Bullet Witch

by Atari

Product Features

• Fight off legions of hideous and powerful undead, as you try to reach the demon lord Akuma
• Upgrade your guns as you go, then combine them with your magic for incredible destruction
• Collect 10 magic spells that can defend you -- from building Ancient Walls to Sacrificing bodies, even calling down Thunder and Tornadoes
• Action adventure with story sequences intermixed with gun fights and magic
• Advanced physics engine showcases the environmental damage; Special Xbox Live content can be downloaded for even wilder gaming

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000ICV996
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches ; 2 pounds
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: February 27, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,809 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Bullet Witch is set on a bleak Earth, in the year 2013. The human race is almost extinct as hideous demons and monsters dominate the planet. It's been decided that only a combination of ancient and modern combat can beat the se creatures. Alicia is a highly-trained soldier who also know ancient magic. The fate of the human race is in her hands, as she ventures into the world of monsters and fights them with her mix of magical arts and military equipment. Manage Alicia's health & magic meters to avoid running out of ammo or power -- be strategic & play it safe, or the world dies with her.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice Idea but Poor Implementation, June 10, 2007

By 

Lisa Shea "medieval swordfighting enthusiast" - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Bullet Witch (Video Game)

Bullet Witch for the XBox 360 is a goth shooter. You're Alicia, a black-wearing witch of the future who is humanity's only hope for survival. The city landscape has been overrun with gigantic demons.

I'm always thrilled when they have females as main characters, especially in traditionally male-dominated areas such as shooters. You do have to deal with the fact that these females are usually busty and very skimpily clad, but progress doesn't always come quickly. In this case, the belly-dancer-garbed witch carries gigantic swords and uses magic. She's up against nasty looking, gigantic demons which stomp around a dark, grafitti-filled city. Think the future of Terminator, but with demons instead of robots.

These maps are very large, dark, and nicely detailed. On the other hand, there often is no directional indicator - so you're wandering for long periods of time around a huge map, with no idea of where to go next. It can get frustrating. Now, while I thought for example that the brickwork and detail of the sewers was of good quality, my boyfriend's comment at this point was "the game starts stupid-looking, and slowly advances to mediocre".

The enemy demons are a mixed bag. Sometimes they show reasonable AI, hiding from your shots, strafing you and so on. At other times, you can just sit behind a wall while they come at you one by one, getting "stuck" on the corner and letting you plink at them like a shooting gallery.

The sound is reasonably nice, changing from throbbing battle-music to more low key skulking-through-the-sewers songs. Voice acting isn't high end, but it's not awful either.

My main complaint with the game is that it is rather short. I suppose you could say it takes a while because of the lack of a map, but once you actually know where you're going, the game has little gameplay. Games on the XBox 360 often stretch on for weeks and weeks, providing very enjoyable gameplay all along. With Bullet Witch, you can probably end the game in a day of playing without all that much effort. That's just not enough enjoyment for the price of a game - or for the investment of your energy to learn the button scheme and connect with the characters. It's like getting fond of a new TV series, and learning who all the individuals are - and then having it get cancelled only a few shows in. You were expecting much more.

A great idea, but I think the game needed a few more months in development to flesh out the AI and add on more storyline / maps to fully complete it.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An (overall) decent game that heavily lacks polish, June 5, 2007

By 

Sinless Knight "S. Knight" (Virginia Beach, VA, USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Bullet Witch (Video Game)

After careful inspection (having played through and mastered the game on practically every difficulty level), I can honesty declare that Bullet Witch is nowhere NEAR as bad as some of the critics have panned it out to be. The game was met with a rather moderate reception when it was originally released in the 2nd quarter of 2006 in Japan. Fast forward several months later and the title finally sees the light of day stateside, thanks to Atari. Problem is, it hits at a time when the consumers have already been introduced to much higher budgeted and produced shooters (from the Gears, to the Lost Planets, to the Rainbow Six Vegas' and on down). It almost seems as though the critics were so desensitized by the other shooters on the market, that when Bullet Witch finally came along (stateside), they viewed it at as a competitor, thus rating it unfairly. Sure. the game has flaws, (some more overt than others) but what games don't?

You play the role of a reclusive witch by the name Alicia. The setting takes place in 2013 A.D., at a when time demons appear to be an even bigger threat to the human race than before, summoning Geist (subhumans made from demon quota) to do their dirty bidding for them on Earth. As Alicia (the only witch powerful enough to take them on) it's your duty to vanquish the hellspawns to wence they came. However, you're not entering the battle alone. Along the way, you'll be allied with humans who will fight alongside you in hopes of salvaging humanity from the demons.

Gamesplay basically consists of getting to point A to point B. Weapon's consist of the machinegun (your primary weapon), shotgun, cannon, and gatling gun (my personal favorite). These weapons can either be upraded or powered up (in-game ). Upgrading can either be done between stages or from the title screen's options menu. It enbables for stronger weaponfire damage, as with powering up. Powering Up gives each weapon a special, unique, attack effect. For the machinegun; fire, shotgun; wind, gatling gun; lightning, and cannon; first-person sniper view. You never really run out of ammo since the guns' ammo are magically generated, thus require magic points to reload. Magical spells (BW's main highlight) are generally a well balanced mix off offensive and defensive skills. In some instances you'll need to use a powerful attack spell to take out an overpowerful enemy, in which normal weapons simply won't take out. You recover magic points by taking out enemies with your guns. Through battle you'll occasionally run into civilians and soldiers (NPCs) to whom you can lend help to (granted their in need). Some will express their gratitude in by giving you an item in which will replenish your health much quicker (your health recovers gradually overtime, considering you've lost any). You aren't required to rescue or save any civilians or soldiers, but doing so (or not) does have a substantial hold on your overall ranking at the end of each mission.

