide a sniper bullet into their testicles, kill someone by repeatedly kicking them in the ass, etc), and it’s a really smart way to make earning money or points or whatever fun. In fact, it really defined the way I played the game, much more than I thought it would. Whereas in other FPS’, I (obviously) was just thinking about killing my foes however I could, in Bulletstorm I was constantly trying to pull off these skillshots.

Sometimes even to the point of putting myself in extreme danger solely to try to launch someone into a helicopter blade, or tie two enemies together and take them both out with one shot from a triple barrel shotgun. I was extremely impressed with the way it subverted the expected gameplay experience. Until it got a little repetitive, just near the end. I wish there had been a few more skillshots to unlock, because after a while “Headshot” and “Tripwire” and “Trap Shoot” just weren’t fun anymore.

Along with fun guns, you also get this electro-whip thing which can pull enemies towards you. I guess this was supposed to be a major point of the gameplay, but to be honest I rarely used it. The skillshots to pull off with the guns were much more fun. The guns fire with hefty response, which is something I always look for in a shooter. All in all, good gameplay.

The story is minimal and whatever, but the characters are fun and funny, especially your recently cyborg-ed sidekick Ishi, who’s like a grotesque 6 Million Dollar Man with a really bad attitude. At times it sort of goes overboard on trying to be the funny and crass game that swears a lot and makes fart jokes, but for the most part it works. There’s no multiplayer, which is fine with me. There are enough of those already. I was very happy with Bulletstorm. If you’re looking for a break from your average shooter, then you will be too.

- Whole Milk