Bullet Witch Reviews

  • Corvus Q7Corvus Q70
    08 Feb 2009
    59 4 12
    Okay so let’s start off, if you’re one of those people who mainly enjoy games with huge budgets, cutting edge tech, awesome graphics and great magazine/website reviews, you will probably want the people who made this game to pay for their sins. If you’re one of those people who enjoy odd, quirky, clunky yet strangely charming Japanese games, well this could be something you might really enjoy. Pretty good for those of you who want a fairly easy 999 points (the last 1 point for beating the hardest difficulty isn’t so bad in my opinion.)

    So to start off Bulletwitch is a single player, third person shooter. If you don’t know what a third person shooter is, think of gears of war, or Earth Defense Force… Basically it is a lot like a first person shooter, except you can see your character running around to help you avoid projectiles, attacks, debris and navigate the environment. What sets Bulletwitch apart from other games around these days is one, oh my goodness it has a health bar. I know many of you youngsters these days may find the concept of a health bar foreign, alien and even crazy, but back in the day Health Bars were the thing and awesome folk like myself love them. You see most games these days you stop and sit around for a minute when your screen goes fuzzy then you’re fine and dandy, in this… well you’re health is constantly slowly regenerating but still, for those of you used to the fuzzy screen business it might freak you out.

    Then you have a magic bar which also constantly regenerates, but it is a littler trickier since the cap for the bar slides up and down depending on the spells you use and how many enemies you kill. If you ou use a lot of spells but don’t kill any enemies, your bar will only regenerate 10% full, so get killin. Spells are pretty snazzy and also one of the other things that sets this game apart. I might as well describe some of them now. You can summon up a wall which will pop up out of the ground and you can hide behind while your health regenerates. You can throw a rose grenade which will cause spikes to erupt from the ground and instantly kill most any basic enemy. You can summon ravens to distract, confuse and immobilize your opponents (probably will be your most used spell if you plan to run through the game as fast as possible.) You can charge your weapon with elemental properties fire, wind and lightning bullets, you can also turn your anti tank cannon into a sniper rifle. Then you have some really nifty Super spells which would be my favorite.

    I will cut to the chase and say perhaps my favorite part of the game are the spells Tornado and Meteor. Tornado summons a gigantic tornado onto the level, ripping apart the environment, picking up everything not nailed down to the level and throwing it about all willy nilly, most enemies will be taken as well but those that hang on will probably get crushed by all the stuff about to be raining down on their head when the spell is over. Then of course you got meteor which really summons gigantic meteors from the sky crushing skyscrapers and blowing the crap out of stuff when they land. Have fun knocking down skyscrapers like dominos and killing most anything in the level quite easily. With these spells you must be careful though, any debris from the tornado spell or debris or even the meteors themselves will kill you, usually instantly if they land on you, and so you might want to take a step back when the chaos ensues.

    Then you have your main weapon the gun (which is really modeled after to be a stylish witch’s broom.) Your gun can transform into an assault rifle, shotgun, anti tank rifle and a big ole gatling gun. All these weapons have different uses, some you might not see or appreciate at first but if you decide to actually go more for a high score on the leader board than just achievements, you will be pleasantly surprised how the weapons have different uses for specific situations.

    There are 6 stages all together, although two of them are just different versions of eachother. None of the stages are especially long, you can easily run through each stage if you run passed all enemies and avoid getting shot. Each difficulty presents you with the same amount of enemies, just as the difficulty changes they are harder to kill or kill you faster. There is a fair amount of different enemies, the large majority of enemies you will fight are odd skinless soldiers, which I suppose could be frightening, but really I just find them cheesy and awkward in a odd anime villain way. You got your basic soldiers, shotgun, rifle, rocket, assault, heavy soldiers, also there are some of them who carry really big guns but have decided they are Chuck Norris and would prefer simply to chase you down and roundhouse kick you instead. Then you have captains who lead these demonic flesh soldiers, of course then you have more specialized enemies, like giants, tanks, walnut heads who use telekinesis to try and kill you (actually surprisingly effective if you let your guard down) and a few other odd enemies.

    The story is interesting yet uninspired, it basically feels like sitting down and watching a made for tv movie that is already 20 minutes underway and then ends abruptly still leaving you to wonder wtf just happened, wtf will happen and yet oddly wanting more. The characters are fairly generic but I still find them quite charming, memorable and enjoyable. The voice acting is bad of course; the character animations are odd and clunky for the most part, although the Bulletwitch is still quite nice to look at. The graphics aren’t anything special and the actual shooting gameplay often feels odd and inconsistent. But I mean what else do you expect from a game like this? Oh yeah and for those of you who care about sound quality, yeah it sucks too.

