Customer Reviews

Bullet Witch

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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).

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?

I got this game based on a preview video I watched. Sexy girl, big guns, stuff blowing up, whats not to like right? Boy was I wrong. There is very little to do in this game. Theres no ammo to pick or health to find (you have unlimited ammo and your health regenerates pretty fast). The enemy AI is horrible as well as your allies. Aiming your weapon is difficult and jerky. You run FOREVER through unnecessarily vast landscapes. There is very little challenge. I played the game for a few HOURS praying for something interesting to happen. Finally after two or three stages, I come upon what i perceived to be a boss. Big guy 4 or 5 stories tall with a giant machine gun for an arm. Yes! Finally something to do...I killed him with one spell...seriously...I didn't even have to move. I could go on and on but I wont. Dont buy this game, dont rent it, forget it ever existed.

Years ago I was hooked by the uniqueness of the first few levels of Drakengard, released for the PlayStation 2. When I finally found and picked up a copy I found it had hooked its claws into me even more. So when Drakengard 2 came out I of course picked up a copy. Unfortunately it wasn't as good as the first Drakengard, but it was nonetheless still a good entry to the series. Many many years later I picked up Nier, which was associated with Square Enix, but received extremely harsh reviews.

Around the same time I found that Cavia, a name I remembered well from the Drakengard series, had worked on Nier, which got me wondering what other games they had had a hand in. I had played Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex for the PlayStation 2 years before, and ended up trading it in due to what I found were clunky controls (if I remember correctly). But as I was looking through the list I saw one game I had seen before and skimmed over due to the price and cover.

Once I released Cavia had had a hand in Bullet Witch I decided to pick up a copy once I found it at a good price (and with the manual and original box). Having found a copy for under $5, I figured it was definitely worth a try.

Bullet Witch is a rather interesting game. The controls are annoying but as I played I couldn't help but think of Bayonetta. Both characters have a certain sex appeal, but both are extremely deadly. One might be ashamed to admit that they not only played, but owned their games, but both contain fairly good games, even if it's significantly easier to tell that Bayonetta is one.

In Bullet Witch you control a woman who carries with her a gun larger than herself. As you progress you can switch between 4 guns total, each with their own uses. You also gain certain magic spells, and can increase your own abilities, although its limited to increasing your health and magic regeneration.

There are a total of six stages with each lasting between 10 minutes to an hour, depending upon how lost you get and how many times you've played a level. There are five or six different difficulty settings, with only the lower three available at the start. Achievements are available for beating the game under each difficulty, but since they do not stack you can look forward to playing multiple times (if you care about the points). However, each time you start a game your previously unlocked skills and remaining points carry over, so you could even play the first level over and over again (10-15 minutes a shot) to build up your skills early.

As noted above the controls are fairly clunky, which is unfortunate since it's a third-person shooter with some fairly fast enemies. The lighting can also be tricky at times, and there's no good indication of the fact that you're near death, so expect that surprise.

The general suggestion is that you play your first time on easy, since achievements don't stack and the game is a little ... clunky, so that's exactly what I did. I played the first level a number of times as well, on both easy and normal, but I finished my first game on easy. All told I probably put 6 or 7 hours into the game (thus far).

The story isn't horrible, and is actually about what I expected after playing Cavia's other games. Since you're introduced to it within the first few minutes of the game, I'll go ahead and say that I didn't quite catch why she hears a voice, but I think that's the only oddity (although it could be left unstated for a reason).

Finally, I really enjoyed the graphics in the game. It certainly shows its age, and is probably on par with PlayStation 2 graphics, but because of the nature of the story I have no issues with that.

While it's certainly not the greatest game ever, it's generally not that bad. I'll play it again and beat it at least on normal, and could easily see myself playing it even after that. The game also received a good deal of DLC, all of which is extremely cheap, as in free to 25 cents. The latter is actual maps, which adds a pretty good deal of content for a fairly low price.

For these reasons I'm going to give Bullet Witch 4 of 5 stars. One could perhaps argue that it only deserves 3 stars, but I think the game tells a good story and once you release the shortcomings (using maps removes the pain of wandering around in the larger maps), it's not that bad at all, and offers a good deal of content for the current price.

