Bullet Witch

"I'd like to put bullets in this witch..."

It's been a long hiatus since my last review, but yesterday, I decided to start reviewing again. As I searched for a great new game to play at my video store, my eye immediately fell on Bullet Witch. I mean, it looked like it could be a really great game, but, sadly, my return to reviewing is on a game that was severely disappointing.

As the title would suggest, the protagonist (Alicia), has guns. At first, you are only able to use the machine gun, but as you beat levels, you gain the ability to upgrade your machine gun or purchase “new” guns like shotguns, sniper rifles, etc. The reason I have the word “new” in quotations is because all of these guns look almost exactly the same, except the barrels are shorter or longer. This is very annoying and makes it so the only way you can really tell what gun you currently have equipped is by looking at how many bullets are in it. Even then, you'll probably pull out a shotgun when you think it's a sniper rifle and end up in a world of hurt. Also, if you cycle through your weapons too fast, you'll probably miss the one you were trying to cycle to, meaning you have to cycle through your weapons again in order to get to the one you want, which is just plain annoying.

We've covered the “bullet” part of the game's title, but what about the “witch” part? Obviously, Alicia can take advantage of various spells that are at her disposal. Some of these spells are pretty creative and original, but most of them are relatively useless. You can create an “ancient wall” which simply provides cover for a short time. However, I found that the ancient wall was almost never useful as the monsters you had to fight were usually surrounding you, instead of just trying to shoot you from one direction. Also, some enemies won't be affected by your guns, so you have to use the Lightning Spell, which, as its name suggests, calls lightning from the sky and creates a satisfyingly huge explosion. You can spray blood on people in order to give them health back, but this feature isn't very rewarding and just a waste of time, really. One spell that I thought was pretty interesting was Willpower, which was works very much like the Force in Star Wars. Basically, Alicia will hold out her hand and stuff will fly at enemies. Sadly, this spell is very flawed as, for some reason, you'll be trying to push one car, but a car that you weren't even looking at will just fly in a random direction. When you beat levels, you will gain the ability to upgrade your spells and buy new ones, like a spell that calls a flock of ravens to attack enemies.

Most of the enemies in the game are undead soldiers with bazookas, sniper rifles, machine gun, and various other weapons. These guys may take some pretty well-aimed shots to take down, but usually aren't that big of a hassle. Accompanying the undead soldiers are tanks that have machine gun turrets on the back of them as well as the ability to shoot a rocket at you. These rockets are almost always one-hit kills, which can become very frustrating when you are in a big battle with a tank and a ton of undead soldiers. The only way to take a tank down is by using Lightning, but the short cinematic that comes with using this spell becomes just way too old to watch over and over again. Finally, there are these floating demons with huge brains that are so smart, you can actually SEE their brain power surrounding their brain in a color-coded fashion. At first, all these guys do is float in mid-air while you shoot at them (you have to kill them in order to progress in levels because they put up force fields that block your path), but later they will throw vehicles at you. Now, at the beginning of the game when they first start throwing stuff at you, it's pretty cool dodging all the cars and trucks being thrown at you (which Alicia does by a simple tap of the LT button---she performs various flips in the direction you move her), but later when you have to worry about the floating brain guys AND tanks AND undead soldiers, this can lead to very cheap deaths. Say you have to kill a ton of undead soldiers, destroy a couple of tanks, and have to worry about the floating brain guy throwing cars at you? You may think that might not sound very hard, but trust me, when you are glad you just beat a ton of soldiers (which not too far in the game becomes a very frustrating hassle) and a car flies out of nowhere from your blind spot, crushes you, and kills you with one hit, you'll be throwing controllers.

As you may have guessed from my previous paragraph, the camera in this game is pretty horrible, considering how the game is played. Enemies will be shooting at you from all directions, but how are you suppose to know where the hell they are? Also, say you don't know a floating brain guy is around, you just spend five minutes killing enemies and you are ready to go on to the next level, then, out of NOWHERE, a truck barrels into you. How irritating is that? Well, let me tell you, it's very, very irritating.

I have no idea how many civilians I accidentally shot because they ran in front of my freaking gun. The civilian A.I., as well as the A.I. of the soldiers that will aid you later in the game, are simply horrible. The soldiers will rarely, very rarely, kill anything, which makes you think that maybe mankind deserved this apocalypse if the soldiers of the world can't shoot a freaking gun! However, the enemy A.I. (save for the floating brain demons and the tanks) isn't that great, either. The undead soldiers will often ignore you if there is a civilian around and simply spend their time shooting the hell out of the civilian, which is pretty lame, considering there is a scantily-clad witch going around killing all of their buddies.

One of the few things that really impressed me with Bullet Witch was, not so much the story, but all the disasters they list at the beginning of the game, with even a death toll accompanying them. The story isn't really that great at all, though, and only weird people like me would probably be fascinated with the game's apocalyptic happenings.

Wow. I never thought an Xbox 360 game could be as ugly as Bullet Witch is, but I was very, very wrong. The environments are all dull and look like they came from a low-budget PlayStation 2 action game, instead of an action game released on the Xbox 360. Nearly all the enemies are identical, and their designs barely even make them look THAT dead. Seriously, if you are far away enough, you won't be able to tell the undead soldiers, with their guns, from the cowering civilians. That, my friend, is just plain sad. Also, the game is filled with glitches that will have you walking through various objects in the environment. The character models were somewhat better, but they weren't that great, especially compared to other Xbox 360 games like Gears of War or Prey.

The music wasn't extraordinary, but there aren't any complaints in the sound department. The game's audio wasn't that amazing, but wasn't that bad, either.

With only six stages, Bullet Witch falls very short of playtime, but does have some minor replayability if you feel like buying all the weapons and upgrading them to the fullest. However, I seriously doubt you'll want to play through Bullet Witch more than once (if you even make it through once). There is no multiplayer and nothing really to unlock, which mostly kills the replayability for most gamers (except for the previously mentioned upgrading and buying of weapons and spells).

Bullet Witch isn't just one of the worst games on the Xbox 360 that I've ever played, but it is one of the worst games I have ever played period. Hopefully, the next Xbox 360 title I have the chance to play will be much better than Bullet Witch. If you really want to try out this game, rent it. Do not, and I mean, do not buy this game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/26/07