The 2K Summer Sale is officially live on Steam, and it’s the perfect excuse to find your next great escape. Summer is about having the time to truly immerse yourself, dive deep into a world, and remember exactly why you fell in love with gaming in the first place. Whether you’re
The 2K Summer Sale is officially live on Steam, and it’s the perfect excuse to find your next great escape. Summer is about having the time to truly immerse yourself, dive deep into a world, and remember exactly why you fell in love with gaming in the first place.
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Playing as an alcoholic space pirate deserted on a dangerous planet with a rude and unapologetic cyborg sounds like a messy experience. Perhaps it is, but you'll never find me calling Bulletstorm a bad game, as this fantastic FPS takes Doom's fast-paced action and combines it wit
Playing as an alcoholic space pirate deserted on a dangerous planet with a rude and unapologetic cyborg sounds like a messy experience. Perhaps it is, but you'll never find me calling Bulletstorm a bad game, as this fantastic FPS takes Doom's fast-paced action and combines it with the ridiculously over-the-top violence and witless yapping of Duke Nukem to create one heck of a fun time. It's one of my favorite shooters, and as Humble now has it at 90% off, now is the ideal time to buy it.
Bulletstorm was a blast. In an era of samey, grey-brown, war-based FPS games , People Can Fly's 2011 shooter was big, bold, vibrant and funny, exactly the kind of mash up you'd expect from the studio that created Painkiller and worked on Gears of War. Imaginative weapons, a terri
Bulletstorm was a blast. In an era of samey, grey-brown, war-based FPS games, People Can Fly's 2011 shooter was big, bold, vibrant and funny, exactly the kind of mash up you'd expect from the studio that created Painkiller and worked on Gears of War. Imaginative weapons, a terrifically vulgar leading man in the form of Grayson Hunt, and even a playable 'trailer' that sharply parodied Call of Duty and Battlefield, Bulletstorm felt like a remedy to the post-CoD 4 war shooter blues. And now, with the summer Steam sale almost upon us, and a Bulletstorm VR remaster announced for Quest, you can get the original and hugely underloved shooter for less than the price of a sandwich.
Today's Deal: Save 75% on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time
Today's Deal: Save 75% on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
We loved the original Bulletstorm in 2011, and we loved the Full Clip remaster in 2017. We'll probably also love the Switch version when it arrives end of August - a date mentioned by Sebastian Wojciechowski, CEO of developer People Can Fly, on the phone to me. But what about a p
But what about a potential Bulletstorm 2? That's what you really want to know. Steady yourself, there's hope.
"We are, as you can see [with the remaster and the Switch version], still holding this IP deep in our hearts," Wojciechowski told me. "We want this IP to have its second life. We're still not sure what that means but obviously since this is our IP - we own the IP - and the IP is known and has its fans, we would like to do something about it.
It's been eight years since Bulletstorm first popped up on our screens, and now it's about to land on a new one. Announced during Gearbox's PAX East presentation, Bulletstorm: Duke of Switch Edition does exactly what it says on the tin, bringing outrageous shooting and Duke Nukem
It's been eight years since Bulletstorm first popped up on our screens, and now it's about to land on a new one.
Announced during Gearbox's PAX East presentation, Bulletstorm: Duke of Switch Edition does exactly what it says on the tin, bringing outrageous shooting and Duke Nukem to the platform. It's due to arrive sometime this summer, but no exact release date has been given just yet.
Gearbox has a lot going on, enough to sustain a week's worth of near constant social media teases. The company will give a keynote address at PAX East next week, and after already hinting at a bunch of Borderlands-related stuff (including Borderlands 3 ), a new Penn & Teller
Gearbox has a lot going on, enough to sustain a week's worth of near constant social media teases. The company will give a keynote address at PAX East next week, and after already hinting at a bunch of Borderlands-related stuff (including Borderlands 3), a new Penn & Teller game, and something else that we don't recognize, there's yet another announcement on the cards.
That announcement seems related either to Bulletstorm or Duke Nukem, perhaps even both. Gearbox Tweeted this today:
You may recall that when Gearbox issued its re-release of Bulletstorm in 2017, Duke Nukem was available as a DLC playable character. Hence the ambiguity regarding this tease: does it mean more Bulletstorm, or more Duke, or just a bit of one of those in something else?
Obviously we won't know until next week, but if it's a new Bulletstorm game, it seems unlikely that People Can Fly will be developing it — apparently it has a Square Enix-published game in the offing. And if it's a Duke Nukem game or, indeed, anything Duke Nukem related, maybe we deserve it.
