Did the bro-shooter Bulletstorm actually have a futuristic vision?

09.07.2023

A scene from Bulletstorm VR. A huge dinosaur-like creature bursts through the planet’s surface in front of the player, who is brandishing a multi-rail gatling gun — Count us as rapt with expectancy to see Waggleton P. Tallylicker in virtual reality.

Owen S. Good
is a job editor for games at Polygon, and also a 15-year expert of video clip games writing, popular for his insurance coverage of sporting activities and also auto racing games.

A lots years later on, Bulletstorm, in some way, sustains.

You wouldn’t anticipate it for a game that, in knowledge, checks much more as a Duke Nukem-esque guilty satisfaction that came no place near to its sales assumptions. Gratuitously terrible and also absurdly foul-mouthed (does anybody else bear in mind “Hey, dick tits!”?), also if Bulletstorm drew laudatory reviews for its gameplay, specifically its ammunition economy, it barely appears like a game that might be called “ahead of its time.”

But it is, firmly insists Radomir Kucharski of Incuvo, the Polish online fact port store that Bulletstorm manufacturer People Can Fly acquired at the end of 2021.

“When we were searching for a next project, we looked at Bulletstorm and thought this game, with its mechanics, was actually, like, designed for VR,” Kucharski stated. “Bulletstorm is so action-packed, so close to the action, and with such physical interaction, it just looked like it was designed for VR.”

At the moment, Incuvo was independent and also fresh from its virtual reality adjustment of 2 of Bloober Team’s scary titles — Layers of Fear and also Blair Witch, both for Oculus Quest and also PlayStation Virtual Reality. Incuvo had actually located success adjusting developed games on a work-for-hire basis, and also Kucharski was seeking one more hit to maintain the workshop’s energy going. It additionally aided that People Can Fly, like Bloober Team, is a Poland-based designer.

More vital, Kucharski stated, was the cult-hit condition Bulletstorm remains to take pleasure in. Electronic Arts and also Epic Games almost deserted the residential property after it dropped much except revenue and also sales assumptions. People Can Fly, which Epic gotten in 2013 and after that dilated in 2015, maintained possession of the franchise business, and also still had sufficient of a target market to warrant remastered releases for consoles in 2017 and 2019.

“I was big-time into first-person shooters,” stated Kucharski, a programmer that had actually dealt with Medal of Honor and also various other army shooters in the years coming before Bulletstorm’s launch. “I found Bulletstorm very unique; I thought the gameplay was very fresh, something that was groundbreaking at that point.”

The groundbreaking parts, which appeared to take a rear seats to all the blasphemy and also the physical violence in the initial advertising, were Bulletstorm’s “skillshot” gameplay loophole; making use of the atmosphere to artistically get rid of opponents; and also the “energy leash” that hero Grayson Hunt makes use of to lasso opponents, stun them, or fling them to their ruin.

The chain, Kucharski stated, is one of the most VR-ready attribute of Bulletstorm’s initial gameplay. Reloading a tool, for instance, is a much more significant experience. The dual-wield nature, of a weapon in one hand and also the chain in one more, is much more quickly revealed via a committed controller in each hand of the gamer, Kucharski reasoned. “This is something that was simply not possible using standard controllers, or a keyboard and mouse.”

Bulletstorm VIRTUAL REALITY is most definitely not a rail-shooter adjustment of the franchise business, Kucharski stressed. Players might openly wander the degrees as they performed in the initial. The adjustment is additionally devoted to the initial tale, though Kucharski stated the game is not a “one-to-one copy. I want to say it’s a new game, but it is the same original story.” Half of the degrees are specifically the like the initial Bulletstorm, he stated, “but there is new content,” also if that doesn’t suggest narrative modifications.

“We used a lot of assets from the original game,” Kucharski stated. “We had to redo some of the stuff, obviously, we had to change the engine from the old Unreal 3 to, I believe, 4.27 is what we’re using right now. We had to recreate a lot of stuff, but the assets are based on the originals.”

Bulletstorm VIRTUAL REALITY, revealed at the start of June, will certainly introduce later on in 2023 for Meta Quest and also PlayStation Virtual Reality 2. For every one of his discuss Bulletstorm’s sophisticated gameplay, Kucharski stated this will certainly still bring the very same smirky tone of its forefather.

“Yeah, the game is still pretty violent,” he chortled. “It’s very over-the-top with the violence. It’s not serious; it’s fun.”