A witch with a big gun? Hunt the undead? The time in 2012. It is a time where over 1/3 of the human population is dead, due to war, disease and unknown creatures. A witch stands up to put a stop to this chaos. Her name is Alicia.

Players will take control of Alicia throughout the game, togeher with some Resistance soldier NPC. On the top right corner of the screen indicates your HP, EP and bullet rounds.

Like all action shooting games, your HP will decrease when you take damage from enemy, but it will auto-recover after some time. However, one hit from any vehicle or sniper will kill you instantly. EP gauge will only fill up to max, if you defeat an enemy. It decreases when you reload your gun or using magic.

The giant gun will be your primary weapon, and 10 collateral magic attacks, including Ancient Wall, Sacrifice, Raven panic etc. There are also 3 Major Magics to deal Major damage: Thunder, Tornado and Meteor. Unfortunately, players are required to fill up their HP/EP gauge before casting Major Magics.

There are 6 stages in this game, running from the city of America to the sewers, country side areas and heart of the forrest. It takes approximately 1 hour to complete a single stage. After every stage, you will be graded and given points. Use these points to unlock Shotgun and Rifle, also new magics and stats. Major Magic can be obtained automatically in later stages.

If you died middle of the game, it sends you back to the last checkpoint, and the good thing is, it only take several minutes to return where you left off. Simple and easy.

Beginners may find aiming at enemies is hard, due to big cursor and small aiming areas. But when you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy.

These are some good character models in this game, especially Alicia, who is the perfect example of a video game babe.

There are more than 10 types of enemies including bosses. They usually come in small numbers, but don't underestimate them. Blind fire without keeping an eye on your HP may be fatal. Boss fights are pretty interesting, I can ensure you that you'll be amazed.

If you get bored with Alicia's outfit, there are some extra ones in Xbox Live Marketplace. There are also some Concept Missions up for grabs also.

Archievement points are easy to gain here, finishing each stage gains you some points, and beating the game in different difficulty gains you more points as well.

Bullet Witch may be one of those normal action shooting game, but it is fun to use a female character and shoot around with 80 rounds out of a giant machine gun. I strongly recommend this game to Gears Of War Fans - it's similar to GOR, except the main character is a babe!

A magic-based protagonist in a post-apocalyptic world sounded intriguing for awhile. Until, that is, I got around to playing it, then I was just bored.

Let me start by saying 'Bullet Witch' is ... OK. There are worse game out there for the 360 that you could be playing. If that sounds like faint praise ... well ... frankly, it is. For any positives, I'm not sure what else to say. The game's doing just enough good to keep it from being awful, but there are a slew of problems that keep it from being good too.

The most obvious flaw I found is the A.I. It's terrible, the enemies you'll fight are just flat out dumb, usually wandering around unaware of my presence until I'm virtually on top of them.

The story's premise is pretty good, but, through the course of the game, you never really progress in it. Your character kills demons ... just because. The voice acting is also way below average.

The graphics are about average, I've seen worse (faint praise again, I know). At the same time, however, I've certainly been treated to light-years better in a third-person shooter <cough> Gears of War <cough>.

Generally, the combat system is passable, but the menu-selection style it uses for spell casting is a little clunky and kind of tough to navigate through in the middle of a battle. As was mentioned before, it's true, nothing can be hot-keyed to speed up your selection. To be fair, the elemental spells you can cast are really cool looking and one of the games high-points.

This was also brought up before, but bears mentioning again, 'Bullet Witch' is really short. A previous reviewer put the game's completion time at about six hours, that's pretty close to the mark. This is a rental, plain and simple. In all, there's enough here to justify taking a look if you're really bored and out of stuff to play, but I just can't see plunking down fifty bucks to own a copy. You'll be able to find a used copy for half of that soon enough. If you want it that bad, just wait it out.