Save 75% on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition as part of this week's Weekend Deal*! Step into the boots of Grayson Hunt after a crash landing on an abandoned resort planet forces him to make a hard choice: survival or revenge. An exiled member of the elite assassin group Dead Echo,
Save 75% on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition as part of this week's Weekend Deal*!
Step into the boots of Grayson Hunt after a crash landing on an abandoned resort planet forces him to make a hard choice: survival or revenge. An exiled member of the elite assassin group Dead Echo, Grayson’s blind desire for vengeance finds his crew stranded on Stygia where he can finally confront the commander behind his betrayal—or get his team off the planet alive.
Daily Deal - Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, 33% Off
Today's Deal: Save 33% on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time
Today's Deal: Save 33% on Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
I wish I was more excited by Bulletstorm’s return. It was a ludicrous FPS, cruelly rendered inoperable by Games for Windows Live. The release of the remastered Full Clip Edition should be cause for celebration. Once again, I can steer a bullet into the ballsack of a bandit. You d
I wish I was more excited by Bulletstorm’s return. It was a ludicrous FPS, cruelly rendered inoperable by Games for Windows Live. The release of the remastered Full Clip Edition should be cause for celebration. Once again, I can steer a bullet into the ballsack of a bandit. You don’t get any more capital-v Videogames than that.
Full Clip Edition is good, because Bulletstorm is good. But sometimes being good isn’t enough, especially when I’m asked to pay £30 for a working version of a game I’d already bought. This likely isn’t Gearbox’s fault—it was EA who published the original, now defective version. That doesn’t lessen the sting of having to buy it again.
The other reason I’m souring on Bulletstorm is my own fault. I, of my own volition, started a playthrough as Duke Nukem. I didn’t have to do this. I knew going in that I’d hate it, but I couldn’t help myself. This is my story.
Duke Nukem is available to owners of Duke Nukem’s Bulletstorm Tour—a DLC ‘bonus’ given out to preorderers of the Full Clip Edition. I’m fascinated by this: pointless preorder bonuses are nothing new, but this is such a bad idea that it seems designed to put people off preordering. It’s an anti-bonus, it makes the game actively worse.
One of my favourite things about Bulletstorm is that, despite being filled with caustic, hateful characters, it is nonetheless likeable and even somewhat charming.
The problem with Duke Nukem being in Bulletstorm is that Duke Nukem isn’t a character. At his best—in Duke Nukem 3D—he’s a soundboard of stolen action movie quotes. And while Bulletstorm may have a reputation for vulgarity, its language has a purpose. Consider the line “cock-fucker-rimjobpiece-of-shit”, delivered by the actual protagonist, Grayson Hunt. It’s a beautiful line, delivered with all the machismo of an aging soldier trying to mask his own sadness. Yes, it’s puerile and childish, but that’s sort of the point—and, outside of the context, the order and rhythm of the words feels poetic.
One of my favourite things about Bulletstorm is that, despite being filled with caustic, hateful characters, it is nonetheless likeable and even somewhat charming. Duke Nukem is neither likeable nor charming, and he has no place being here. Moreover, his presence feels so awkward. His lines are crudely pasted over Grayson’s, meaning everyone else still refers to him as “Gray”. Sometimes he unfunnily comments on this. Other times he unfunnily parrots the original dialogue (even when it makes no sense for him to do so). Most of the time, he unfunnily chimes in with a quip or non sequitur, always worse than the original dialogue.
Humour is subjective, of course. I’m predisposed to not finding Duke funny because I think he’s a witless cretin with all the charisma of decomposing ham. But even I was surprised just how mundane his dialogue was here. I lasted just over hour, up to the point where, apropos of nothing, Duke shouts “hashtag ‘busy killing’”. I quit, embarrassed and a little sad.
What’s frustrating is that Duke Nukem isn’t unsalvageable. He’s a relic of an outdated era, and there’s fun to be had in a game that treated him like the irrelevance that he is. Gearbox could, for the first time in his existence, turn Duke into an actual character—not cool or badass, but endearingly awkward. But if the best they can do is hashtag jokes, maybe it’s time he was sent off to the big polygonal stripclub in the sky.