    Overall though as much as mediocre pie this game is constantly shoveling down it’s throat I really love it, the gameplay, artistic style, characters, feel and environment of this game really appeal to me. It is enough to make up for most any of the flaws. I really honestly enjoy the game, it is also a pretty quick 1000, the last achievement I need to unlock at the time of writing this review is to play the game for 15 hours.

    As far as x-box live content goes it is overpriced, made to steal your MS and for everyone except hardcore fans is not worth buying, also the leaderboards are kind of fun, trying to get the best score you can on the different levels, but the leaderboards themselves seem kind of glitchy so really isn’t anything to get worked up about.

    Oh yeah, there are also a few boss battles they are okay, but basically the coolest stuff is the spells, the feel of the game, destructible environments, I really love this game in a weird way so there ya go. Oh yeah and since people seem to concern themselves with these things, I am not going to say if you should buy it, rent it or imagine in your brain that you're playing it. I bought it and I am quite happy with my purchase, but on the otherhand I enjoy playing with string, tape and elastic bands from time to time.
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    Phoenix C64you can be 29, 39 or 49... but your attitude is from a retarded 9y. old dickhead.
    i enjoyed onenchanbara and after reading this review and watching a few videos i think i'll get this one too. low budged game with no story? just what i need after a stressfull work day.
    Posted by Phoenix C64 on 11 Feb 11 at 08:05
    DelithYou'll get that in this game, Phoenix. I've recently started it back up after a 7 year hiatus from it. Oh my, it shows its' age in very bad ways. The polygon count is N64 quality and the acting is "in-your-face" cheesy. I mean, so cheesy it's dripping uncontrollably into your lap while you play. The world is suppose to be almost destroyed by these demons, yet after every stage there is a newspaper with it's headline telling about what you just did. A newspaper! Where does humanity get the man hours and the power to run a paper mill and actually print and distribute newspapers!? And who are these damn reporters following me around the game, commenting on my exploits? I'm on outside of an airplane at 30k feet! I didn't see Lois Lane out there with me when the flying demon was trying to eat the airplane!
    Posted by Delith on 11 Nov 13 at 17:46
    Kuningatar VI actually enjoyed the challenge of last two playthrus: Chaos and Hell. And oh shooting down those helicopters with cannon made me laugh every time! Loads of mobs fall down all screaming "Yeaaargh!". Sometimes crappy voice acting has its moments :D
    Posted by Kuningatar V on 06 Sep 17 at 16:24
  • WeisGuy9WeisGuy9776,086
    13 May 2009 13 Apr 2011
    22 6 2
    Here we have what you might call one of those "love it or hate it" games. My feelings kind of migrated from the former to the latter the longer I played. You play as Alicia, the Bullet Witch, and battle valiantly against hordes of evil demons that have entered this world. That's really all I know about the story line as the game fails utterly in explaining any more of it. Your weapons of choice include an increasing selection of gun...broom...thingies and, obviously, some witchy-type spells. It's a great game that was almost, but not quite, destroyed by its own developers. Are you ready? Let's break it down:

    Genre:
    Action-Advernture

    Gameplay:
    I think the main complaint here (or blessing, depending on your point of view) is that the game is very short. You can easily finish the entire game in a single sitting. Level design is mostly well done, although several levels are recycled, but some are quite vast and there is no mini-map. In fact, there is no map at all! This equates to lots and lots of aimless meandering in search of the next objective. Not that you know what the next objective is; you can only hope that you will know it when you finally find it. Enemies quickly become repetitive as you will encounter almost all of them in the first of the six missions. Which brings me to another developer brainfart. There are loads of one-hit kill enemies in the game that will gleefully strike you dead in an instant no matter how far you've upgraded your health, etc. Seeing as how the checkpoints are VERY far apart, you will find yourself replaying certain level sections so many times that you'll come to realize you would rather ingest flaming gasoline and then eject it from your nose. You will also earn upgrade points at the end of each level with which you can improve your witch. The final boss is a pretty cool battle, but the game does nothing to prepare you for how daunting he is. It's not really that he is all that tough to beat, but he is magnitudes of difficulty tougher than everything leading up to him.
    Rating: 2/5 stars

    Controls:
    The control scheme overall is quite excellent and intuitive, with one notable exception. The aim mode is initiated by clicking down on the right stick, which is quite awkward and unintuitive, as well as downright annoying. Alicia also seems a bit slow in turning, but this is thankfully adjustable in the options. There are four weapons at your disposal including a machinegun, a shotgun, a cannon and a gatling gun. The other weapons are cool to look at and play around with, but you will end up using your machinegun almost exclusively, as there are few situations where it is advantageous to switch. All of the magic spells are very pretty and a few of them are quite handy, but most of them are about as useful as tits on a bull. The Rose Spear ability in particular is a total waste of mana, or whatever you call magical energy in this game. The idea is that you throw a rose in the middle of a group of enemies and huge iron spears shoot up out of the ground everywhere and savagely impale your foes - only it doesn't really work that way. What really happens is that huge iron spears shoot up out of the ground everywhere and lamely miss all of your foes. The Tornado ability is really cool on those occasions when it materializes somewhere in the general vicinity of your enemies and the Meteor ability will absolutely decimate entire sections of the city, knocking down multi-story buildings, while somehow managing not to kill any of the human skin-wearing commandos inhabiting the area. The Lightning ability, Willpower ability and Element Shot, however, work quite well and you'll spam them relentlessly.
    Rating: 4/5 stars

