A glimmering city rose up in the distance as a calm, serene sunset brought twilight to the tropical landscape of Stygia. I was awestruck at the beauty that I beheld on this world, my senses astounded by the orchestral score that sounded around me.
I gripped the controller in my hands and selected the only available option 'Echoes' on the menu. The only available course to me being some sort of run down building. I pressed A, frightened of what was to come.
That's when I met Grayson Hunt. That's when he called me pasty.
When introductions were over I was given my guns, and that's when hell broke loose.
So, Bulletstorm. I want to get the bad things out of the way first, just so I can gush for the rest of the preview, the demo is stupidly easy. I don't know why, maybe it was stuck on the easy difficulty setting, maybe my muscled body turned aside bullets as easily as my boot heel turned away the foes, but I had no problem, even when enemies were attacking from all sides, and even when the screen starts flashing and instructing you to take cover, there's ample time to score a few kills whilst sliding your way home.
And it may just have been the fact that Echoes is basically a quick, story devoid mission, but the characters lacked much amusing to say, I spent at least five minutes kicking one of them to try and get a response, not even a stagger. Aside from that, the only other gripe I have is the dusty urban area you play through, rather than one of the more lush, and I'm sure more colourful areas that the game could provide to sell itself with.
That said, the game is definitely a good looking one, with fairly crisp graphics and good looking character models, as much as I could tell, at least, most people I encountered seemed intent on trying to tear my face off until they got a boot in theirs and a bullet up their ass.
Attacks have a nice and varied range of use, you can charge your telekinetic energy whip thing to clear out a room of bad guys easily, you can simply shoot their heads off, or you can kick them away to buy a little room for yourself, and it all works very well, with a good variation of attacks paying off, though kicking can sometimes feel a little off, feeling as if it's nowhere near connecting with the enemies.
And you might think it gets old to kick an enemy into a bunch of spikes, but it really, really doesn't. Power cables happen to be my favourite so far, and the game should be a bucket load of fun when it's released.
