Bulletstorm, anyone interested?

Going to wait until it comes down in price a bit on Steam Sale. That and my game backlog is keeping me busy.
 
Prophecy said:
I said I would be back with my impressions, so here they are. Keep in mind that I only just started the second act.

The good:
- The skillshot system is interesting and really adds a lot of fun to the game. It starts out pretty limited, but once you start getting more guns the game really opens up.
- The levels are really vibrant, which is a nice change of pace from most Unreal Engine games.
- The story is ridiculous and over the top, but still very enjoyable.

The bad:
- The first Act of the game gets a bit boring as you only have one gun for most of it. I just got to the beginning of Act 2 and I now have a second gun and new enemy types, and already the game is a LOT more fun.
- All of the other negatives stem from the fact that this is a piss-poor PC port of a game that was obviously designed for consoles

Example 1:

Don't power off my system when saving? Really?

Example 2:

The game technically supports 16:10, but rather than scale the output appropriately it just adds letterboxing. WTF indeed.

Other signs of a lazy PC port:
- For an unreal engine game, it runs like shit. I have it maxed out and it never stays at a solid 60fps. It hovers around 45 - 50 most of the time, but sometimes takes noticeable dips toward 30. The game is certainly pretty, but with my specs it should have no trouble staying at 60fps constantly.
- As mentioned previously, you have to use WASD to navigate the "inventory" within the game. You would think it would be trivial to add mouse scrolling to a menu like this.
- Some of the cutscenes in the game are pre-recorded, compressed movies that were obviously run in-engine. I can only assume that they were recorded and compressed to save space for consoles. They don't look awful, but they certainly look worse than they would have if they had just been shown in-game.
- There are options in the menu to turn on aim assist and "target lock". These are enabled by default.
- The max in-game AA (4x) just doesn't cut it. I haven't tried forcing higher AA through the drivers, but the game already isn't performing as well as expected so I'm a bit reluctant to do so.


I am excited to play more of the game as it truly is unique and the environments are gorgeous; however, it is inexcusable for a company like Epic to release such a shoddy PC port. I can only hope that they patch away all of the annoying console bits, but they probably won't. It would also be nice if they released mod tools, since it IS an unreal engine game, but I know this is a pipedream. I will post more gameplay impressions as I get further into the game.
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Your post just convinced me not to buy the game. I was back and forth. It seems fun, buy the effort/replay doesn't seem to be there from everything I've read. I guess this is another $75% off steam sale type purchase.
 
demingo said:
Your post just convinced me not to buy the game. I was back and forth. It seems fun, buy the effort/replay doesn't seem to be there from everything I've read. I guess this is another $75% off steam sale type purchase.
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I'm still trying to decide whether I am happy with my purchase. $60 is definitely too much to pay for the game, but I have a feeling that it's just going to get more fun as I get more weapons. It's also a very refreshing take on the FPS genre. I don't think it's selling very well on PC, so maybe it will drop in price quickly.
 
Prophecy said:
- The first Act of the game gets a bit boring as you only have one gun for most of it. I just got to the beginning of Act 2 and I now have a second gun and new enemy types, and already the game is a LOT more fun.
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Any game that uses "acts" or "levels" is years behind the rest of the gaming world. Games these days are supposed to create a seamless world, unlike games from the 1990s.

I'am going to hold off on buying bulletstorm until the price drops a lot. Maybe by the end of 2011 steam will have it on sale.
 
After finding out how bad of a console port this is, I am going to hold off on buying Bulletstorm until it is free.
 
This game mildly had my interest, after reading impressions I don't think I will be picking it up anytime soon.
 
For those of us that actually got the game, there is a good article on Ars that explains how to get into the .ini and fix some things:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...u-how-to-get-it-playing-nice-with-your-pc.ars

Texas Gamer said:
Any game that uses "acts" or "levels" is years behind the rest of the gaming world. Games these days are supposed to create a seamless world, unlike games from the 1990s.
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I don't think I agree with this. Transitions within game are pretty seamless. I think they named acts/chapters more as a point of reference than anything.
 
Apparently there has been multiple users experiencing graphical issues with Bulletstorm on PC.. Things like 16 bit textures and strange shadow effects. Anyone here had any probs like that?
 
I like the game so far. Runs fine maxed out at 8x AA on my setup (so not sure about someone else only seeing a max of 4x)

Not sure if people expect a game to fellate them or what. People are really scraping the bottom of the barrel for nits to try to declare this a horrible game. Sure it's not perfect, but it's really not bad either.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
oh, how nice. a multiplaform review that doesnt say anything about the fuck ups on the PC version.

