Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition Split Screen

Now the developer Gearbox remastered information technology as Bulletstorm: Full Prune Edition for Xbox Ane and PC, making a great game even ameliorate. Volition those enhancements (and the add-on of Duke Nukem) be plenty to win over gamers?

• Come across Bulletstorm: Total Clip Edition on the Xbox Store
• See Knuckles Nukem's Bulletstorm Bout on the Xbox Store (opens in new tab)

Dark futurity

Bulletstorm takes place in the far time to come, with mankind traveling between planets and solar systems via massive starships. Protagonist Grayson Hunt (who goes by Gray) is the leader of Expressionless Echo, a small black-ops squad that'south been performing covert assassinations for Star General Serrano.

During one of these missions, they discover that Serrano has tricked them into murdering numerous civilians rather than military targets and criminals. Flashing frontward several years, Grey and his team encounter Serrano's flagship in the far reaches of space. Gray drunkenly insists on attacking the enormous send, a decision which will cost his crew greatly.

Presently, Gray and one of his teammates awaken on a hostile desert planet somewhat reminiscent of Borderlands' Pandora. This partner has been forcibly turned into a cyborg, RoboCop-style, afterward losing nearly half his body in an explosion. The performance leaves him in a constant state of pain and forces him to battle an ambitious AI for command of his mind. Still, our cyborg sidekick must work with his old commander if he's e'er to find peace.

As you can tell, the narrative hither is darker than your average shooter. Greyness is an extremely flawed protagonist (somewhat artificially voiced past Steve Blum), one with much to atone for by the stop of the game.

Curse deleted

As serious equally Bulletstorm's story can be, it's fifty-fifty more than laden with profanity. Nigh every grapheme drops multiple expletives during every conversation, equally does Grayness during gameplay. Even in multiplayer, players will suffer an announcer who refers to them as "blowjobs" and other gratuitous euphemisms during the action.

The florid language tin can be funny in its daringness, not unlike the issue South Park had during its early days. Still, the copious crassness wears sparse at times, peculiarly if you (similar me) generally attempt to keep your linguistic communication make clean. Thankfully, profanity can exist disabled in the options, so y'all can always tone it downwards one time it wears out its welcome.

Run, gun, and catch

Bulletstorm is a first-person shooter that shares stylistic similarities to Gears of War, which makes sense since Ballsy Games codeveloped the original game along with Polish studio People Tin Fly (which ported the original Gears of State of war to PC back in 2007). Still, the gameplay deviates from Microsoft'due south Gears series in several means.

The big gameplay innovation here is the energy ternion, a grappling weapon Gray acquires during the prologue. You can apply the ternion to grab and move environmental obstacles, but that's simply function of the fun. The balance comes from pulling enemies to whatever number of deaths, sticking them to spikes and cacti, throwing them off of ledges, into fire or electricity, and much more than.

Greyness can kicking or slide-kicking enemies into things, equally well. All of these mechanics cause time to briefly deadening downwardly, which is all the amend to concatenation kicks and grabs as you prepare upwardly devastating kills. Nearly such kills qualify every bit Skillshots, Bulletstorm'southward other unique gameplay contraction.

Skillshots reward players for creative kills. Killing enemies in mid-air, using a weapon'due south unique Charge abilities, environmental kills, headshots and more, all qualify as Skillshots and award points to spend on weapon upgrades. You lot can break and cheque the Skillshot listing to see which ones you haven't washed yet; these award the well-nigh points. Skillshots assist keep the moment-to-moment gameplay fresh, since you're always encouraged to try new things.

Less impressively, Bulletstorm has no proper cover system. You tin duck to avert fire by clicking in the analog stick, only that's a far weep from the sublime pasty comprehend mechanics of Gears. The lack of sticky comprehend (or even a way to jump or roll) makes Bulletstorm's gameplay feel a tad dated, but the free energy leash and Skillshot systems by and large brand up for it.

Multiplayer

The single biggest mistake during Bulletstorm'southward development is that the campaign has no co-op multiplayer support. Given the general similarities to Gears of War, shared staff between both games, and the story pairing Gray with a partner, it would have made then much sense to allow ii players to squad up to accept the game on. No such luck here, unfortunately.

Still, Bulletstorm does have an online cooperative manner called Anarchy (split-screen is not supported). Up to 4 players can team up in 12 different Anarchy maps with the goal of surviving 20 waves of enemies. Between waves, you can spend points earned on upgrades, a welcome addition to the standard Horde-way formula.