An update for Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is now in effect for Windows PC. For full notes on what's been changed or updated, see below: Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Update Notes- 6/23/17 General Added a new graphic setting for motion blur that can be adjusted based on indivi
An update for Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is now in effect for Windows PC. For full notes on what's been changed or updated, see below:
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Update Notes- 6/23/17
General
Added a new graphic setting for motion blur that can be adjusted based on individual preferences
Updated PS4 Trophy pack, save data, and startup images
Changed water to resemble it’s appearance in original Bulletstorm release
Fixes
Fixed voiceover-sync issues for Duke Nukem
Fixed an issue in which the Penetrator's firing and reload behavior could be slowed after extended use with unlimited ammo in Overkill mode
Fixed an issue that could cause the Penetrator's projectiles to not stick into some objects
An update for Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is now in effect for Windows PC. For full notes on what's been changed or updated, see below: Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Update Notes- 6/23/17 General Added a new graphic setting for motion blur that can be adjusted based on indivi
An update for Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is now in effect for Windows PC. For full notes on what's been changed or updated, see below:
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition Update Notes- 6/23/17
General
Added a new graphic setting for motion blur that can be adjusted based on individual preferences
Updated PS4 Trophy pack, save data, and startup images
Changed water to resemble it’s appearance in original Bulletstorm release
Fixes
Fixed voiceover-sync issues for Duke Nukem
Fixed an issue in which the Penetrator's firing and reload behavior could be slowed after extended use with unlimited ammo in Overkill mode
Fixed an issue that could cause the Penetrator's projectiles to not stick into some objects
Here's how big a deal Doom's shotgun was: in a game with another weapon called the Big Fucking Gun , the shotgun is the one we remember best. It's reliable at practically any distance. One clean shot to the chest will eviscerate most enemies. Somehow that pump action reload anima
Here's how big a deal Doom's shotgun was: in a game with another weapon called the Big Fucking Gun, the shotgun is the one we remember best. It's reliable at practically any distance. One clean shot to the chest will eviscerate most enemies. Somehow that pump action reload animation and its cha-chick are satisfying every single time with only five frames of animation. How many other games are confident enough to give you a gun this good 10 seconds into the first level?
Before Doom, shotguns were for shooting clay pigeons. After Doom, they were for annihilating demons. And for annihilating practically anything else: as Doom birthed a new genre, you could rely on the trusty shotgun to be there almost anytime, more steadfast and reliable than a squirrely pistol or a ammo-hungry rifle. It's our pellet pal. Our blunderbuss buddy. In the wry words of John Romero, when we spent half an hour reflecting on the design and history of Doom's shotgun: "No other game has a BFG 9000 in it, but lots of games have shotguns."
Today we're celebrating that lineage by talking about some of our favorite shotguns and why we love them. Step one: make it kick, and make 'em bleed.
How to make a great shotgun
"Number one, the damage it does is the most important part," said John Romero. He was talking about weapon design in general. There's so much that goes into a good game gun, but those pain points have the biggest impact in making a weapon feel powerful. "If it does more damage than any other gun, it doesn't matter if it has no sound effects, you're going to be using it," he laughed.
OK, but all that other stuff is important too. Animation, sound effects, the works. When they all come together, you can just feel it. It's an almost animal hell yeah. Fullbright's Steve Gaynor practically got poetic describing this sensation:
"Shooter games can be about a lot of things—the complexity of tactics as you use the environment to your advantage, the cat & mouse drama of chasing and being chased, sneaking up on your prey or falling into your enemy's trap—but it's also always about that aesthetic moment where the trigger's pulled and the audiovisual effects deliver that moment of utterly blowing a videogame creature away. And that's what the shotgun's all about. It's loud. It's sudden. And above all, it's effective."
So how do design all that stuff to feel just right? Bill Munk, animator and creative director at Tripwire, had this to say about developing Killing Floor 2:
Shooters are always about that aesthetic moment where the trigger's pulled and the audiovisual effects deliver that moment of utterly blowing a video game creature away.
Steve Gaynor
"We start with the gore system, which is a very important ingredient that makes shotguns feel devastating. Second is the impulse force applied to the creatures when they get hit, this is really important to not only make the shotgun feel powerful but also adds to the enjoyment of taking down a target. Third is the damage each pellet does, it's a hard balancing act because depending on what you shot, if it doesn't die or react the way you picture it, everything falls apart and the weapon feels unsatisfying. To balance shotguns in KF2 we first start with the price for the ammo, the weight of the gun and the time it takes to reload. Shotguns generally have massive damage but become less effective at range due to the spread of the pellets which also is a nice tool to balance these high damage weapons.
"Last but not least are the shoot animations. This is an area we've put a lot of time and research in. We animate the shots at high framerate so that we can animate the violent force when you fire a shotgun. This is a detail you barely notice in realtime but can feel the difference."
And when Killing Floor 2 slows down into Zed time, you can really see that animation at work.
You can see even more detail in KF2's shotguns firing and reloading here. They're ahead of the curve in animations, but the fact that Doom's shotgun still feels good with only five frames of reload animation shows how much the damage, muzzle flare, sound effects, and other elements of a shotgun can make it feel satisfying without much real detail.
