Bulletstorm

[Art Blade]

 ^+-+

There is one thing about this MP game that is quite hard to cope with: You can't stop.

Not that you wouldn't want to, but there is no pause menu or anything that could stop those waves of enemies. They keep coming. If you want to take a leak, you better do it during the end of a wave when the scores are shown for a couple of seconds, then the next wave starts with a limited amount of time during which you have to spend your experience points you earned during the last wave on upgrades for your weapons and armour, speed and stamina.. all in all, not really funny if you notice during a fight that you'd really have to go some place knowing that while you're away your team (perhaps only one guy) will have to stay alive and keep you alive, too.. hehehe ^-^

So indeed it is quite challenging everything considered  :-() But it is good fun :)

[Art Blade]

Ha! Another private match with that Russian player (Sergei17) playing a team of two game on Dead Rock map was a full success, with his help I finished my first complete challenge with all 20 waves. Woo-hoo  :-D

Currently out of 37,533 players I'm ranked #106 for kills (7,725 kills, and additionally 121 revives which is quite a lot compared to other players but if a team mate goes down it is the only thing I care about and I try to revive him first) and rank #128 for skill points (1,811,695 points with 11,422 skill shots needed -- you can get points with fewer shots if you focus on high scoring skill shots but I also kill for less just to survive or to get a mate out of trouble when surrounded by enemies).

All that in less than a week  ;)

[Art Blade]

And now I found an American player (Idan4326) whom I invited to do the same routine on Dead Rock and we managed all 20 rounds ;D

Now I'm a level 65 "Final Echo" and my rankings are currently #82 for kills and #70 for skill points, a total of 37,696 players ranked.

YES, top 100!  :)

[PZ]

 :-X :-X ;)

[Art Blade]

Taking the MP game to a higher level, Binnatics and I decided to use voice chat so we were able to communicate and max out the scores even more. Basically it's like "here's one for you" and "ok, got him" or "there's a boss" and "no, not any more, there isn't." :-D

I'm playing the highest level 65 "Final Echo" (same as Binnatics) and the ranking is now for Kills #61 and for Skill Points #37 out of 37,982 players. I checked the scores and am convinced that in the top ten there are at least five cheaters (it is impossible to score like 230 million points with like 1,500 shots) but anyway, I got there within less than a week.

Playing like this requires a good strategy and useful tactics and focussing for perhaps two or three hours (20 waves) if you want to catch every enemy and kill him together with your team mate to get as many points as possible, but we're still enjoying it and having a good laugh in between :) It is totally different from what most players do, they just go in and kill for themselves, their only strategy being "let's kill some."

[PZ]

Organization and cooperation are essential components of any successful operation - can accomplish almost anything  :-X

[Art Blade]

Bulletstorm: Whip, Kick, Boom Trailer

;D

[Art Blade]

End of Report -- Final Impressions

Now it's Sunday night again, so you guys have followed one week of my multiplayer career as a Bulletstorm team player. After this one week my final standings are as follows:

Out of currently 38,464 ranked players, my ranking is

#25 with 2,935,979 skill points and 17,803 skill shots
#38 with 10,443 kills and 192 revives (of team mates)
#59 with 562 challenges played, 574 waves completed, 4 full matches played (from wave 1 to 20)

These are the three rankings and their categories to be found in Bulletstorm MP.

If you play as a regular player, you'll see a chaotic game with more or less accidentally caused team skill shots. Anyone can perform skill shots and the sum of them is the team score; each the team score required to advance to the next wave depends on how many players a team has (like, two players need 20,000 team skill points to finish wave 20, whereas three already need 30,000 points total which is hard to get, and a regular team of four players needs 40,000 points which is next to impossible without strategy, tactics and communication). If one enemy is killed with a skill shot performed by two or more players, every player's score who participated in the killing doubles. So you see, usually random teams can't make it past wave 19 and most of the time not even past wave 12.

I've only met three people who are capable of adjusting their way of playing the game so that the team really gets good scores without voice chat. With one of them I played a private match (2 players) using messages and the score was great. With two of them I played "team of two" (I made up this term) using voice chat and the results were amazing. Binnatics and I played together as if we had played this for years but we only played three games together so far, one as a random team of four and I noticed his skills, the second game was private yet without voice chat but we had exchanged like two messages before we started the match (one: general simple strategy, two: weapon loadout) and the third.. it was heaven. In the end our team scored roughly 48,000 skill points in wave 20 while we only needed 20,000)

Another very promising player is Idan4326 but his mic was broken so he could basically only listen to me and replied with text messages in GFWL which isn't easy to follow (interrupts the game flow). However, we did have a lot of fun and scored abundantly, so maybe we'll try a team of three with Binnatics as soon as Idan4326 has got a headset.