Here's a much better PC review of this "game"
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/bulletstorm-on-pcs-isnt-friendly-to-high-level-users.ars
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Ars said:
The game has a number of issues on our favorite platform, but it remains a fun—and violent—way to spend an afternoon.
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Ars said:
All this being said, once you get access to the .ini files to edit your graphical settings and get the game running well, it looks and feels great on the PC. EA and Epic tried to keep us from having access to the game's higher level settings, and that's annoying, but it's also easy to get around.
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So they've posted how to get around most of the annoying issues and conclude that the game looks and feels great on the PC. Were you trying to make a point?
 
im not sure if im getting a bug with the display settings or what, but i get the same 62 fps with the settings all on low or all on high. barely notice the difference between the two also. not sure if its just not adjusting the settings right or if there is really that little of difference between the lowest and highest settings.
 
Zinn said:
So they've posted how to get around most of the annoying issues and conclude that the game looks and feels great on the PC. Were you trying to make a point?
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How dense are you?
Pay 60$ to be frustrated. Ummm, no thank you.
 
foursecondpin said:
im not sure if im getting a bug with the display settings or what, but i get the same 62 fps with the settings all on low or all on high. barely notice the difference between the two also. not sure if its just not adjusting the settings right or if there is really that little of difference between the lowest and highest settings.
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Did you read the thing about the ini file using simple encryption, and you need to decrypt it and change the settings there?
 
Added this to www.pcgamingstandards.com

Fixes are linked for the terrible FOV letterboxing the 16:10 screen resolutions, for uncapping the frame rate and also removing the mouse smoothing/acceleration.

For the record I think them encrypting the ini files is a fucking outrage, it's bad enough that we have to fix the game ourselves, especially after the preceding unreal tournament games but to make our lives that much harder for making these fixes, it's just fucking lame, they just don't give a shit about PC gamers at all.
 
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This game cracks me up.

The main character is such a fucking parody its almost sad. Its like Marcus Fenix and Wolverine had a baby that played too much GTA. Every other word is an obscenity. It sounds bad but so far its pretty funny, though im sure it will probably get old.

I didnt even notice the letterbox issue until it was pointed out, otherwise so far it runs fairly smooth and is a LOT of fun.

Sure $60 is a lot but its still a decent game. If you are on the fence hit the first sale you can find.
 
foursecondpin said:
im not sure if im getting a bug with the display settings or what, but i get the same 62 fps with the settings all on low or all on high. barely notice the difference between the two also. not sure if its just not adjusting the settings right or if there is really that little of difference between the lowest and highest settings.
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The game, rather the engine has a 62 fps frame rate cap. GoW has this and UT3 could enable it too. It's in other Unreal Engine games as well. Oh yeah, Transformers had it too.

I do have an issue with half the screen being darker than the other half. The border of which goes diagonally, bottom left to top right. It's only an issue in certain parts of the game. Hope it's driver related and gets sorted out. Shadows seem a little funky on some character models, but mostly fine.

I'm only in the second chapter and the laso, kick, shoot repetition is getting tiresome. So far I'd give it a strong 6 maybe 7 out of 10. Hope the game's combat improves from here.
 
I don't know why this game gets so much hate. It's no AAA title but it's decent so far. It's a nice change of pace from more "serious"/modern/"reality" based FPS games like CoD or BF (I'm not knocking those btw). Sure it's probably not worth $60 but most games aren't anyway. I've played and bought far worse. Haters gonna hate.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
How dense are you?
Pay 60$ to be frustrated. Ummm, no thank you.
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Being that I've paid $60 for the game and I'm enjoying it, I must be very dense.

Ehren8879 said:
I do have an issue with half the screen being darker than the other half. The border of which goes diagonally, bottom left to top right. It's only an issue in certain parts of the game. Hope it's driver related and gets sorted out. Shadows seem a little funky on some character models, but mostly fine.
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Same thing here, I'm guessing it's a bug with the 6900 series video cards.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I don't know why this game gets so much hate. It's no AAA title but it's decent so far. It's a nice change of pace from more "serious"/modern/"reality" based FPS games like CoD or BF (I'm not knocking those btw). Sure it's probably not worth $60 but most games aren't anyway. I've played and bought far worse. Haters gonna hate.
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You pretty much answered your own question. Its no AAA title but it carries the price tag of a AAA title. Its fun and i like it but i used a gift card. If i had paid $60 in cash i would be pretty damn unhappy.
 
A AAA title used to be $50. This is $60 and no doubt there will be 3 or 4 DLC packs pushing the price to $100.

As for the encryption PCF did the same thing to the original zip files for painkiller. Not a real surprise, it was broken easily back then, have to wonder why they bothered now.
 
It's broken already.

Though after playing the PS3 demo I won't even bother. It's not even worth the disk space.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I don't know why this game gets so much hate. It's no AAA title but it's decent so far. It's a nice change of pace from more "serious"/modern/"reality" based FPS games like CoD or BF (I'm not knocking those btw). Sure it's probably not worth $60 but most games aren't anyway. I've played and bought far worse. Haters gonna hate.
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1. It gets hate because its Epic and they made there career with the help of PC gamers. And they decided to turn there backs on us basically and use piracy as the excuse when its just as bad on consoles.

