TSA’s Top 100 of 2011 – #44 Bulletstorm

There’s an old urban myth that when John Woo made the jump from Hong Kong to Hollywood the visionary director only knew three words of English. ‘Action,’ ‘More,’ and ‘Bullets.’ Though we’re confident he undoubtedly knew a few others (‘Van,’ ‘Damme,’ and ‘WTF,’ likely candidates) it does posit the concept that you don’t need complex linguistic skills to communicate effectively.

Bulletstorm talks in bullets, each sentence punctuated with fiery exchanges, each paragraph ended with gratuitous death.

There’s a plot but it’s merely a serviceable device. Players take in the role of Grayson Hunt, an exiled, drunken space pirate eking out an existence on the edge of the galaxy since turning rogue on his squad years before. When a ship crash lands on his world, the disgruntled wiseacre joins up with former team member Ishi Sato to fight off marauding mutants and flesh-eating gangs. Hamlet in space it is not.

The crux of Bulletstorm isn’t why you’re shooting what you’re shooting but how you’re doing it. The game offers up a deep and rewarding skill-shot system, points tallied for pulling off the more outlandish of kill executions. Describing the mayhem of kicking people into deadly cacti or lassoing them in only to boot them away again just doesn’t do it justice. Check out some footage we’ve highlighted before below for the full skinny. If you don’t chuckle maniacally through that video, check your pulse.

Developed by Polish studio People Can Fly, the studio acquired by Epic Games in August of 2007, the guys know a thing or two about action having handled the PC porting duties of Gears of War. Whether Bulletstorm will ignite the sales charts to that level is difficult to say. It does have Epic Games’ luminary Cliff Bleszinsk flying its kite; the game famously revealed by US mag GameInforner after Bleszinsk’s spot on Jimmy Fallon, where he was set to announce the game, was bumped in favour of teen pandemic Justin Bieber. See? It’s okay to hate Justin Bieber. Or maybe just hate the fact that we live in a world where clown-fringed asexual pop misfits are deemed more important than kick-ass game designers.

If Bulletstorm has an ace up its sleeve it’s its hilarious, meme-creating, colourful dialogue. Any game that tells you to strap on anything gets a pass in our sordid book. This just may be the next Duke Nukem in terms of most quotable game of all time.

Expect high-jinks with a chance of lead poisoning on February 22nd when Bulletstorm launches on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.