The graphics are for the most part, decent. Huge, open-ended, scenic environments. Most objects in the game are fully destructible and can be used to your advantage in many instances. The physics are quite impressive. Especially being that Cavia (the developers of BW) used their own proprietary physics engine, rather than working off an existing one, such as Havok or PhysX. However, there seem to be some MAJOR clipping and collision issues. Despite all of Atari's attempts at cleaning these up for the stateside release, some are just too unmistakably obvious to pass up. You'll walk through a trash can, yet can oddly shoot it to pieces. There's also some irregular pop-ups (in the background) from time to time, knowingly in the wider scenic areas. The game is visually at it's finest on the airbase/railroad stage (beautiful scenery and dynamic multi-tiered environments and physics) and it's somewhat a pity that the developers were unable to achieve this type of quality all throughout the game. My only guess and reasoning for this is that the game was rushed at some point.

Enemy A.I. is alright for the most part. Geist soldiers are cocky and arrogant (they have plenty of character, some will even attempt to bribe you into sparing their lives) but can put up a fight. They'll try to strafe, dodge, and roll out of the way off oncoming fire, so it's not like they just stand there and let you hit them. You'll occasionally run into some overly aggressive soldiers who will practically do everything in their power to not get hit by you (some geist soldiers weapons doing more damage than others) but will constantly keep a strong trail on you in the process. The snipers appear to be the most unbalanced enemies in the entire game. Seemingly having godlike bird's eye accuracy and can aim from 200 acres afar (literally). They never miss. So the moment you see red lights trailing you, if you've not hidden yourself for cover in time, it's all over.

Controls are average. Ducking/crouching is pretty much useless being that you move like a tank when trying to do so. This leaves you open as a huge magnet for gunfire, since you can't evade attacks while crouched (cannot roll or jump). Another huge issue is the magic window. There are times when you can be well positioned (with the right amount of magic points) and for whatever reason, the spell won't activate. Since spells can only be casted through live window, it's very common that you can be killed while attempting to assign one. For instance, if you try active the lightning spell and miss, you're open to attack for a few agonizing moments. Perhaps the developers were trying to make is so that you'd make tougher decisions in using spells in tight situations, but in the process made it more frustrating. It's almost like they were trying to torture and penalize you for trying to enjoy the features in which the game possesses. Hit detection is also off some. There are too many instances in which an object can be hurled at you and be off several frames, yet it will still do full damage (as if landed at you accurately) wiping you out in an instant. Other instances, you can be aiming/shooting directly at the enemy and your attacks won't register.

Voiceacting is a mix. It can range anywhere from intermediate to "When's my next break at again?" The music, on the other hand is astonishing, with a great deal of the compositions being symphonic, fitting the game's atmosphere.

Bullet Witch is an overall decent game. While the game spands only six stages long, extra missions can be unlocked via Xbox Live, along with constumes, which help add replay value and longitivity. It's a fun fast-paced/action shooter. If you can look beyond some hindering flaws (and ignore the overly harsh critic remarks) , beyond all of the rubble lies a potentially great game (which just seems that the developers weren't able to fully capitalize on for whatever reasons). Unfortunately some may find the game's faults too unbearable to consider giving it a fair chance. Hopefully these problems will be addressed in the sequel. I'm anticipating much in store from Bullet Witch 2. We'll definitely see more of Alicia (whether it be in comics, games, or even potential anime spin-offs).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Close but no cigar..., March 12, 2007

By 

Daniel S. Boucher "God punishes us for the th... (Portland, ME) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Bullet Witch (Video Game)

There are so many things that are frustrating with this game that I don't even know where to start. So, here it goes. The camera, Argh!!! Half the time you can't see what your fighting because your character is in the way or one of the lame AI characters desides to plant his butt right in your view. Speaking if AI, why is it that they seem to shoot allot but kill nothing? I can't tell you how many times I got killed from someone from behind while the stupid AI just watched!

The "skills" system that allows you to upgrade your magic and weapon would be good if the game lasted more than four hours and you had more opportunity to upgrade. You get awarded points at the end of each level and if you sucked, good luck upgrading anything. For example, I had to play the game through twice just to get all four gun modes and then when you finally are able to "level up" your gun/witchcraft, there's no difference. I've maxed out my machine gun and it's no different than it was when I started, lots of noise and 800,000 shots just to kill one enemy. Argh!!! What were the developers thinking?

The levels are long and tedious with allot of kill this "thing" to unlock that gate. Another funny note is that you meet the final boss right off and you're told that you can't fight him right now because you lack the skills however when you finally do fight him you're character is no different than when you started. What? I know you don't get it but if you buy this game you will... Anyway, I bought this title because there's a survival horror thing going here on which I love, however is the game worth it? Trust me, rent it first.

Bullet Witch gets 2 stars from me because there are some really cool moments like battling a demon at 10,000 feet while trying not to fall off the jet. The "great magic" that you get is pretty cool to watch in action but the magic regeneration will have you once again wondering, WTF?