A dozen years later, Bullet stormone way or another, endures.
You wouldn’t expect it for a game that, in hindsight, scans more like a Duke Nukem-esque guilty pleasure that fell nowhere near sales expectations. Senselessly violent and absurdly rude (does anyone else remember “Hey, asshole tits!”?), even if Bullet storm drew critical acclaim mainly because of the gameplay its ammunition economyit hardly seems like a game that can be called “ahead of its time”.
But it is, emphasizes Radomir Kucharski of Incuvo, the Polish virtual reality port shop that does Bullet storm maker People can fly acquired at the end of 2021.
“When we were looking for the next project, we looked at Bullet storm and thought this game, with its mechanics, was actually designed for VR,” Kucharski said. “Bullet storm is so action packed, so close to the action and with such physical interaction, it felt like it was designed for VR.”
At the time, Incuvo was independent and fresh from Bloober Team’s VR adaptation of two horror titles – Layers of fear And Blair witch, both for Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR. Incuvo had found success adapting established games based on rental work, and Kucharski was looking for another hit to maintain the studio’s momentum. It also helped that, like Bloober Team, People Can Fly is a Polish-based developer.
More crucial, Kucharski said, was the cult following Bullet storm keep enjoying. Electronic Arts and Epic Games practically vacated the property after it fell far short of earnings and sales expectations. People Can Fly, which Epic acquired in 2013 and then spun off in 2015, retained ownership of the franchise and still had enough of an audience to warrant remastered releases for consoles in 2017 and 2019.
“I was a big fan of first-person shooters,” says Kucharski, a developer who had worked on Medal of Honor and other military shooters in the previous decade. Bullet storm‘s launch. “I found Bullet storm very unique; I thought the gameplay was very fresh, something that was groundbreaking at the time.
The groundbreaking components, which seemed to take a back seat to all the swearing and violence in the original marketing, were Bullet storm‘Skillshot’ gameplay loop; using the environment to creatively take down enemies; and the “energy belt” that hero Grayson Hunt uses to lasso, stun, or fling enemies to their doom.
The belt, Kucharski said, is the most VR-ready feature of Bullet stormoriginal gameplay. For example, reloading a weapon is a more meaningful experience. The dual-wield nature, of a gun in one hand and the belt in the other, is more easily manifested by a dedicated controller in each player’s hand, Kucharski reasoned. “This is something that simply wasn’t possible with standard controllers, or a keyboard and mouse.”
Bulletstorm VR is certain not a rail-shooter adaptation of the franchise, Kucharski stressed. Players can freely roam through the levels, just like in the original. The adaptation is also faithful to the original story, although Kucharski said the game is not a “one-to-one copy”. I want to say it’s a new game, but it’s the same original story.” Half of the levels are exactly the same as the original Bullet stormhe said, “but there’s new content,” even if that doesn’t mean narrative changes.
“We used a lot of resources from the original game,” said Kucharski. “We had to redo some things, of course we had to change the engine from the old Unreal 3 to, I believe, 4.27 is what we’re using now. We had to recreate a lot of things, but the assets are based on the originals.
Bulletstorm VRannounced in early June, launching later in 2023 for Meta Quest and PlayStation VR 2. For all his talk about Bullet storm‘s advanced gameplay, Kucharski said it will still carry the same grinning tone of its predecessor.
“Yeah, the game is still pretty violent,” he chuckled. “It is very exaggerated with the violence. It’s not serious; it’s fun.”