Zero Punctuation: Bulletstorm

[RA92]

I'm sorry. CoD and GoW don't do realism. Regenerative health is not realistic. 'Lone Wolf' style gameplay is not realistic. What they do is uber-cliched and bad escapism.

Hey, I'm not saying it's realistic. They are. With their guns that exist before they existed, the ability to call down nukes from knifing someone and...

Yeah, maybe I should have put "REALISM" rather than realism. But realism, like the Columbine shooter sim, sucks equally.

You know who could've saved the gaming industry from such mediocrity?

Salvador Fuckin' Dali http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Salvador_Dali_NYWTS.jpg/451px-Salvador_Dali_NYWTS.jpg

But he's moved on, so that train has left a long time ago...

 

[Dody16]

Come to think of it, Yahtzee makes a good point. Who ever asked for all these realistic shooters anyway?
I've always said I only like games that let me do things that are either impossible, or improbable in real life. And although by just saying that I am still excusing the existence of a lot of games, I will say that my point is this: since we're in the realm of fiction anyway, why not take advantage of it? Besides, if realism is that important, for example you can argue that a health bar is more realistic then taking five bullets to the chest, hiding behind cover, and then being able to walk away as if nothing happened to you. In real life, if you get shot, usually the damage is a little more permanent.

But I've let my self ramble too much already...

 

[Mute52]

I will now call my garbage can a dustbin from now on

 

[archvile93]

My favorite line in there would have to be, "Now, drop the net, hit him with sticks!" I have to disagree with his review of the gameplay though. Maybe I'm just better than him, but even on hard I spent very little time hiding behind walls. As long as they died before I did I was fine. And kicking an exlpoding bouncy ball was a blast (pun not intended).

I also played it on Hard and I think it was really fun, except for those fucking snipers and the fact that sniping an enemy in the balls was almost impossible (for me), because as soon as the (normal) bullet got near they would just cower and start running to the side, urgh, charge shot was great tough =). I really liked the weapons, but I think that the Thumper cost more than it was worth (cost more than you got from using it around 3-4 enemies). And I think I read somewhere that there would be "Epic battles with Giant bosses"...Yeah there weren't much of that. The Grindwheel wasn't really a boss, the Hecaton wasn't really a boss either (altough they were giant, so ½ point for that maybe?). The plant-like boss was ok.

Yea I do agree with you there, though the thumper is quite useful, especially indoors where enemies hit the ceiling and get insta-killed. There really is only one boss to, though the others make nice set pieces. The one that killed himself was humorously underwhelming. I also never got the sniper shot skill kills either. Hitting enemies in the head give you more points despite being easier. To get some ball shots, I recomend kicking them first so they can't dodge.

 

[Tinybear]

Just gonna say it: Painkiller sucks. I tried it for 25 minutes and I found it not engaging at all (silent main character and NO FUCKING INTRO STORY), and the gameplay was boring (I mean, if you want fastpaced massacre games, play serious sam).

 

[archvile93]

Come to think of it, Yahtzee makes a good point. Who ever asked for all these realistic shooters anyway?
I've always said I only like games that let me do things that are either impossible, or improbable in real life. And although by just saying that I am still excusing the existence of a lot of games, I will say that my point is this: since we're in the realm of fiction anyway, why not take advantage of it? Besides, if realism is that important, for example you can argue that a health bar is more realistic then taking five bullets to the chest, hiding behind cover, and then being able to walk away as if nothing happened to you. In real life, if you get shot, usually the damage is a little more permanent.

But I've let my self ramble too much already...

yea but as everyone else says, taping a med-kit to your face really isn't any more realistic. Health bars are pretty unrealistic even without that since just about any hit would put you down anyway. Personally, I can enjoy both Duke-Nukem and Red Orchestra levels of realism, so I'm glad that both styles exist.

 

[archvile93]

what the hell, it keeps eating my posts.

