A dozen years later, Bulletstorm, by some means, endures.
You wouldn’t count on it for a sport that, in hindsight, scans extra as a Duke Nukem-esque responsible pleasure that got here nowhere near its gross sales expectations. Gratuitously violent and absurdly foul-mouthed (does anybody else bear in mind “Hey, dick tits!”?), even when Bulletstorm drew laudatory opinions for its gameplay, significantly its ammunition economic system, it hardly looks like a sport that might be referred to as “forward of its time.”
However it’s, insists Radomir Kucharski of Incuvo, the Polish digital actuality port store that Bulletstorm maker Folks Can Fly acquired on the finish of 2021.
“Once we have been trying to find a subsequent venture, we checked out Bulletstorm and thought this sport, with its mechanics, was truly, like, designed for VR,” Kucharski mentioned. “Bulletstorm is so action-packed, so near the motion, and with such bodily interplay, it simply regarded prefer it was designed for VR.”
On the time, Incuvo was unbiased and recent from its VR adaptation of two of Bloober Group’s horror titles — Layers of Worry and Blair Witch, each for Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR. Incuvo had discovered success adapting established video games on a work-for-hire foundation, and Kucharski was searching for one other hit to maintain the studio’s momentum going. It additionally helped that Folks Can Fly, like Bloober Group, is a Poland-based developer.
Extra essential, Kucharski mentioned, was the cult-hit standing Bulletstorm continues to get pleasure from. Digital Arts and Epic Video games virtually deserted the property after it fell far in need of revenue and gross sales expectations. Folks Can Fly, which Epic acquired in 2013 after which spun off in 2015, retained possession of the franchise, and nonetheless had sufficient of an viewers to warrant remastered releases for consoles in 2017 and 2019.
“I used to be big-time into first-person shooters,” mentioned Kucharski, a developer who had labored on Medal of Honor and different navy shooters within the decade previous Bulletstorm’s launch. “I discovered Bulletstorm very distinctive; I assumed the gameplay was very recent, one thing that was groundbreaking at that time.”
The groundbreaking parts, which appeared to take a again seat to all of the cussing and the violence within the unique advertising, have been Bulletstorm’s “skillshot” gameplay loop; using the setting to creatively remove enemies; and the “vitality leash” that hero Grayson Hunt makes use of to lasso foes, stun them, or fling them to their doom.
The leash, Kucharski mentioned, is probably the most VR-ready function of Bulletstorm’s unique gameplay. Reloading a weapon, for instance, is a extra significant expertise. The twin-wield nature, of a gun in a single hand and the leash in one other, is extra simply expressed via a devoted controller in every hand of the participant, Kucharski reasoned. “That is one thing that was merely not doable utilizing customary controllers, or a keyboard and mouse.”
Bulletstorm VR is certainly not a rail-shooter adaptation of the franchise, Kucharski emphasised. Gamers could freely roam the degrees as they did within the unique. The variation can also be trustworthy to the unique story, although Kucharski mentioned the sport isn’t a “one-to-one copy. I wish to say it’s a brand new sport, however it’s the similar unique story.” Half of the degrees are precisely the identical as the unique Bulletstorm, he mentioned, “however there’s new content material,” even when that doesn’t imply narrative modifications.
“We used a number of property from the unique sport,” Kucharski mentioned. “We needed to redo a few of the stuff, clearly, we needed to change the engine from the outdated Unreal 3 to, I imagine, 4.27 is what we’re utilizing proper now. We needed to recreate a number of stuff, however the property are primarily based on the originals.”
Bulletstorm VR, introduced originally of June, will launch later in 2023 for Meta Quest and PlayStation VR 2. For all of his discuss Bulletstorm’s superior gameplay, Kucharski mentioned this one will nonetheless carry the identical smirky tone of its forebear.
“Yeah, the sport remains to be fairly violent,” he chortled. “It’s very over-the-top with the violence. It’s not critical; it’s enjoyable.”