The premise of this game is that the world has basically ended due to a string of tragedies like earthquakes, wars, etc. Oh. And then all of the sudden zombies demons pop up. Enter a gothic looking babe toting a Bigger-than-she-is broomstick shaped machine gun, who is (for some reason) going to shoot her way through the hordes of zombie soldiers to save us all. Sweet, right?

As far as I am concerned, for a video game - that's actually a fine premise. On top of that the design on the main character is pretty nifty. In fact, it was nifty enough for me to pick this up out of the bargain bin and take it home.

Thats when I played the game, and instantly regretted the $10 I had just lost. Truth is there is no way the developers looked at the final product and went, "Yes. This is exactly what we envisioned. It's Perfect And Without Flaw."

Now, the game is technically playable. But realistically it is so broken that it's just not worth your time and/or money.

The biggest issue is not the halfway-there stage layouts which are chock full o' pointless and distant dead ends, the terrible dialogue, and the "Well, We Tried" PS2 worthy graphics. It's the fact that the enemy AI is literally retarded. Enemies walk into walls, run around in circles, fire sporadically, sometimes notice you while you're a mile a way and can't see them and sometimes are blissfully unaware that you are right in front of them. If you get a car thrown at you, you have a 50/50 chance that it will kill you instantly or not hurt you at all regardless of whether it actually hits you or not. Most of your time spent playing this game will have you wondering "What The Hell Is Going On?" Not to worry. The game doesn't know either.

Sure there's nfity gun upgrades, and some "somewhat useful" magic (that is a huge pain to use), which helps the game be fun for like 5 minutes... or until you realize that it's not going to get any better.

It's sort of a shame because you can definitely see a really cool game that just needed a little bit of extra attention to live up to it's potential. Sadly, it's just not there, dooming this game to a life in the "Bargain Bin." Which is where it should stay...

This game is not at all bad. As far as 'B' title games would go, this one was very fun. Of course there are better games out there; I get tired of people comparing a game like this to Gears of War, etc. Not all games are going to be 100/100.

I picked this up in the store on the sale rack, having never heard of it. I came into the game with no expectations, but by the end of it, it was a great game. It had its little hiccups from time to time but overall, it was a very fun game to pick up, play, beat, and put down.

Bullet Witch, a game with an interesting premise being that you are a witch with a gun shaped like a broomstick to decimate demons and other creatures with spells or your broomstick's many forms. Now while this may SOUND interesting unfortunately the gameplay decimates this game completely. Now the first thing you should realize before purchasing this game is that it was made quite a while ago, so it's not going to look anywhere near as good as modern games. However, I have played games with truly horrendous graphics that I enjoyed more than Bullet Witch so graphics should't be a main concern. Anyway, onto the gameplay. Well, first off there is no auto-lock function so those of you who are used to that may die a few times on the first few enemies you come across as I did. Also, something that I found ridiculous is that the enemy A.I. is going to act in one of two ways: Either A: It's going to stand there and shoot repeatedly missing you, or B: Swerve back and forth shooting you non-stop making it impossible for you to hit them, even if you jump(which is a nice looking dodge move). How did this happen? It really makes you wonder... and another annoying design flaw is that while there's only about 5 enemy types in the game, the sniper enemies pull off some of the cheapest kills in video game history. In fact, they're even harder than the final boss. But I'm getting off track here, because minor gripes aside it's still a frustratigly cheap game with horrible hit-detection and some terrible camera angles as well.



Final Notes: First off, I'm not saying the game is crap because of its cheap difficulty but because of its poor design choices; from repetitive enemies, bland enviroments, and countless glitches, to horrible hit-detection, tedious running across maps, and even frustratingly cheap deaths which are almost never your fault. However, even though there are some impressive moments in the game, (those being the large scale spells and BOTH of the boss battles...that's right, 2 bosses in an ACTION game), they aren't enough to justify the price. If you can rent it, rent it, or buy it used for about $15.00 first to see if you like it, a lot of people do like the game and you can't argue with them, in fact it is kind of charming, but I only reviewed it in a technical manner. Oh and if you're wondering why I didn't talk about the story it's because the story is basically non-existent.




"If you have a choice, buy Bayonetta, if you already have Bayonetta, try Bullet Witch out..."