It is a great team game and depending on how you play it can be very amusing. Once you've got the score needed to get to the next wave, you can kill the rest of the enemies any way you want. Since our teams score so high, we have lots of enemies to just waste and that was just so funny.. like playing football with them, touch down, field goal, kick-off and what not. I was laughing so hard with Idan4326 as we played a different map that has a massive waste press (garbage compactor) in the middle that slams down like a sledge hammer on an anvil...   ^+-+

I enjoy the game as long as the right people are in the team. Else it's just chaotic and basically frustrating to see what they call "team play." I'm glad that I have found those few people who make this game so special.

[PZ]

Sounds like you had a great time  :-X

[Art Blade]

Talking about time, I just checked the game time, like 55 hours. Oh and I just had to play a few more rounds and got even higher in ranks.. I think the limit is just the ranks below some score cheaters who set it with like 230 million points. I think it works the same way as in TDU2, they want to upgrade everything at once and from start and "give" themselves skill points so they can buy stuff but "unfortunately" it also registers as skill points in the MP rankings. If you took them out of the equation I'd be in the top twenty by now and might get even into the top ten.

I just met another top ranking player, going to find out what he's like in a private match with headphones and mic (headset)  ;)

[fragger]

...I think the limit is just the ranks below some score cheaters who set it with like 230 million points. I think it works the same way as in TDU2, they want to upgrade everything at once and from start and "give" themselves skill points so they can buy stuff but "unfortunately" it also registers as skill points in the MP rankings. If you took them out of the equation I'd be in the top twenty by now and might get even into the top ten.

I just don't get people who do things like that. I can't imagine what sense of achievement anyone can possibly have when they know they cheated to get up there.

But way to go Art! And you know you did it by not cheating :-X :)

[Art Blade]

Indeed :)

Getting there wouldn't have been possible without the friendly support and cooperation of my Dutch friend Binnatics who has just joined our site as a new member  :) :-X

[fragger]

Well done both of you, then :-D :-X Welcome aboard, Binnatics! Whether you post anything or not, I hope you have fun here :)

[Binnatics]

Well, hello there ppl's,

I've just finished reading the whole bulletstorm topic, lol 20 pages ;)
Anyway, great to b here. Funny to read through a timeline like this... ppl start hearing about an upcoming game, some manage to obtain a beta-version or so, and then when it comes out ppl get even more enthousiast every day!
I think Bulletstorm is the best shooter i've played since Red Faction Guerrilla, which had also a good combi of mp and sp gaming.
First I thought I would quickly finish the game and leave it behind, but it's different. Like Art was talking about, you climb up in the ranks, and killing with all these different skillshots is just SO FANTASTIC!!!

The game is great fun and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't allready bought it.

By the way, I did not have so many trouble installing and signing in to GfWL. I agree that it is not a good thing having happened to the PC gamers, and experienced some trouble with it myself in other games. But for this one (I bought the retail version) everything was working fine, accept for numerous disconnection issues and bad connections in MP matches. Not sure if that is due to the one hosting the game, or the network.
Anyway, when in a private match so far I never lost connection.

Gonna take some rest now (it was late yesterday, and just before going to bed i remembered I had an apointment with my dentist this morning at 08:00 h :D)

[Art Blade]

Ow, so that must have been a really short night then and a rather bad start for a new day ???

The "bad connection" issue during random public matches is something I don't understand either, as if the game used different servers all over the world, some of which probably on the opposite side of the world.

I too lost connection a couple of times during public matches -- particularly annoying if you had fought your way up to say wave 12 or higher because usually you won't be able to get back into the same game due to the random distribution of player slots and even if you do you'd have lost all your weapons and upgrades.  :-\\

And indeed, private matches so far have been smooth regarding connections and I haven't lost connection during those either. :)

[Binnatics]

I was wondering if we could share some "great skillshot ideas" overhere. I myself have given it a thought and came up with the following:

• Thumper > blood symphony. If one should perform a thumper on as many enemies as possible the other can use his blood symphony to drag them appart one by one in the sky. It would have a great graphical effect i guess, all the blood in the middle of the sky, and maybe the blood symphony score will be added to both players...?
  