2. Cliffy has a habbit of opening his mouth and letting comments that took about 1 percent of his total brain power to produce come out anytime he talks about PC gaming ""I think the PC is just in disarray... " and then he goes ahead and says this when asked if PC gaming was "coming back" (as if it was dead) "Abso-frigging-lutely. The thing is, I think everybody coming together in that kind of way will essentially kind of help re-glue things back together and kind of help fix the market." So what have learned ? He doesn't seem to put any real thought into half the shit he says and ends up looking like he has no idea what hes talking about.

3. When Epic ported Gears Of War over to the PC (from the same internal studio People Can Fly) they did a god awful job of it and blamed it all on GWFL and PC piracy. I won't go into how many launch issues it had but it was a giant mess. I don't think Epic would have had any problem not doing a PC version of Bulletstorm but I can imagine People Can Fly had something to do with it being green lighted (and they sat back and watched the profit margin on big FPS games like COD and wanted in on the profit from multi-platform launches).

These are just a few reasons of what could be a larger list.

Bulletstorm is not a bad game but it does suffer from consolitis. There some basic options and polish PC gamers expect be supported when a game launches. Not having proper 16:10 frame support (instead of letterbox) is seriously retarded in this day and age , its a very simple feature to add and yet Bulletstorm lacks it...

PC gamers don't get the option to rent games. Once you spend 60 bucks and enter the CD key you can't "trade" it in towards something else or resell it on Ebay , your stuck with it so PC gamers have more to lose than a console gamer does. We can all understand that I'm sure. If Bulletstorm is a 6+ hour single player experience with a score attack MP and a horde mode that no one really is that into. At that price its very over priced , I can buy a couple of Blu Rays with extras that will out last that time frame and have money for dinner and some beer and I think that would have been a better use of it had I known in advance.

Instead we're all in the same boat. Developers like Epic don't seem to really grasp this reasoning at all ... and its becoming more common place as time goes on.
 
Godmachine said:
1. It gets hate because its Epic and they made there career with the help of PC gamers. And they decided to turn there backs on us basically and use piracy as the excuse when its just as bad on consoles.

2. Cliffy has a habbit of opening his mouth and letting comments that took about 1 percent of his total brain power to produce come out anytime he talks about PC gaming ""I think the PC is just in disarray... " and then he goes ahead and says this when asked if PC gaming was "coming back" (as if it was dead) "Abso-frigging-lutely. The thing is, I think everybody coming together in that kind of way will essentially kind of help re-glue things back together and kind of help fix the market." So what have learned ? He doesn't seem to put any real thought into half the shit he says and ends up looking like he has no idea what hes talking about.

3. When Epic ported Gears Of War over to the PC (from the same internal studio People Can Fly) they did a god awful job of it and blamed it all on GWFL and PC piracy. I won't go into how many launch issues it had but it was a giant mess. I don't think Epic would have had any problem not doing a PC version of Bulletstorm but I can imagine People Can Fly had something to do with it being green lighted.

These are just a few reasons of what could be a larger list.

Bulletstorm is not a bad game but it does suffer from consolitis. There same kind of basic options and polish PC gamers expect be support when a game launches. Not having proper 16:10 frame support (instead of letterbox) is seriously retarded in this day and age , its a very simple feature to add and yet Bulletstorm lacks it...

PC gamers don't get the option to rent games. Once you spend 60 bucks and enter the CD key you can't "trade" it in towards something else or resell it on Ebay , your stuck with it so PC gamers have more to lose than a console gamer does. We can all understand that I'm sure. If Bulletstorm is a 6+ hour single player experience with a score attack MP and a horde mode that no one really is that into. At that price its very over priced , I can buy a couple of Blu Rays with extras that will out last that time frame and have money for dinner and some beer and I think that would have been a better use of it had I known in advance.
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2. Don't forget he pretty much implied that every PC gamer is a pirate.
 
From what I've been reading, most people who actually got the game are saying it's fun to play, which is what ultimately matters in the end. It might not be worth the 60$ price, but at least it's an entertaining game which can be bought down the line for less. The people who are complaining about ridiculously trivial shit like the game being split into acts/levels... well... those are the kind of people who complain for the sake of it. They can't be satisfied so developers shouldn't even bother.
 
spindoctor said:
From what I've been reading, most people who actually got the game are saying it's fun to play, which is what ultimately matters in the end. It might not be worth the 60$ price, but at least it's an entertaining game which can be bought down the line for less. The people who are complaining about ridiculously trivial shit like the game being split into acts/levels... well... those are the kind of people who complain for the sake of it. They can't be satisfied so developers shouldn't even bother.
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If this were reddit, I'd upvote you.
 
spindoctor said:
From what I've been reading, most people who actually got the game are saying it's fun to play, which is what ultimately matters in the end. It might not be worth the 60$ price, but at least it's an entertaining game which can be bought down the line for less. The people who are complaining about ridiculously trivial shit like the game being split into acts/levels... well... those are the kind of people who complain for the sake of it. They can't be satisfied so developers shouldn't even bother.
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This forum, like most of the internet, is filled with clowns. After a while you have to ask yourself how seriously you want to take them. :D
 
Godmachine said:
1. It gets hate because its Epic and they made there career with the help of PC gamers.