Take Resident Evil 4's starting shotgun, a standard pump action. It's much simpler than Killing Floor 2's weapons, but blasting zombies with it feels a bit like smiting them with the fist of God. Part of that comes from RE4's once-novel over-the-shoulder weapon aiming. It's incredibly physical. You hold a button down to aim and Leon plants his feet. The camera zooms up to his shoulder, and it feels like you're aiming the shotgun with the whole of his body. The muzzle jerks sharply upward when you fire, and a single blast can send a whole crowd flying backwards. Leon pumps out the spent shell before recentering his aim. It's not fancy, but it feels sublime.
Sound off
No game gun sounds more pleasing to the ear than a shotgun except for, maybe, a bolt-action rifle. And those two weapons have something in common: both are about a single moment of release, followed by a peerless sound saying fire again, baby.
Most game weapons are about a constant stream of sound. The blam, blam, blam of a pistol, the ratatatat of an SMG, the heavy thugthugthugthug of an LMG. With a shotgun, it's all about that one shot. It's a crack of thunder, not a boom. "You need a good, sharp, aggressive sound to drive the shotgun's presence home, not some underplayed thud but a good, bracing crack," said Gaynor.
But the reload can be even better. Only a heavy bolt can match the click of a double barrel popping open and closed or the cha-chick of the pump action. That sound effect really hasn't changed much since Doom 1, and it's easy to see why.
I'd say sound is 70% of the feel of a great shotgun mostly because I've played games while they are muted and they lost the feel.
Kynan Pearson
Sound is a big part of why we love shotguns, but it's also crucial to the "feel" of hower powerful they are. "I'd say sound is 70% of the feel of a great shotgun mostly because I've played games while they are muted and they lost the feel," said Kynan Pearson, who's worked on the Halo and Metroid Prime series. "The reload noise, the boom and the pain noises create a fantastic symphony of death."
Producer Matt Powers, who worked as a producer on the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty series, wrote about this on Gamasutra:
"I kept getting feedback that our shotgun was underpowered…people really kind of hated the shotgun. When I looked at the balance numbers, the shotgun was actually a little overpowered if anything. So…after much consternation I decided to attack the balance issue from the side of perception rather than through the actual numbers themselves. I went to our audio director to talk about changing the sound. He added a bit more low end to the fire sound, pulled out some midrange and bumped up the high end to give it a sharper punch. I did not tell the team that the only thing I changed was the sound, I just asked them to give it another try to see if the changes I made addressed the balance issues they were seeing. The feedback came back unanimously positive."
Animation, sound, weight. Those are some of the ingredients of a great shotgun. So how did id make the first FPS shotgun, with no history to draw on, back in 1993?
History lesson: the original boomstick
Our love affair with the shotgun started with Doom, but for Romero, it started with two other sources: Rednecks, and Evil Dead. In one of id's earliest games, a 2D sidescroller called Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, you blast ghouls with a shotgun (and can even shoot at diagonals!). In Dave's first game, you had a pistol, but changing that to a shotgun in the sequel was an obvious move. "You're a redneck in Louisiana, of course you'd have a shotgun," Romero laughed. "We mentioned it when we were talking about Doom, we're like 'Hell yeah man, we had a shotgun in Dave and it was awesome. Why not?'"
Doom's shotgun wasn't originally in the plans for the game at all. The small team at id had the pistol, and plans for a rocket launcher, but they needed something in between. So they designed a rifle with a bayonet. The only problem: it wasn't cool enough. "We didn't like the fact that when you jabbed, it just didn't look good. It looked lame," Romero said. "We'd already had lameness issues with Catacomb 3D earlier, when you're using your hand to throw fireballs and stuff. That didn't look or feel cool. With Doom, we did have the bayonet in there, and I believe we even had it working, and it was just like, you know what? No amount of frames will make this look good."
As they started brainstorming sci-fi weapons like the BFG, their thoughts turned to Evil Dead 2. And voila: a shotgun and a chainsaw appeared. "We basically went, 'a shotgun would totally blow away that stupid rifle.' We made the shotgun, we made the chainsaw. It totally felt right in the game. We put it in, and it was just perfect. The gun cocking animation, the sound, it was perfect. The shotgun blast was great and did a good amount of damage. So that's what happened."
The Doom faithful may know that the shotgun was a Tootsietoy Dakota cap gun model bought at Toys R Us and scanned into the game using a video camera, then edited and animated in a Carmack piece of software called Fuzzy Pumper Palette Shop. It was named after a Play Doh toy. What's surprising about Romero's story is how little tuning it took to get Doom's shotgun just right. They added a spread and randomness to the firing, but treated the shotgun pellets as if they were bullets, making the gun easy to implement. And because they "wanted every gun to be effective at super far distances," handicapping the shotgun's range wasn't an issue.
