Hot on the heels of Gears of War, Epic Games’ Bulletstorm had a massive marketing budget and even managed to wing a quick spot in Bridesmaids, a film that the internet tells me is “hilarious,” “surprisingly moving,” and “partially filmed in Oxnard, California.” Could Kristen Wiig and Oxnard save it from a slow death in the bargain bin? Sadly, they could not. The real problem is that Bulletstorm blew its massive marketing budget trying to convince everyone it was a big, dumb shooter just like all the other big, dumb shooters. It was pitched towards people whose idea of fun involves beating a rabbit to death in an adventure playground. In fact, Bulletstorm’s an ingenious and blood-splattered reworking of bar billiards, in which you use your guns to bounce people around a series of deadly environments scoring as many points as you can. Also, it contains a very funny joke about Godzilla. Death by Cube (Xbox 360)
Death by Cube should more accurately be called Death by Shit Art and a Stupid Name. Perhaps that had already been taken. But while Square Enix’s XBLA oddity was doomed to a weird, sad, lonely demise from the very start, it’s actually worth a second look. Visually, this twin-stick shooter may seem to have been designed by the dribbly man who works the late shift at my local Tesco garage, but beneath its relentlessly naff surface, it’s a smart game with a handful of good ideas. In most twin-sticks, you’re faster than your enemies, so if you’re nimble enough, you can keep ahead of the pack and whittle them down from a safe distance. In Death by Cube, you’re entertainingly slow, so it’s all about teleporting around and tricking foes into converging en masse on the spot where you just were. Tempted yet? No? If only this had been in Bridesmaids, too. P.N.03 (Gamecube)
In the early 2000s, Capcom thought it would be a great idea to make a game about a deadly futuristic ballerina and release it on Nintendo’s doomed console, the Gamecube. The developer also thought wonky controls and punishing difficulty spikes might provide that final, crucial incentive to buy. That was all quite stupid of them, obviously, but P.N.03 remains something of a classic in my household. It’s a third-person shooter that you really have to master in order to enjoy, but it’s intricate and incredibly violent and it looks like it’s set in a Rem Koolhaas building. Also, the game’s hero appears to have dressed herself in Dyson off-cuts. In the sequel, you’d probably get to play as an AirBlade. More of this kind of thing, please? Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox)
What do you think Xbox fans were more likely to flock to: a game about warm-hearted hipsters saving their neighbourhood through the ancient art of graffiti, or a game about a very large, mostly silent super-soldier blasting his way through a righteous war against some religious extremists? Sadly, Halo went on to get all the sequels, while Jet Set Radio Future’s producers were taken to the roof garden at SEGA’s Japanese HQ and politely thrown to their deaths. A shame, really, as this blend of skating game and platformer hits all my buttons regardless of the fact that I don’t really like many platformers, and I generally hope most skaters choke on something. The environments are colourful and detailed, the soundtrack is dazzlingly weird and the sense of movement on offer is enough to make me forget that the last time I went for a run, it felt like all my joints had been welded together by that rat-faced man out of SAW. The Red Star (PS2, Xbox, PSP)
The Red Star’s sorrows were twofold. Firstly, it was based on a comic book series that virtually nobody had heard of, and secondly, it was due to be released by Acclaim just as the publisher collapsed in an explosion of crystal meth – did you know you can make this at home? – and cut-price prostitutes. All of which left this spiky blend of shooting and brawling and bullet-dodging (more fun than it sounds) hanging around for months on end looking for a publisher. By the time it got one, nobody cared.
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