2. Cliffy

3. When Epic ported Gears Of War over to the PC (from the same internal studio People Can Fly) they did a god awful job of it and blamed it all on GWFL and PC piracy.

Bulletstorm is not a bad game but it does suffer from consolitis. There some basic options and polish PC gamers expect be supported when a game launches. Not having proper 16:10 frame support (instead of letterbox) is seriously retarded in this day and age , its a very simple feature to add and yet Bulletstorm lacks it...
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1. Epic failed to bring what 1 game to PC? GoW2 which would've just gotten the same old "consolitis" blame.

2. People really give a fuck what Cliffy B has to say? srsly?

Uh oh "consolitis"! Maybe peeps should just stick to PC exclusives and then they wouldn't have to worry about "consolitis".

I will give you the lack of 16:10 support, that is dumb as hell.

People in the PC Gaming section are the biggest butthurt whiney cry babies assholes on [H]ardforum. The rest of the forum is pretty cool and laid back until you come in here with everyone going on about "consolitis", GFWL raped me, Steam sucks, DLC shit on my face, and the animations in Dragon Age 2 along with no top down camera view totally ruined the game even though it's nearly the same fucking thing as DA1 gameplaywise.

Less QQ and more pew pew. Don't buy shit you don't like and don't thread dump.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
People in the PC Gaming section are the biggest butthurt whiney cry babies assholes on [H]ardforum. The rest of the forum is pretty cool and laid back until you come in here with everyone going on about "consolitis", GFWL raped me, Steam sucks, DLC shit on my face, and the animations in Dragon Age 2 along with no top down camera view totally ruined the game even though it's nearly the same fucking thing as DA1 gameplaywise.

Less QQ and more pew pew. Don't buy shit you don't like and don't thread dump.
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People in the front page forums are also pretty fucking whiny/stupid.

Either way, QFT x1000
 
anonmoniker said:
ROFL, look at the 2D backgrounds in this shitty console port.

http://img217.imageshack.us/i/lolxlqn.jpg/

Sooo pixelated, reminds me of old Sega Saturn games where they couldn't handle a fully 3D environment in the distance so they just pasted in a 2D backdrop. The resolution here is utterly pathetic.
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Thats a very specific , small and likely unnoticed moment (also the Unreal engine streams in textures so at closer range that would clear up) where the games graphics doesn't hold up. The outside scenery is quite beautiful otherwise ..

If your spending time to take a screenshot of a certain frame were the backrounds look iffy then you are missing the point of a game like Bulletstorm. Compared to other Unreal engine driven games this one stands apart in its usage of color and range.

Compared to the Gears Of War console port its miles better.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
People in the PC Gaming section are the biggest butthurt whiney cry babies assholes on [H]ardforum. The rest of the forum is pretty cool and laid back until you come in here with everyone going on about "consolitis", GFWL raped me, Steam sucks, DLC shit on my face, and the animations in Dragon Age 2 along with no top down camera view totally ruined the game even though it's nearly the same fucking thing as DA1 gameplaywise.

Less QQ and more pew pew. Don't buy shit you don't like and don't thread dump.
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You've heard it here first folks, we're no longer allowed opinions, this self appointed moderator has ruled on the matter. It's only singing Epics praises from here on out guys, but at least it will be laid back while we all sit around agreeing with one another.

Yeah, that's why I'm here :rolleyes:
 
|Tch0rT| said:
*SNIP*
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Wow nice job with the "selective" editing there :rolleyes:

However you sell it to yourself , is your business.

Your post fails to make any kind of point , you've lobbed in the entire PC Gaming and Hardware section and titled them a bunch of "butthurt whiney cry babies assholes" which is just really a fantastic way to not state a point and insult forum users in the same sentence.

Do us all a favor , you don't like other opinions opposing your view? Thats fine , but unless you have something useful to add to the discussion then how about you just write it in your diary instead and save the insults for people that actually care about what you think.
 
I am a butthurt whiney crybaby asshole, but magically it doesn't stop Bulletstorm being an overpriced console port.

I hired the 360 Bulletstorm, and it will be a fine game for $20, but not $120 or whatever bullshit the local retailers have decided to flog it for.
 
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