"It was important that whenever we added any gun to the game, it never nullified a previous weapon. There had to be a reason for keeping the pistol around and everything else," Romero said. "The shotgun, I believe used the pistol randomness, and also added some to the spread, but not too much. So you could kill stuff at a distance. It was not like a sawed-off shotgun that would have a massive spread."
It was important that whenever we added any gun to the game, it never nullified a previous weapon.
John Romero
That would come later, of course, with Doom 2's double barrel super shotgun. First person shooters have since skewed towards treating shotguns more like the sawed off: close combat killers with a very particular purpose, a more compartmentalized approach to "balance" that gives every weapon its role.
"I feel shotguns live and die by where they sit in the balance," said Pearson. "It's easy to make a shotgun too effective or nerf it so it's not dominant in the weapon selection. I feel like shotguns need drawbacks, but part of the satisfaction is the exaggerated quality of wrecking opponents at close range. I prefer tight spread with damage dampening at distance. Everyone has different preferences so it depends on the game."
We can still delight in a good kill with a well-balanced modern military tactical 12-gauge, but our favorite shotguns are the ones that defy those restrictions. Look at the shotgun in Halo: Combat Evolved, which was overshadowed by the pistol but still had tremendous range and a vast ammo reserve.
Other shotguns do something unique to stand out, either in how they affect enemies and the world, or in how they let lead fly.
Blaster master
When I get a headshot with a pistol I expect, at best, a backflip or an exploding skull. But much of the joy of a shotgun comes from its physicality. I want my enemies blown backwards by raw force. This is where other elements of the game come into play to make the shotgun itself better. A perfect example, Gaynor explained, is Bioshock's shotty:
"It reinforces what makes a great shotgun on its own—an awesome muzzle flash, great pump action animation, amazing sound design, and high destructive power—but also how important its effect on enemies can be. Not just the blood effects or how much damage it does, but how they flip, spin, and pirouette through the environment when blasted. BioShock used tech that allowed the enemies to do a crafted death animation—ie spinning through the air in response to catching a handful of buckshot in the side—and transition that smoothly into a dynamic ragdoll that leaves them convincingly sprawled on the environment in the aftermath. Blasting Splicers with the shotgun was great because the shotgun was great, yes, but also because the Splicers were such wonderful fodder, their reaction to your blasting being an integral part of the whole exchange."
This is one area where Valve's typically soft weapons really shine: Left4Dead 2's shotguns can lift a group of zombies off their feet and send them flying. They also absolutely shred enemies. Valve's Alex Vlachos gave a great talk about Left 4 Dead 2's wounds at the 2010 Game Developer's Conference, and you can see how the system works in this presentation. This applies to all weapons, but shotguns are your best bet for blowing off limbs or big chunks of torso.
Gaynor similarly praised the F.E.A.R shotgun's "effect on a highly dynamic gameworld, where firing this thing off causes dust, concrete chunks, and broken glass to fly everywhere. But of course it would be nothing if not for F.E.A.R.'s slow-mo bullet time mechanic, allowing you to enjoy the shotgun's effects at half speed, every frame of its destructive power lovingly rendered for the player's satisfaction. Jumping over a barricade, going into slow-mo, and hearing an enemy soldier shout "OOoooohhhhhh shiiiiiiittttttt" as you pull the trigger, causing him to backflip over a railing with balletic grace, is maybe one of the most satisfying interactions in any FPS game. Oh, and if you play your cards right and get up into point-blank range, this thing can straight-up mist an enemy in one shot. That's how badass it is."
Romero and Bill Munk both called out Soldier of Fortune's shotgun for similar destructive power. "Soldier of Fortune, especially for the time, really showed the brutality of a shotgun and made the player feel extremely powerful based on the gore system," Munk said. "But for overall feel I'd have to give it to F.E.A.R. The first time you experience a shotgun in slow-mo seeing every pellet fly and the ragdoll react to it is a thing of beauty!"
Soldier of Fortune sure wins for nastiness, though.
Gettin' weird with it
God I love the flak cannon. In my imagination, the flak cannon is what would happen if the god of death metal looked at a normal shotgun and turned it into an industrial tool that could conveniently be used to shred men into paste. It's not simply firing a shell when you pull the trigger: a metal piston slams forward to propel a disc the size of a hockey puck out of the muzzle, where it separates into a spreading pattern of glowing superheated scrap. You can watch every piece make bloody contact with your enemy, but it also has a utility unlike any other shotgun: bouncing those metal meteors around corners to shred bad dudes from afar. Is there any wonder it's our favorite gun ever?
When Doom gave us a shotgun to blast demons, it was novel. Now that every shooter has its own take on the shotgun—and it's usually pretty straightforward—we love the flak cannon and other alternative shotguns for stepping out of that mold.
