Bulletstorm hands-on preview: Now THIS is combat evolved

Things I did during my first 15 minutes with Bulletstorm:

1. Tethered a man with my electric grappling hook, yanked him towards me, and kicked him in the face.
2. Tethered a man, yanked him towards me, kicked him into the air, then blew him to pieces with a quadruple-barrelled shotgun.
3. Fired 100 bullets at the same time from a super-charged carbine, liquefying three men in a row.
4. Set a giant grenade bouncing on the spot like a basketball, then kicked it around the level for 20 seconds, obliterating everyone it came into contact with.
5. Kicked a piece of cover across a room and splattered two men against a wall with it.


Above: Remember when the headshot was the pinnacle of FPS showboating? Those days are gone...

6. Tethered a man through the windscreen of an airborne helicopter, pulled him out of the cockpit, then shot him in the head as he tumbled to the ground.
7. Tethered a man, whipped him straight upwards into the ceiling, then threw a grenade up there, plastering him across the top of the room and scoring a ‘Graffiti’ bonus.
8. Snared a man with a manually-detonated flail grenade grappled him towards me, kicked him into a group of his friends, then detonated him and blew them all up.
9. Used that very same flail to slice two men in half and decapitate a third. In one shot.
10. Set the aforementioned giant grenade bouncing on the spot, then tethered a man standing further away and yanked him straight into it, bursting him on contact.


Above: The electrical tether is your flexible friend, key to all of Bulletstorm's most insane combos

11. Kicked a man into an electrical generator.
12. Kicked a man into a wall of spikes.
13. Shot a man in the throat and then kicked him into the vortex of a swirling plasma tornado.
14. Kicked a man into the air, then shot him into the jaws of a waiting dinosaur skull. Which then ate him. Scored a ‘Nom nom’ bonus.
15. Jointly tethered a man with the aid of a multiplayer team-mate. We then pulled him in opposite directions and yanked him in half.


Above: Duke Nukem would be a proud, proud man

Bulletstorm is not like anything you’ve played before. Well it kind of is, but nothing it can be compared to even resembles an FPS. Imagine Mortal Kombat at its most hilariously brutal spliced with God of War’s free-flowing evisceration andPrince of Persia: Warrior Within'sopen, accessible and deeply customisable combo system. Now put it in first person and throw in a bunch of already stupidly-powerful guns that can then be super-charged to decadently cartoonish levels of bodily devastation.

David Houghton
Long-time GR+ writer Dave has been gaming with immense dedication ever since he failed dismally at some '80s arcade racer on a childhood day at the seaside (due to being too small to reach the controls without help). These days he's an enigmatic blend of beard-stroking narrative discussion and hard-hitting Psycho Crushers.