Bulletstorm hands-on preview: Is the campaign as fun as the demo?

7. Made mother very angry. Bulletstorm's scripted set pieces are larger-than-life, too, of course. As I'm exploring an underground mine early in the game, my progress is blocked by a nest of eggs. Eggs the size of hydrogen bombs. I gun my way through them, only to find myself chased by an unseen monster of a mommy who triggers an earthquake upon every step. I hijack a helicopter to escape, only to find that it's low on fuel and plummeting fast. I survive the crash, only to find myself in another fantastically exaggerated sequence several minutes later…

8. Outraced the Katamari of Doom. This time, I'm being pursued by a gigantic metal gear that broke loose from a factory and now rolls across the landscape, crushing everything – people, vehicles, entire towns – under its impossibly wide tread. I can't hope to destroy the wheel, so the best I can do is blow up fuel towers along its path, the force of which ever-so-slightly divert its angle of destruction. Much cursing, from me and from Grayson, ensues.

9. Grew to the size of Godzilla. After feeling incredibly small for so much of the game so far, Bulletstorm surprises me with an awesome role reversal. Grayson and Ishi cut through an abandoned amusement park ride in which animatronic dinosaurs amaze the tourists by stomping across meticulously miniaturized metropolises. Because (most of) the dinosaurs are out of commission, however, I'm the one stomping – I get to stroll past towering skyscrapers that are shorter than I am, I get to cross several city blocks (complete with cars the size of ants) in a single step and, once the bad guys have rushed in, I get to electrocute them against toy-scaled billboards and telephone wires.

10. Killed four men with a single sniper bullet. Equally empowering is any time I charge up for the alternate ammunition on my vast assortment of weapons. If you played the demo, you know the joy of vaporizing enemies instantly with the secondary option on your carbine, or impaling them with a rocket from your pistol. Wait until you try the sniper rifle. Even when fired normally, it's special, allowing me to steer the bullet manually into whatever limb or organ of my target I choose. When I save up for the alternate shot, though, the bullet is still under my control inside the target, allowing me to steer his body like a grotesque puppet. Into walls. Into cactus spikes. Into other enemies. And did I mention this magic bullet is explosive as well?

11. Danced. And drank some more. The amusement park isn't the only evidence that Bulletstorm's set on what used to be a resort planet. I also visited a disco. And the song "Disco Inferno" played. And I drank a bunch of old booze off dusty tables. And my vision blurred just as a group of thugs flooded the club, so I stumbled around, attempting to aim at them and earning "Intoxicated" skillshots each time I actually succeeded. And Ishi called me "an asshole." And then an Achievement popped up for killing everyone while remaining on the dance floor. And yeah.

12. Heard the infamous "dicktits" line… in context. This randomly rude insult from the demo, which was mocked and celebrated across the internet in equal measure, is also in the campaign. Along with plenty of other bizarre new slang. But the developers of Bulletstorm know how ridiculous they're being, and the game rarely takes itself too seriously. When another character angrily tells Grayson that he's a "dicktits," Grayson responds with exasperated confusion: "What does that even mean?!"

Feb 8, 2011

No FPS has prepared you for this. We guarantee it

Epic Games and Cliff Bleszinski are bringing you another ultraviolent franchise. Let's see how the two compare

Chris, Charlie and Matt load up the Bulletstorm demo and FAP ‘til their nuts explode