The flak cannon's secondary fire is a perfect example: it concentrates the heavy damage of the shotgun into a single arcing grenade that's harder to land, but offers concentrated damage you won't get at range with a spreading flak cloud.
Romero himself designed a shotgun that was meant to diverge from the straightforward utility of Doom's shotgun: Daikatana's Shotcycler-6.
Daikatana had rocket jumping, but because its rocket launcher fired two shots, it would really hurt. "I thought, can I make a safer rocket jump type weapon?" Romero remembered. "With the Shotcycler-6 I can do six shots, and if you jump it'll take you up to another place. I thought that would be kinda cool for people who are good, and know the secret of the shotgun jump. So it's basically six shots, who doesn't love that, with kickback enough that you can actually get propelled up in the air, almost like a rocket launcher."
Gears of War 4's Overkill is a madman's fusion of double-barrel and auto shotty: it fires a shell from one of four barrels on mouse click and on mouse release, giving you the flexibility for tactical timing or a panicked barrage of eight shots in the span of a second.
Bulletstorm's ridiculous four barreled shotgun has a charge shot that simply vaporizes enemies, burning them away to nothing but bones. It's a fitting middle finger to the concept of balance.
And though it was a short-lived glitch, not an intentional design, I have to sing the praises of the most overpowered shotgun of all time: Battlefield 3's briefly broken underslung M26 DART. A patch made every 12 gauge flechette pellet deal the full damage of the assault rifle's primary bullets, making the spread an ungodly cloud of death. And yet it's so politely soft-spoken.
In conclusion
Videogame shotguns are rad. When you use a good one, appreciate it: marvel at its kick, its cocking action, its thundercrack, and the knockback like no other.
"There's something inherently satisfying about video game guns that are built to be 'one shot, one kill' like, say, a hefty magnum revolver, or a bolt-action sniper rifle," said Gaynor. "And that's also the shotgun's job... with the added benefit of not really having to aim. Who could ask for more?"
The controversy surrounding the practices of digital marketplace G2A was brought into sharp relief earlier this month when a planned collector's edition of the Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition , developed in partnership with Gearbox, went completely sideways. After YouTuber TotalBi
The controversy surrounding the practices of digital marketplace G2A was brought into sharp relief earlier this month when a planned collector's edition of the Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, developed in partnership with Gearbox, went completely sideways. After YouTuber TotalBiscuit brought the arrangement to widespread (and very negative) attention, Gearbox demanded immediate changes from G2A and threatened to kill the deal if they weren't met. G2A declined, saying that its practices are already above-board in every way Gearbox wanted, and that was the end of that.
Through it all, a simple question hung in the background: How did Gearbox not see this coming? Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford shuffled responsibility onto Gearbox Publishing chief Steve Gibson, and said that he (and implied that Gibson) had never heard of G2A prior to the blowup. To my mind, it was hard to imagine that highly-placed people in the industry, whose business is literally making and selling videogames, wouldn't be aware of one of the most notorious key resellers in operation. But in a recent blog post, tinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik offered his take on how a deal like that could come about.
Nichiporchik began the post by saying that he too was initially baffled by the whole thing. In the wake of tinyBuild's own unhappy encounter with G2A last year, when it accused G2A of selling $450,000 worth of its games without paying it a single dollar, "it felt like everyone understood the situation and we haven't bothered with it much since," he wrote. But a little later on, as he was preparing for this weekend's Reboot Develop conference in Croatia, he noticed a familiar name on the speaker list: Marius (Mario) Mirek, the G2A senior account manager he'd butted heads with earlier this year at GDC.
Mirek's bio on the speaker's list describes him and G2A in fairly glowing terms, as you'd expect, and also identifies him "as the G2A staff member whom accosted Tiny Build at GDC and called them out on their torrent of accusations." Nichiporchik admitted that the description upset him, but insisted that his focus is simply trying to "understand how a deal like G2A and Gearbox could come about." He cited several examples of conferences where G2A had been rejected as a speaker and/or sponsor, presumably to buttress his claims of shadiness, but then mentioned another one that took place in October 2016, where Mirek had given a presentation on behalf of G2A.
"Imagine I'm an industry executive. Odds are I'm very busy running a large business, and don't have the time to follow industry drama about marketplaces. Then I see a marketplace positioned alongside very reputable companies, I wouldn't think twice about their reputation if they're next to CD Projekt Red, Apple, 343, Obsidian, etc. If a company I don't know is amongst reputable speakers, there's no reason for doubt in making a business deal with said marketplace," he said. "This is how I believe a deal like we saw with Gearbox and G2A could come together."