    Sound:
    The musical score is about average for a game of this caliber and manages to convey the various moods of the game in a decent fashion. Sound effects are quite good overall, with no glaring deficiencies.
    Rating: 3/5 stars

    Graphics:
    The graphics are probably the highlight of this game. Nothing terribly outstanding here, but they are decently well done. The magic effects all look very nice and the final boss is tremendous. The ruined city is pretty well portrayed and the fire is pretty as well. Don't get me wrong, we're not talking about anything close to what the 360 is capable of, but taken for what it is I have no complaints, and any technical flaws went unnoticed by me.
    Rating: 3/5 stars


    Co-op:
    None

    Multiplayer:
    None

    Replayability:
    Not much here. Each difficulty you complete unlocks another difficulty level, of which there are five. There are also several alternate costumes for Alicia, but these are free, yes free, downloads and available to you right from the start. Be warned, or tantalized as the case may be, that some of Alicia's costumes come fairly close to an AO rating. Upgrades purchased will carry over to your next new game as well. Completion on any difficulty will unlock the stage select option, but this is close to worthless as you cannot acquire upgrade points during stage select missions, so the only reason to use it is if there is a particular level you are just desperately in love with. I can pretty much guarantee that this is not going to happen.
    Rating: 1/5 stars

    ScoHo Info:
    All I can say is: break out the valium. There are only 14 achievements in the game and they are utterly horribly designed. Count on at least five, count 'em, five playthroughs to 100% this game as there are five difficulty levels which do NOT stackably unlock. You MUST play the game on each difficulty to unlock the difficulty completion achievement. The difficulties are Easy, Normal, Hard, Chaos and Hell. Oh, and by the way, Hell difficulty is a 1gs achievement. There is no easy gamerscore here as the level completion achievements are only 10gs. My first playthrough was on normal difficulty and after completing the entire game I had 300gs. There are no achievement for accomplishing certain feats/quests, etc. All achievements are completion related or out & out grinders.
    Rating: 1/5 stars

    Let me just say in conclusion that this is not a horrid game. It has a definite fun factor for one, maybe two, playthroughs. After that it simply becomes the definition of frustration. Unfortunately for me, I just gotta have that gs and will just have to suffer through it. Thank God for skimpy costumes! In the end, I have to chalk this one in the column of "games that could have been".

    Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

    Smiley Rating: cryredfacesmile out of cryredfacesmileclaptoast
    3.0
  • oneluckybulletoneluckybullet343,275
    20 Jun 2011
    6 4 1
    Finally Bullet Witch is out, but was it worth it? I say yes and in my review you will find out why.

    Story

    At the opening of the game you will watch a movie setting the back drop for all mankind and what has befallen them. In 2007 and on mass wars, viruses, and undead wreck havoc on man kind and millions die by 2013. Alicia is a witch that uses a gun in the form of a broom. She is also haunted by a spirit that helps her along the way. The spirit is in control of her magic side. This game and story have a very dark and mature tone to it, something that sets it apart from others.

    Control

    In reading up on this game, I have seen a lot of bad press about the control of this game. Some say it is hard to shoot, move, or even cast spells. I say they must not be playing the same game im playing. Movement is done with the left analog stick, while the right stick controls the camera. A simple click on the left lets you duck, and a simple click on the right lets you go into sniper mode. Spells are cast with left or right buttons. Hitting one brings up your spell list, pushing it again brings up more spells. Once the list is up just push either the a, b, or x button to cast your spell. Very simple and easy to use.

    Replay

    This game has tones of stuff to do. From beating all seven missions on easy to beating it on hard for the extra costumes. You are awarded skill points at the end of every level to spend anyway you want. You can upgrade your gun/broom to several different types. Also you can adjust the damage it does, whether you want it to have and elemental shot or what type of gun you want it to be. Spells are learned the same way, by spending points on it and increasing the damage it can do. The only place this game fails is in the variety of enemies. Sure there is a good amount, but the main ones you fight over and over do become a chore instead of fun.