 

[themerrygambit]

So I'm curious what yahtzee's thoughts are on the original Unreal Tournament and some of it's sequels. I used to be rather competitive in FPS shooters back in the day and the last FPS that I was truly obsessive about was the original Unreal tournament. While it didn't have some of the more fun outlandish moments of Serious Sam. (Another high favorite of mine) It did have the simple mechanics of fun fast furious FPS gameplay down to (in my mind) perfection. Granted I'm a PC player. but to me the controls were intuitive, weapons were varied and gloriously fun for the most part. (You could for instance create a style of play and winning strategy for just about any weapon in the game, there was something undeniably satisfying about killing someone with the hydrolic piston... I won an entire string of 40 kill death matches with that alone and garnered a fair amount of hatred for it.) But I guess the point I am making is that that game didn't bog down the player with really anything. You never had to reload, clips, you never had to duck behind cover and you never had to pause to regenerate your shields. (seriously... for the love of god please bring back health packs and life bars its way more fun.) In short there was never anything in the game to slow the player down. It was basically an escapist's dream. The player was giving super human speed, jumping ability etc. but at the same time the game pitted you up against super human enemies to match you.

Yahtzee talks about a multi-player game that can stand on it's laurels in single player mode and to me UT addressed that very well. While it is basically geared toward multi-player you could have a completely satisfying game experience playing it single player. The artificially intelligent "bots" you could go up against in single player were marvelously well designed. Sure you started out schooling them but just like in the old computer chess games the computer will get smarter faster and more infuriating the better you get. It gets to the point where eventually when you're doing good enough the computer will introduce "impossible" bots with special names like "Loki" who never misses. Pitting the player up against the computer in a way that is reminiscent of the original Tron & Terminator movies. Man vs the impossibly perfect computer. Who will win?

Then if you did want to throw yourself into the multi-player fray you never had to be a "clan" member or anything like that you could feasibly be a lone wolf who occasionally goes on to a random server Piston kill 100 people or so to death and then leave everyone wondering "Holy S@#$! Who the F@#$K! was that guy?!!"

*sigh* I miss those days of simple fun... seems like everyone keeps trying to get that feeling back but no one can quite seem to get it right anymore...

 

[themerrygambit]

On another note I would love to try out that triple shotgun though... that looks awfully fun...

 

[googleback]

EPIC now resides with Moleneux... you DONT say "HURRR I THINK YAHTZEE WILL LIKE THIS ONE DERP"

 

[daxterx2005]

lol grape nuts ftw

 

[PlasmaFrog]

It's hilariously ironic since they decided to implement several features from the typical modern shooter. Bloody screen and regenerating health, I'm looking at you.

Besides EA's tendency to self-hype titles with crappy advertising tactics, the game was fine. It wasn't anything new or revolutionary, but it was a decent step in another direction for once.

 

[Roggen Bread]

Everything I could say was said before.

Yahtzee, you are yet again right-o.

I just concentrated on the funny explicit violence.
I am suprised though, you did not mention the uberness of just kicking dues into spike things.
Seriously.

 

[LordOrin]

Augh! Thanks Yahtzee, now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for another 5 years

 

[Art Axiv]

I hate score grinding games. I guess that Yahtzee goes "ditto" on that matter.

 

[Dfskelleton]

I agree on some things here, but not all.
The thing is that Epic tried to make it cover based, but People Can Fly shone through and made it so that it wasn't nessecary. My favorite tactic involves slide kicking someone, blowing their torso off in mid air with the shotgun, and kicking their two parts into a deathtrap. Oppurtunity? Not extremely often. Fun as hell? Totally.
Although, did anyone else notice how short it was, or is that just me. Seriously, I finished it in two days. It was definitely worth it due to how much fun it was.
The dialogue was so immature but still hilarious, such as a conversation along the lines of:
"If you come near me again, I swear, I will kill your dick!"
"...What? You're going to kill my dick? What does that even mean?! Fine, I'll kill your dick!"
*awkward silence*
"Now, if you two are done with the dick killing we have more important things to do."
Also, glad I'm not the only one who remembers Doomguy's physics defying awesomeness.