"Game conferences are the face of our industry, and I believe it's important for them to take responsibility for who represents it—potentially preventing situations as described with Gearbox," Nichiporchik concluded.
All of which makes sense, except for one point: If you're the head of a game publishing company, large or small, then I would think that having some awareness of who you're making deals with would be part of your job. This isn't just "industry drama," this is a company you're doing business with that stands accused of hosing a fellow publisher out of its share of nearly a half-million bucks. Of course the guy making the presentation is going to present it as a shining beacon of awesomeness; Gearbox once said that Aliens: Colonial Marines was going to be a great game, after all. But if you're just taking a guy at his word because he managed to secure a speaking spot at a conference in Moscow, then whose fault is it really when things go flop?
Gearbox and G2A got into a surprise beef last week when the backlash against the Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition collectors' box, prompted by complaints from YouTuber TotalBiscuit, led the publisher to threaten to kill the deal unless its demands for changes in the way G2A conducts
Gearbox and G2A got into a surprise beef last week when the backlash against the Bulletstorm Full Clip Edition collectors' box, prompted by complaints from YouTuber TotalBiscuit, led the publisher to threaten to kill the deal unless its demands for changes in the way G2A conducts business were immediately met. They were not, leading Gearbox to begin "executing on our extraction process," as the company said in a statement released just ahead of the weekend.
Today, G2A issued a lengthy statement of its own, in which it denied the allegations made against it and claimed that it's actually already doing everything that Gearbox called for.
"It all began with a few negative reactions from some YouTubers, and in particular from John 'TotalBiscuit' Bain, to an announcement that G2A.com is working together with Gearbox Publishing. Our partner, Gearbox Publishing, unfortunately decided to publicly publish a letter with a list of ultimatums, without consulting us about the truth of the allegations made by John Bain," G2A wrote. "This is an excellent example that rash actions, without full knowledge of the facts, can be harmful to both the developer and the marketplace. Especially since all of the requests made of G2A.com in the ultimatum have in fact long been part of our marketplace."
Gearbox's first demand was that G2A Shield, essentially a fraud protection service that's available on a per-purchase or subscription basis, be made free for everyone—something G2A declined to do. All customers have access to full consumer protections, it wrote, initially through the key seller and then, if that goes nowhere, by contacting G2A. The site will then reach out to the seller itself to try to "bring about a satisfactory resolution for both parties," typically within a few hours. G2A Shield simply eliminates the need to go to the reseller first by running everything through its own 24-hour live chat channel: The idea, then, is that you're not paying for protection, but for convenience, which G2A described as "very well-priced given the benefits it offers."
It also denied Gearbox's allegation that it hits buyers with hidden fees, saying that "all fees and rates are clearly and explicitly described in corresponding tables" on the site. Taxes are based on the buyer's country, and fees arising from the method of payment may also be applicable, but they are "independent of G2A.com, and we clearly inform the buyer about them before any purchase is made," it wrote.
But the big "no" has to be its response to the call for a free web service or API that will enable certified developers and publishers to search for and flag fraudulent keys in G2A's database. The legality of the keys it sells is "of the utmost importance," it said, because it refunds—at its own cost—game keys that stop working, even long after they're purchased.
The real issue, it claimed, isn't the trade in fraudulent keys, but that games are being sold through the site at all, out of developers' control and at lower prices than they want, "which is why they accuse us using baseless and unproven allegations."
"The problem is that some developers do not want to accept that people resell their games. The developers would like to control the market and all the sales channels within it, imposing higher prices and prohibiting the resale of unused games. G2A.com does not agree with this—we respect the buyers’ rights, buyers who often unfortunately believe that the rules set forth by developers follow the law," it wrote. "This is why G2A.com will not give developers with whom we have not signed an agreement unlimited access to and the ability to modify our databases. G2A.com has to protect every honest seller, and by giving such access to all developers, we would allow for a situation in which a developer could delete every key on our marketplace regardless of its origin. Such an action would be damaging to the industry, to gamers, and illegal."
By contrast, the G2A Direct program it offers requires signed contracts with developers and publishers, making it much more unlikely that they'll do anything untoward. "Therefore, they are the only ones who are able to check our database independently and without limitation," it wrote.
"We respect our critics and believe that they have the good of the industry at heart. Unfortunately, sometimes they do not understand how G2A.com works and as such this misunderstanding causes them to mislead the public about our company," it concluded. "The best proof of this are the four ultimatums formulated in part by John Bain, which, it turns out that were completely unnecessary as all of the issues raised have long been a part of the G2A.com marketplace."
"Most of the allegations levied against us are based on both a lack of knowledge, and a lack of desire to learn the other side of the story. The best example of this is quoting false and defamatory statements while ignoring the facts."
