The title of this piece refers to an interview I once saw with the developers of Halo: Combat Evolved. This was Bungie's big goal, to create 30 seconds of fun for the gamer, and then let him do it again and again. And it worked - Halo is arguably one of the greatest FPS franchises in the business!
However, without fail, the same thing could be said for just about EVERY shooter out there. Point, shoot, reload, point, shoot, reload... Still fun though, right?
People Can Fly and Epic Studios have done just that with their new opus, Bulletstorm. Only, this time, they added a couple new wrinkles to that 30 seconds; a nifty new tool, the tether; and a carnival house devoted to pain! Just about everywhere one looks in Bulletstorm, one sees something they wouldn't want to get too close to in real life - cactus covered in deadly spikes, exposed electrical wiring, man-eating plants, etc. Each of these things are designed to be used by the player to rack up crazy combinations of over the top violence visited upon the bodies of maniacal (and most probably cannibalistic) muties out to kill you. The more you manage to wring out of a combo, the more points you get. However, since points in Bulletstorm equate to cash, and cash is what you need to buy more ammo and upgrades for your fabulously twisted weapons arsenal, it behooves the player to be as creative in his kills as he possibly can. This "skillshot system" is what changes everything - People Can Fly obviously love video-games, and it shows in a perfectly balanced system designed to reward player creativity with bigger and better toys...
One example is the flailgun, a weapon you find early on that shoots spiked grenades connected by a chain like a sadistic bolo, perfect for tying up a foe which you can then use to fling into a group of his buddies before remotely setting off the explosives, multiplying your skillshot count by the overall amount of enemies. If any of them end up stuck to a cactus, or slamming up against an explosive barrel, you get credit for those things, too! All these seemingly disparate mini-atrocities add up to one big score, which the player can then use to buy themselves something nice from the store. And since every item in the store is a weapon or something weapon-related, that "something nice" is definitely gonna be something you like. This, of course, is just one small example - not only does each weapon have a secondary mode, they also have their own specific skillshots to unlock inspiring the player to use each weapon in ways he may never have thought about before!
As for re-playability, Bulletstorm has that in spades. Playing thru the campaign opens up challenge areas you can take on separately by yourself, or with a couple of friends (the main campaign has co-op as well!). Your scores are kept track of and placed on the gamerboards for everyone else to see. The better you get at manipulating each one of these spaces, squeezing out more and more skillshot points, the better you end up being in the campaign upon every consecutive play-thru. In the end, the experience is akin to billiards - the better you get at it, the more satisfying the experience. And with graphics this good, and characters this fun to hang out with, you're gonna want to get better...
On the subject of multi-player, results can be mixed. If you're playing with friends with a common goal, you're gonna have a lot of fun. If you're playing with strangers, you're probably not gonna have any fun at all as most of the gameplay relies on mutual cooperation and good communication. But with a single-player experience this good, who cares?
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