    All in all, I love this game and I don't feel that the small shortcomings that it may have out way the great story and game play it will through your way. Do yourself a favor and pick this game up now. Ignore all the magazines that say this game is too hard. This is a fun and enjoyable game that deserves to be played not over looked like so many other good games.
    4.0
  • Wildboy WileyWildboy Wiley612,828 612,828 GamerScore
    18 May 2009
    8 6 2
    I'd seen a lot of videos of "Bullet Witch" on Youtube, and after most of them, it looked a lot to me like Devil May Cry, or Ninja Gaiden with guns and a woman. The problem, is that Bullet Witch isn't like either of them, and sadly, she's a lot uglier than both.

    To start, the story is that you are a witch, dressed in black, with a huge gun that is actually 4 different guns combined. She is sent to protect the little bit of people left in the world in the year 2013, due to such things such as Disease, mutation, Natural Disasters. There's more to it, but if I say anymore, I would have told you the ENTIRE STORY. The games ending is terrible, it's not an ending at all. The entire game is like some Prologue to a game which god I hope NEVER gets a sequel.

    As far as gameplay goes, I've seen better gameplay in worse games. The game is hard to play, why....well I had the game installed to my Hard Drive, and the Frame Rate would still drop increasingly when nothing was happening. I was in a sewer level with two monsters on screen, and the frame rate dropped so much, that the game froze, and before you blame my xbox, it happened on my friend's NEW xbox as well, in a similar area.

    The sound is lame, the weapons sound pretty much the same, just quirked a little to sound different. The voice acting is poor, the 2 characters that have a part in the cutscenes have no feeling to their voices and sound like zombies. Most of the talking the main character does, is usually when she is casting a spell, otherwise she is quiet.

    The game has no sense to itself. The "Bullet Witch", is supposedly a witch, but in my opinion, and some facts, she seems more human than anything. Alicia (That's her name), can die getting a car thrown at her, when most people know folk lore for witches is that they need to be burned before they can actually die or be killed. She can't fly, she has a giant gun that looks a lot like a broomstick, but is more of a boomstick. It's a shotgun, Rifle, "Sniper Rifle" (It doesn't actually zoom in like a real sniper rifle), and a gatling gun. All of which surprisingly do well in battle. Witches aren't supposed to like humans, as they hate everyone as folk lore also teaches us, but the witch in this game gets a hard on for humans.

    Finally, the A.I., the worst part of the game. As my Stranglehold review, the A.I. is the same. The enemies will either stand still shooting at you, which is terrible as they can't even hit me if I am standing still, or there is the somewhat successful enemies that run right at me shooting, and can actually do some damage, pending I don't have my shotgun ready to blow their brains out. There were even times that if I had to reload due to a car killing me too many times, that in certain parts of the level, the A.I. was in standby, as if it didn't detect me approaching, resulting in easy kills for me.

    Sadly, this game was made by a developer that I for one never heard of. If it was developed by someone more known to gamers, perhaps it would have been a more stable game. The game is good to buy used, as it might take a couple days just to beat easy mode, and get the 15 hour achievement if you go for them, but if you just want to play through it one time, so you can learn the rest of the story I didn't mention, than rent it.

    3 Stars.
    3.0
  • KisaMagicKisaMagic30,019
    25 Jan 2009
    2 11 4
    This game what to say. The achievements are just stupid easy to get, that is if you can muster yourself to the fact you haft to play this game through several times. The storyline is that of cheesy poorly written comic book, though it reminds of some who writes the Tomb Raider story lines. The sound is basic and mediocre at best with not much to make it stand out, and the game play I can best describe as atrocious at some points and overly simple at others.

    This game is a very standard game. You play as over sexily made woman with a big gun and powers and you go around blowing stuff up and killing hideous monsters. The voice acting is bland the characters are extremely one dimensional and the graphics feel to focus more on making the monsters and main character try to stand out but lacking in any meaningful remembrance of them.

    The camera controls in this game are shoddy and takes you for ever to recalibrate you perception around you to find the creature shooting you or attacking. Many of the monster blend into the back ground due to the fact they are mostly a base brown color and so are the buildings the are either hiding in or up against. There is really no auto aim to help new players to the 3rd person shooter genre and the weapons themselves are extremely unimpressive.

    They try to add the aspect of an rpg to the game with the fact as you kill more monster you get points to spend to up grade you gun and your powers.

    One good comment I haft to mention is that some the powers are rather unique and interesting but again nothing sparkles are stands out here as defining feature to make this game worth most players times.

    As you beat the game you unlock harder and harder modes of play thus how you get the rest of your achievements and fill out that all important 1000 points. Let me put this way the level difficulty as you go into the harder modes is not semi gradual nor does it seem that monsters get smarter or more inventive, no all they do is increase the time it takes to kill one, up the damage they produce and increase the numbers to ungodly swarm amounts.

    To sum it all up this game is maybe worth checking out for the unique powers but pick it up as rental or in the cheap bin at your local game store and don't expect to spend you time engrossed in it. It a 3rd person shooter with a sexy woman need I say more.
    1.0
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