• Charged bouncer > kick. I'd like to try this as a team but for a max score. We could collect a swarm of enemies close together (best scalpers for that reason) and then unleash a charged bouncerball close to the group. The other player kicks the bouncerball in the middle of the group. That would give a large amount of skillpoints to both players i think.
• Thumper > Charged penetrator. One guys thumps at least 2 enemies in the air, the other uses his charged drill to shoot one, and then drag him into the next thumped enemie. I think this might be a way to make this weapon usefull in teamgames and I wonder how many points it would generate for both players.

Anyone having more ideas let me know, we can try it in-game to c how it works.

[Art Blade]

We tried the blood symphony skillshot but it didn't turn out to be what we had hoped for. As a matter of fact, only one weapon seems to be worth using during MP which is called flailgun. A flail (without exploding it) attached to the enemy before he gets busted by another team player produces an extra "sadist" skillshot adding points to the skillshot that actually killed him and both players involved get the extra points. :) Also, the flailgun helps to stop bosses and incapacitate them for a while which is a great advantage when battling them.

[Binnatics]

Sorry for switching to the Bulletstorm-topic Art, but GlaDOS was closing in on us. I had to make an unexpected move ;) Click the spoiler to drop the cubus:

Spoiler

[smg id=3235 width=500]
Cool!!! You did it! Well, that wasn't much of a challenge.
Now go to the next room, and find the portal device that's in there. Go ahead!

Too bad the blood symphony didn't w%&k, but it gave some extra nice blood-splattering-sky-vew anyway  :-()

I allmost forgot about hte great skillshot possibilities with the sniper-like gun. Too bad it ain't available in team games.

[Art Blade]

On an aside, I think this is the first game that allows console and PC players to join the same MP game, basically because it's not so much a precision shooting game but hitting somewhat big targets, allowing auto-aiming and snapping the crosshair onto the target, there shouldn't be a big difference between console and PC players.

I came to believe that we share the same games because the GFWL shows a little guy on the gamer card for PC players and then there is a different icon of a little guy with a console controller across it which is probably used by Xbox360 players.  :)

[Art Blade]

I'm actually ranking #10 for skill points now.. (out of 40,000+ players) feels good :) And Binnatics is on his way, too  :-() :-X

Five out of those top ten are definitely cheaters which makes it impossible to get to #1 though.

[Art Blade]

Always a nice surprise to find people out there who enjoy a good coop match and play along, this time top-ranking jriker43 who immediately grabbed his headset and dipped into a 2-player-team private match with me and we did have fun picking those pesky enemies and leash them through a tornado..  :-D

Actually talking to players during and after a match is a nice experience. There are only few players out there who play along like that but those are all nice people  :)

Maybe we can pull off a team of three or even four some time soon.. looking forward to it :)

[Binnatics]

Me too i'm looking forward to having a four-player party. It whould make the game even more fun!
I wonder if they will ever allows both console and pc players connect to eachother in the same online match. I believe there is still no connection possible. They set that up for GTA IV, but I guess it only included leaderboards.

I agree they should do that, and with the new possibilities on 'motion-sence-controllers' it should allready b possible to enjoy the same shooting/aming experience as a mouse gives to the PC gamer. Think it will come by the time, they still need to get used to it.

I agree that this game should make the perfect start to it. Fine aiming is just not neccessary, only if you want to do headshot. Well, headshots don't produce big coop scores, so why would we try that but for the fun every now and then? I still like the 'gag-reflex' where you hit someone with a bullet in the throat or the 'mercy' when shooting someones balls off and finish him with a nice kick to the head  >:(

[Art Blade]

 ^+-+ yes, there are great skillshots. 135 different ways to kill enemies at least in SP and probably even more in MP ??? >:D

[Binnatics]

Yes, we finally made it!!! Art and I we got a score above 50000 in one single wave. The hard part is that you have to do that in wave 20, which is the last round. So you have to pass all the other rounds and then finally get the shot in the last one. That takes about 3 hours of playing before getting the shot at it.
We did it with only 2 players, what is quite an achievement.
Now I'm all tired so good night all of you!

C ya later (:)

[Art Blade]

 ;D :-X

The "Anarchy Master" (50,000+ skill points in the 20th -- final -- wave of a challenge) achievement is something the best team players strive for but few manage to get it. Teams of four good players may get it so indeed, doing it on our own, this nice rewarding achievement is special.

OWG for the win  ;D :-X

During one full challenge we get roughly 300,000 skill points each while we'd probably only have needed something like 20,000 to just finish it  :-()