Only wiping out the enemies isn't enough to win in Anarchy mode. Y'all've got to do it with mode. Each wave has a score target that tin can simply exist reached by performing Skillshots and the occasional co-op Skillshots. Fail to reach the target, and the team must replay the wave. These targets are more often than not doable – my squad just failed a few times on the way to Wave twenty.

Anarchy mode tin can be fun, only information technology feels archaic compared to more robust Horde modes in games like Gears of War 4 and Sniper Aristocracy 4. Bulletstorm never got to improve Anarchy mode in sequels, so that makes sense. But the small arenas and a general lack of diversity during private co-op games limit Anarchy'southward long-term potential.

As if that wasn't enough, matchmaking leaves a lot to be desired. You lot can't just create a public lobby and sit in information technology until someone joins (like you could with most games). Instead, one must search for Quick Match and hope that others are searching at the same time. Afterward a few minutes, the search times out and you have to search again. I spent numerous attempts searching in vain before finally getting matched upwardly with another player. I suspect many gamers volition fail their first search and never try again.

Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition includes niggling new content, other than a few forgettable single-role player Echo (challenge) maps. Mostly, you but get the original game with much improved graphics and all of its downloadable content in one package.

Still, Gearbox and team produced one new paid DLC (which was free for preorders) called Duke Nukem'south Bulletstorm Bout. As the name implies, this DLC brings the once-popular get-go person shooter (FPS) hero Duke Nukem into the world of Bulletstorm.

The Duke DLC doesn't add together a new game style or levels like you might await. Instead, it simply lets you lot play as Duke Nukem instead of Grayson Hunt in the main campaign. Duke speaks newly recorded lines and shows up in cinematics, merely everything else stays the aforementioned. The other characters even refer to him as Grayness, which is bizarre. Duke oft corrects them and says enough of other goofy things, adding some nice humor to the unremarkably serious narrative.

The Duke Nukem'due south Bulletstorm Tour DLC sells for $v. That's just the right price for what it offers – a silly new way to experience the game. If you lot don't intendance about Knuckles, you tin can easily skip the DLC without losing out on anything of import.

Achievements

The Xbox 1 version of Bulletstorm: Full Prune Edition has sixty Achievements worth a total of one,000 Gamerscore. These include all of the Achievements from the original Xbox 360 game and its two DLCs, which are included by default here. The Knuckles Nukem DLC does not have its own Achievements.

Goals include chirapsia the game on the highest difficulty, finding two different types of collectibles, reaching level 30 in Anarchy multiplayer (I got to level eighteen in one complete game), and numerous Achievements tied to specific levels and Skillshots. Levels tin can exist replayed at will, so zilch is missable. Merely with 60 Achievements and then many Skillshots to go afterward, information technology will take a fair number of hours to get them all.

Overall Impression

Bulletstorm was a peachy game for its time, but mismanagement by original publisher EA kept it from finding an audience. Maybe the world wasn't ready for an ultra potty-mouthed shooter set in a night science fiction hereafter. Things looked a lot brighter back then, and we were all so innocent.

If any game from a previous generation deserved a second risk, it'south Bulletstorm. And that'south just what Gearbox has given information technology with the Full Clip Edition. They fully remastered the visuals in Unreal Engine four, bringing high-resolution textures and models to Xbox One with a (by and large) sixty FPS frame rate. You go all of the original DLC, as well, and that's pretty much information technology. Oh, and the Xbox 1 version currently costs $59.99.

Pros:

• Looks every bit good every bit whatever current-gen game cheers to fully remastered graphics.
• A thrilling campaign with lots of variety and spectacular fix pieces.
• The energy leash weapon and Skillshots keep the moment-to-moment gameplay fresh.

Cons:

• No entrada co-op in a game that cries out for it.
• Anarchy multiplayer is limited and suffers from poor matchmaking.
• Would do good from a proper cover organisation.

It'south a shame the developers didn't fix up Chaos mode or add something brand new for players who've already experienced the game. But since and then many gamers (including me) missed out on Bulletstorm the start time around, the Full Clip Edition notwithstanding makes for a fairly compelling package. Let'due south hope this version sells well plenty to justify a sequel. A Bulletstorm 2 with modernistic gameplay refinements and improved multiplayer would exist truly epic.

• See Bulletstorm: Full Prune Edition on the Xbox Store
• See Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour on the Xbox Store (opens in new tab)

Xbox 1 review code provided by the publisher.

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/bulletstorm-full-clip-edition-review#:~:text=Still%2C%20Bulletstorm%20does%20have%20an,%2Dscreen%20is%20not%20supported).

Share this post