After an E3 showing two years ago that almost stole the show, we’ve waited… and waited… and waited for Brothers in Arms 3 to finally emerge from behind cover. So, with the final mission completed, is it worth another foray into the killing fields of WW2? Put simply: just about.
Metal is not dead. It can never truly die, for according to Brutal Legend, it was passed down to humankind by our creators, the Titans, and it is the weapon by which we defeated great evils (read: shitty music). Tim Schafer, the man behind Psychonauts, the game we’ve guilt-tripped you for not buying almost as much as we’ve mentioned Okami, is one funny game designer.
Bulletstorm is not what you think it is. Whatever you thought of the demo and wherever you sit on the expectation scale, whether you currently perceive it as a potty-mouthed piece of juvenilia or a glorious hark-back to the balls-out fun of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, you’re wrong. It’s far, far more than that, and it’s far, far better than that.
Bulletstorm you see, is a very intelligent, highly intricate, and sumptuously nuanced design masquerading as a big dumb action game. In fact it’s such an evolution of the FPS experience that it’s very probably destined for that pantheon of rare games to be deemed worthy of the word “important” in a couple of years time. Yeah, the i-word. I went there.
Given that Crash is a Burnout game, it's tempting to unceremoniously chuck it into the scrapyard for everything it's not. It doesn't use the same crunchy, visceral viewpoint as other Burnouts. It doesn't concern itself with obsessively detailed vehicular destructo-porn. There aren't any neck-and-neck photo finishes or spark-scattering takedowns that'd look right at home in every Hollywood automotive thriller not titled “Cars.” Crash isn't Burnout 6 or Paradise 2. It is, however, still pretty damn fun...
Burnout is growing. We have the first paid-for DLC – the Party Pack – plus a restart option and loads of tweaks to the handling (early cars are easier), graphics (brighter) and menus (better arranged). All aim, successfully, to make it easier to have fun. But it doesn’t go far enough. It’s telling that the greatest excitement was generated by the chance to restart races, while the best tweaks were shortcuts and jumps you can see when travelling at speed.
Bust a Move (Puzzle Bobble in the UK) is so simple you’d have to be a monumentally cretinous imbecile to get it wrong. Stick to the formula established on day one, and it’s practically bulletproof. Still, it’s gone off the rails plenty of times – drowned by unnecessary features, or bolted on to justify a disc’s asking price. None of that on Live Arcade, though.
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