Atari5200's Budget Game Review

[Atari5200]

Well hello there traveler. Today I am going to review a now budget priced game called Bullet Witch. I bought the game for $15 at Best Buy new, then saw it 2 days later at K-mart for $10 new. D'oh, oh well. I was first interested in this game when it came out, but there were to many mixed reviews for me to warrant paying full price. So, I wanted to share with you my experience and review this game for you.

 

Story: 5 out of 10, At first it started out GREAT! The opening intro was awesome and I was like hell yeah. The world is going into chaos, famine, disease, disasters, etc. Bullet Witch Alecia is the last hope for humanity, would could be better....how about that scenario as the actual story...lol. The game you are playing occurs after the fact of all that, apparently. There's nothing in the game itself that ties anything to the intro. There are a bunch of demons around that you have to kill...why? Because someone released them, and the story revolves around that. Nothing regarding anything else, and even then you don't start getting into the actual story until you meet up with the leader of the resistance, who's name escapes me, but he plays a big part. You just plop into a town and start on your path to destruction.

 

Graphics: 7 out of 10, I though the graphics were above average for the xbox 360. They aren't GOW quality, but they are better than previous generation games, especially the explosions. The environments I feel are well drawn, but there are some load time issues where you could be running and the back ground hasn't loaded yet which can cause some confusion, but this isn't that big of a deal. I liked the characters and how they looked, Alecia is a decent enough hero, and you can download different outfits, my personal favorite is the Secretary. Everything looks good...close up, and I had a couple scares when I didn't know a demon was around and then all of a sudden the damn thing was in my face. All in all, the graphics are above average. The explosions and magic effects are very cool. Wait til you see the giants...pretty damn cool.

 

Sound: 7 out of 10, The sound is decent, from the music to the effects to the voice acting, the voice acting being the worst of the 3. Alecia, I don't know, sounds like the developer went on the street and just picked some random chick. The voice is the same, no change, no matter what the situation. I think this was actually on purpose because the overall personality of Alecia seems to be a loner that doesn't seem to care about what is going on but her mission. The other voice acting, the guy I can't remember, leader of the resistance, I want to say Lance, is too much, tries to hard, and is funny at times. I don't know. The voice acting is ok, but you can definitely tell it's budget voice acting. The sound effects were great in my opinion, your normal shooter sounds but they sounded very good through the surround system. The music was also good, it set the mood very well in tense moments and all around was decent, again, above average.

 

Gameplay: 5 out of 10, At first I didn't know how to score this. It is frustrating and fun. At first I died numerous times, I couldn't kill the first few enemies. The controls do take some getting used to. This is basically a GOW type game that seriously needed GOW controls. Alecia is quick enough as is, but she turns extremely slow. There's no cover option other than just crouching behind something, so there's no cover and shooting around the cover or anything like that. Basically this is straight run and gun. Targeting is difficult and the game slows down when in targeting mode, so most of the time, I never used it. I found it easier to just basically run up the enemies, even mobs, and just blast them at short distance rather than from a distance, EXCEPT, when the AI is dumb as rocks. The AI is not bright in some cases, some enemies seem fine, they will track you down, attack, etc. Other will just stand there like tree stumps and let you blow them away. I'll attack these from a distance, but but for moving objects I'm going to get close up. Also, jumping around avoids bullets, keep that in mind when fighting multiple enemies at once. Another tip: use the humans to your advantage, the enemies will often attack them first before you making for some easy pickins. And don't get me started on the giants, dumb dumb dumb. Some very dull AI a lot of the time.

 

The Gunrod. The Gunrod is your only weapon, but you can earn points depending on how well you finish a level. You're main function is machine gun, there's also rail gun, shotgun, and gatlin gun. They are so worthless that after wasting points on Shotgun and Rail gun I didn't even bother getting the Gatling gun. More detail...you will use the machine gun probably the entire game. I got the Rail gun because it was supposed to be good for sniping. It has a slight magnification from the machine gun in target mode, but hardly anything noticable, no other zoom, this was hardly a sniper rifle and was generally weaker. Now the Shot gun. Hot damn a nice close range weapon since I prefer to fight up close and personal...WRONG. WTF how can I be less than probably 10ft away from a target and constantly miss? It was more a pain in the ass than it was worth and ended up spending future points on maxing out my machine gun level.

 

Witchcraft: There are 3 levels of magic for Alecia. The RB, LB toggle the magic wheel. You can heal wounded humans, have a magic wall shield(worthless), impale enemies on spikes out of the ground (worthless). Lightning, Meteor, and Tornado being the strongest, there are some enemies that can only be defeated with strong magic...Tanks and Helicopters. Like the gun rod, you can spend your points on witchcraft. I didn't bother, other than impaling magic which was worthless. You can also spend your points on other things, like how fast HP and MP regenerates.

 

Overall: 6 out of 10. This is an average game, but it's a fun game, once you get the controls down. For the price you can find it, it's worth it. There is some fun times to be had, there are some cool effects and cool enemies to fight, just be warned that you will need some time initial to get the controls down.

Edited April 29, 2008 by Atari5200

[Gabriel]

By describing this as a run n' gun, you hit upon something I hadn't really known how to articulate before.

 

Most reviews make some mention of the enemy AI and typically complain how the enemies don't behave like elite special forces. First off, they're freakin' semi-intelligent zombies and animalistic mutants. How else did you expect them to act?

 

But the run n' gun comment tells me the basic difference in the way I approached this game. While the FPS veterans ventured into it as SOCOM with zombies, I approached it instead as a kind of first person Commando/Ikari Warriors type of game. The AI is irrelevant to me because I'm not expecting the enemies to be rational. The enemies are merely targets to me, just like they would be in a game of Mercs.

 

I used crouch and zoom a lot. I never bought any of the other weapons and instead just upgraded the default one whenever I had the points. I'm also a pussy and only played through Easy.

[Atari5200]

I played on normal mode and the game, at least to me, was not that difficult once you got a handle on things. There were a couple instances that took me 2, 3 or sometimes 4 or more tries to get through some place.

 

And I don't have the same opinion of the enemy. Each zombie/demon is dressed in military garb, so I took them as ex-soldiers. A soldier is not going to just stand there and die, or run around and only fire once. I'm sorry but I did expect a little more from the AI, especially the Giants. There's not a whole lot of skill needed, nor is it fun, when you have an enemy that should be a lot of fun to fight, just stand there and turn in circles while getting blasted, shooting maybe a couple times, and not at least following or chasing you.

[moycon]

I wasnt crazy about this game. The graphics were fine, the enemies were fine. I just thought it was pretty all around lame as far as gameplay went. I beat the easy no problem, played through the next difficulty level and had no issue...till the boss. Then I got my ass handed to me.