There's a storm a-brewin' in our Bulletstorm preview

Has there ever been such a manly name for a video game as Bulletstorm? You can just imagine some beefy, hotshot hero taking out hordes of baddies with an automatic weapon, then turning to the camera and muttering the word in his gruff voice, before stamping on a few heads. "Bulletstorm"... *crush*. Of course, considering the amount of lead you'll be pumping into your enemy before they've even hit the floor, the name is also rather appropriate.
 

The weapons are completely OTT, and we love it!

Bulletstorm combines two tried and tested elements to staggering effect - whips and slow-mo. Just Cause 2 most recently proved that we love grabbing and yanking enemies, while pretty much every single console game since Max Payne has thrown a bit of bullet time into the mix. And yet Bulletstorm does things a little differently - rather than taking down your enemies quickly and efficiently, you're given the chance to play with them via your incredibly over-the-top arsenal of weaponry.

Every gun available is both very large and very dangerous, and you'll feel invincible as you blast your way through the onslaught. Shooting baddies is for losers, though - keeping them alive for as long as possible before delivering the final, skeleton-shattering blow is where the real party is at.

This is where the whip comes into play. Grab an enemy with the left shoulder button and pull them towards you. As they soar in your direction, a blue light will suddenly encapsulate their body, and they'll float towards you in slow motion. At this point, you have two main options - lay into their defenceless, floating presence with your beast of a weapon, or bring your foot up to meet them. Both are extremely satisfying, and they'll no doubt fly back in the opposite direction.



This isn't the end though - while they're still in the air, you've still got work to do. Maybe you want to fill them with a bit more lead, or perhaps bring the whip back out and drag them back in your direction, all still in slow motion. It's possible to whip, kick, whip, shoot, whip and deliver a final spray of gunfire before their body finally gives in and sprays their innards everywhere - at which point you'll earn plenty of lovely bonuses, including the likes of 'Frequent Flyer' and '4th of July'.

Just describing the slaughter ritual gets us all excited at the prospect of a whole game's worth of enemy juggling and death by experimentation. Mixing up how you kill each enemy is great fun, and there are bound to be plenty of new killing methods unlocked as you progress through the main story.
 

Let him taste your whip, then your foot

The controls are so wonderfully fluid too - switching from whip to kick to grenade to bullet spray feels so smooth, and within minutes we were pulling off intense and spectacular combos. Epic Games wants you to have fun with its baby, hence everything is so simple to pull off, yet looks so insanely impressive.

The environment can be used to great effect in your killings. In the preview level we played through, we were able to further prolong the agony by embedding enemies in cacti and kicking statues over to crush the opposition. Again, experimenting with your murderous ways will earn you plenty of different bonuses and keep a huge grin stuck to your face.

In terms of graphical style, there's no doubting that Bulletstorm looks cool as f*ck. It's somewhere between Borderlands and Timesplitters - the futuristic, sci-fi setting means you've got lots of ugly-looking things to take down, but the visuals lean more towards the comical side of things rather than realistic. The boss battles in particular are shaping up to be something quite epic in scale.

The only aspect of the game we didn't immediately click with was the characters. You play as Grayson Hunt, an exile from a band of mercenaries called Dead Echo. With his old partner Ishi Sato, Grayson finds himself trapped in a gorgeous yet deadly paradise, filled with flesh-eating creatures and mutants weirdoes.

Hunt and Sato's quest to escape from the island is worthy enough of your time, but the characters don't appear all that interesting. Having said that, the voice-acting doesn't sound too shabby, and perhaps we'll grow to like the pair. Considering it's a man and woman duo, we'd wager certain sexual sparks are going to fly at some point during the couple's voyage.
 

Some of the killing bonuses are really quite hilarious

Bulletstorm is going to be one of the early, big releases of next year, but whether it will be incredible rather than simply great remains to be seen. Hopefully as we start to see more details emerging over the coming months, we'll catch glimpses of even more beefy monstrosities of weapons, and even more entertaining methods of torture. Bulletstorm will be released for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on February 2011.

Most Anticipated Feature: Achieving every single special bonus by killing enemies via every possible method.