An Hour of: Bullet Witch

Hello and welcome to the first edition of ‘An hour of’, where I play a game for an hour and say what I feel about it. If you want a more thought out idea of what this is, it’s essentially the same as the ‘Beowulf’ game diaries that are locked away in Movie Vault 666.

So a while back I was in Gamestation, I can’t remember why, I was either buying a game, pre-ordering a game or getting some points to spend online. Either way, whilst I was in the queue I couldn’t help but look around the store. Hell, we all do it when we’re bored, just look around to see if there’s anything exciting or unusual happening.

And that’s when I saw it. A game for five pounds, a game which caught my eye with the image of a stunning black haired woman on the cover, a game called ‘BulletWitch’.

I had a look at the box, which read “a witch burdened with undesired magic and gunplay powers”. I’m sorry, but “undesired magic”? Somewhere underneath that it says “weave astounding magic”, you can’t describe it as “I don’t want this magic, but it’s awesome!”. “2013 AD. Humanity hangs on the verge of extinction. An Army of evil, twisted monsters walk the Earth”. Well the good news is I’m still listening. It looked intriguing to say the least, I mean, the box didn’t say what this evil force was or who the main character is beside her name ‘Alicia’, but I’m sure that the introduction of the game will tell us that.

So I bought it, went home, put it with my other Xbox games in the cupboard and promptly forgot about it whilst I played Gears of War 2. When it got to the point that the special XP event at the weekend had stopped, for the time being anyway, I found BulletWitch again and decided to finally try it out. I loaded up and, finally, started the game.

We first get a cut-scene of what appears to be every single volcano in America erupting, from what I can tell brought on by a 8.something earthquake, killing tens of thousands. Then a new Middle Eastern War erupts, killing six hundred thousand I believe it was. Then demons invade and kill over five billion people. Wait what? Is that it? Demons just suddenly turn up? No explanation? Okay, I guess this makes them a bit more mysterious.

We then see what they look like, malnourished soldiers with a face sewn into their shoulders. They could’ve been a bit scarier, especially since a later foe we see later is just a giant brain on a body. I can’t take that seriously to be honest. The Geist, as the demons are apparently called, shoot someone then a bird, well, because they could and to show they’re the bad guys. They then see our main character and complement her skin, basically insinuating that they want to wear it.

And it’s this point that we get to control the main character, our first task, shoot the three Geist soldiers before venturing through the city. Now the controls are okay, I guess. You press the left shoulder button to bring up the magic circle, press it again to see other spells, right trigger shoots her gun...staff...thing and, of course, the analog sticks move the character or screen. Pretty standard. But the major problem I have, is that there’s no ‘run’ button. You either jog, which is slightly quicker then walking, or press the left trigger to jump, which is what I ended up doing most of the time. That and accidently summoning a wall to block my view for the first five odd minutes of gameplay; the good news though was it blocked the enemies bullets.

Then again most of the time I kept getting lost. There was no clear route of where to go, so most of the time I was just running round until I found the way forward, shooting more and more Geist as I go. It did help though when I killed the flying brain people that a cut-scene showed where a barrier blocking the way forward was.

Speaking of the flying brain people as the game progresses they got stronger. They apparently gained the ability to lift multiple objects up into the sky to use as a make-shift shield before throwing them at Alicia. But they were probably the second toughest foe I came across (so far anyway), as during the first two levels, I took on tanks. Yes, tanks. The Geist, this invading demon army uses our military vehicles. They didn’t bring their own dark, twisted version? Okay. Well I suppose if I gained some tanks from the enemy I’d use them. But in order to fight the first load of tanks, I was given a new spell for free; lightning. And boy did I enjoy using that spell! The animation of her summoning the spell, changing the conditions of the sky into a storm cloud with lightning and then blowing crap up! It was awesome!

So after finishing the first level, which involved blowing up a fuel station, lightning bolting two tanks and killing a psychic brain person, I get a point screen based on my performance. This is used to purchase health, mana, gun staff or spell upgrades, so I brought a health & mana upgrade as well as two new spells, raven panic and rose spear, and an upgrade to willpower.

Oh wait, I haven’t explained willpower yet have I? The willpower spell is a spell that throws objects like telekinesis. When I first attempted to use it however, it barely did jack. Then there’s a spell called sacrifice, which allows Alicia to sacrifice some of her health to heal civilians. I don’t know why since they don’t seem to die, I’ve only seen them buckle to their knees. I guess it’s to do with the skill points at the end of a level. Now the rose spear, that was a spell which intrigued me since it said it would spear groups of enemies. However about 90% of the time this spell does nothing as the enemies just walk away before the spell takes effect. Raven panic I only used once, it did distract an enemy which allowed me to kill it, so I suppose it was an effective spell. The other spells I don’t know how effective or terrible they are, since I haven’t used them yet.

Now there was something that was bothering me at the end of the first level; we have no idea what’s going on! Okay, the plot has been set, demons have brought humanity to the point of extinction and Alicia is saving us. But why? Who is she? Who is the main body she was talking? Why does she have these powers? Why do the screen borders go...smoky? Who still develops the Day Break Times newspaper during the Apocalypse? Well, I hope we get some clarification in the second level.

The second level starts off with saving a bunch of soldiers, and we are introduced to Maxwell Cougar, a leader in a...demon...resisty group....the resisty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gv_Dy0OB8g.  Anyway Cougar assigns some soldiers to go with her and then disappears. I’m sure he’ll turn up again later though, it is the beginning of the second level after all. I can’t say the same for Cougar’s men however as they eventually got squashed a brain person throwing cars at me. The same type of enemy who would (after I blew up a tank) go on to crush me to death, twice, later on in the level. Well I would have killed it first but I was unable to use my lightning spell. Third time was a charm though as I used it to blow the brain person and other Geist soldiers defending it. Beyond this point I went onto a large area where I now have no idea where I’m going. I did kill a brain person which lowered a shield somewhere.

Did I find out where to go? Nope. Because my hour was up.

So how did I find it? Well it isn’t a bad game. The graphics and gameplay are pretty good, the cut-scenes are brilliant and the controls are easy to get used to. The story though is a bit lacking, but then again it’s maybe because I’ve only played an hour and two levels of it. So like I said, it isn’t a bad game, but it does seem the game did a ‘Naughty Bear’; great concept, poor execution. But why? Maybe I will find out later.