G2A say "nope," then, which isn't entirely surprising. What caught me off guard is the relative bluntness of it all: Instead of PR-friendly promises of ongoing negotiations or upcoming new programs, it's a straight-up "Get bent." I don't know how well that will play with its intended audience, but it's certainly interesting to see G2A draw such an unmistakable line in the sand.
Also interesting is the response to the controversy from Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford on Twitter. He thanked TotalBiscuit for his help and claimed that he'd never heard of G2A until last week; he also emphasized that Gearbox Publishing—a separate and new division of Gearbox Software, headed not by him but by Steve Gibson—is "running that business," and was simply trying to accommodate the wishes of Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly.
As for the fate of the Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition box that prompted the whole kerfuffle, the statement made no mention of it whatsoever, but the listing on the G2A website is no longer present.
I've reached out to Gearbox for further comment, and will update if I receive a reply. Tangentially related, we've got some thoughts on the Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, "a pricey remaster of a great game," right here.
Bulletstorm, with its gore comedy and vulgar hyper-masculinity, was a satiric throwback to Duke Nukem, and a game far better than Duke Nukem: Forever. Duke just couldn't let that stand, though, so now he's in Bulletstorm, trying to stink it up with his irrelevance. Get outta here
Bulletstorm, with its gore comedy and vulgar hyper-masculinity, was a satiric throwback to Duke Nukem, and a game far better than Duke Nukem: Forever. Duke just couldn't let that stand, though, so now he's in Bulletstorm, trying to stink it up with his irrelevance. Get outta here, Duke, Bulletstorm doesn't need you.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, released today, is a remaster of the 2011 sci-fi FPS—with a side of Duke, but more on that later—and it's still a lot of fun. The script sometimes fails to satirize terrible attitudes, instead just including them, but it has its moments, and the giblet-spraying shooting is fantastic. Bulletstorm holds up well nearly six years after release, but it's really too bad the original is no longer available on Steam or Origin for cheaper. Full Clip Edition is $50/£30, which is a lot for a nearly six-year-old game, even a remastered one.
The new version is supposed to have "hi-res textures, increased polygon counts, sterling audio, and smoother frame rates." Without being able to grab the original anymore, it's hard to say how much better it looks except by comparing it to the old trailers. It is prettier, though it certainly wouldn't pass for anything close to new—you can judge by the screenshots in this article. I definitely appreciate that Full Clip Edition works with my 21:9 ultrawide display and has an unlockable framerate, though I'm annoyed that I haven't found a way to turn off motion blur.
Adding a little to the value is the included original DLC, which brings some co-op and competitive multiplayer maps. And then there's the new, $5 DLC which inserts Duke Nukem into the main character's place. If you didn't get the Duke Nukem add-on automatically by pre-ordering, don't buy it. It's supposed to be funny that Duke doesn't know where he is—"I'd make a boner joke, but I don't even know where I am," he says, for example—and that people keep calling him by the wrong name, but it just ruins the otherwise dumb-but-entertaining story. And it isn't funny. We get it with the bubblegum line, you dull hack.
It's a gory Looney Toons cartoon, so full of ways to blow up, dismember, electrocute, and impale marauders that it's easy to do any of those things accidentally.
The shooting is Bulletstorm's raison d'être, anyway, and it's more violent than Duke's ever been. Bulletstorm's skillshot system, which rewards you for, say, shooting a guy in the nuts and then stomping on his head, is disgustingly fun. It's a gory Looney Toons cartoon, so full of ways to blow up, dismember, electrocute, and impale marauders that it's easy to do any of those things accidentally. Like kicking a guy into an alien cactus, to which Bulletstorm responds: "PRICKED 100+"
To keep you from having to run up to every guy who's shooting at you so you can do something silly, you have a 'leash' which whips out from your left arm, grabs enemies or objects, and pulls them toward you. It's like Roadhog's hook, except with four times the range, much more forgiving aim, and enemies flail through the air and enter slow-mo when they get close so you can blow up their heads.
It's unnerving how creatively-violent Bulletstorm can be. There's a gun that shoots drills, for instance, and if you impale someone against a rock it'll spin their limbs off. Hayao Miyazaki would probably call the whole game "an insult to life itself," and he wouldn't be wrong.
Rich McCormick explained Bullestorm well in his original review: "It's difficult to defend, like a friend you take to a party who ends up pissing in a vase. You don't want to be associated with him, but shit, he provides an evening of excitement."
Maybe I get along with Bulletstorm because I also ruin parties, though I still wouldn't pay 50 bucks to play it again. For newcomers who missed it back in 2011, it's worth playing and the remaster runs well, but I hope this year's Steam Summer Sale graces us with a discount.