 

[philosophicalbastard]

Yathzee I blame Halo. Stupid regen health.

The first Halo actually had health bars. I believe it was Call of Duty that first used health regeneration, but I'm not sure.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Bit of a shame that People Can Fly didn't just make a new Painkiller. I like GoW but adding that unrealistic element doesn't sound like a smart move. Oh well.

Well they did release about ten Painkiller versions and it was all just going downhill, they needed a new IP, this sadly wasn't what we wanted, ended up just another one in the huge pile of modern gritty shooters...

Hopefully the Duke will deliver

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Poor Yahtzee is impossible to please. This game was practically made for him. You've got to kinda pity the guy.

But he's right to point out a few of its flaws. For one, the level design is completely linear.

WHY IS OPEN LEVEL DESIGN SOOOOOOO MUCH TO ASK FOR IN AN FPS THESE DAYS. THIS GAME WAS MADE TO GIVE YOU THE BEST TOYS TO PLAY IN A SANDBOX, BUT IT DOESN'T GIVE YOU THE FRIGGIN' SANDBOX!!!!

Also I could see buying upgrades for the weapons, but having the thump and special abilities cost a bunch of points is just stupid, it made me conserve all game and I never really got to just have fun because I was worried about running out of ammo in the next room. Friggin' stupid. Combine this with the fact that enemies were very hard to bunch up without the thump and you have it so that you could almost never really play with the game mechanics as you're supposedly intended to.

 

[Pikey Mikey]

My favorite line in there would have to be, "Now, drop the net, hit him with sticks!" I have to disagree with his review of the gameplay though. Maybe I'm just better than him, but even on hard I spent very little time hiding behind walls. As long as they died before I did I was fine. And kicking an exlpoding bouncy ball was a blast (pun not intended).

I also played it on Hard and I think it was really fun, except for those fucking snipers and the fact that sniping an enemy in the balls was almost impossible (for me), because as soon as the (normal) bullet got near they would just cower and start running to the side, urgh, charge shot was great tough =). I really liked the weapons, but I think that the Thumper cost more than it was worth (cost more than you got from using it around 3-4 enemies). And I think I read somewhere that there would be "Epic battles with Giant bosses"...Yeah there weren't much of that. The Grindwheel wasn't really a boss, the Hecaton wasn't really a boss either (altough they were giant, so ½ point for that maybe?). The plant-like boss was ok.

Yea I do agree with you there, though the thumper is quite useful, especially indoors where enemies hit the ceiling and get insta-killed. There really is only one boss to, though the others make nice set pieces. The one that killed himself was humorously underwhelming. I also never got the sniper shot skill kills either. Hitting enemies in the head give you more points despite being easier. To get some ball shots, I recomend kicking them first so they can't dodge.

"Luckily enough", I got it after a while (Luckily in the sense that I could move on and stop using the sniper). And you also have to disrupt-shoot them or they will dodge your kick too. I had no problem that the Creeps could "dodge" the bullets, they did say that they are fast (leash immune etc.) but that ALL enemies could dodge it, that's just bogus. My favourite enemies were The Burnouts, just because they charged like pillocks and got me SO MUCH Skillpoints (X-Ray, Chain-Reaction, etc.) Those moments were the best =). And I don't understand why you couldn't use your own weapons while controlling the Mechaton robot thingy. At one point there were like 3 choppers shooting me as soon as I went to target them, when I get into cover, the robot would march to me, getting his face away from the choppers so I would have to wait while he turned around, getting me shot again so I had to go to cover. And then I shot them about 34 times and they didn't die, so I had to reload and do it all again, Why didn't they just let me leash the fuckers? This must all sound very negative, but the game is still very fun. It's just that part and the snipers/using sniper that's......appalling