There comes a time when a shooter becomes too serious which means that a gap appears in the market for some crazy shooter to come out, rear it’s head and laugh at you in a way you wasn’t expecting.

Luckily for us, that gap has now been filled with a title from Epic, called Bulletstorm.   In a preview at EA’s European showcase, mature-gaming witnessed what can only be described as one of the most impressive, funny and varied action shooters we have seen for a while.

Aptly, the game comes with a moniker, ” kill with skill” and rewards players for killing the enemy in as many creative ways as possible.  Set in tourist resort paradise that has seen its share of atrocities, the demo we saw in a short but eye opening presentation sees the main character, Grayson Hunt (insert rhyming slang here!) deliver as many Duke Nukem style one liners as action moves that would make any pre-pubescent boy giggle with embarrassing laughter.

The environment is very organic and almost anything in this environment can be used to kill the enemy.  As you can imagine with an fps that shooting anything dead is the main way of doing things but here’s the sort of twist.  The more creative you get with your kills, the more you are rewarded in terms of points.  Think of this as an FPS version of Stranglehold but a thousand times better or you could even look at comparisons of Serious Sam and Quake.  The list is endless.  The environment is also your friend and if used wisely can produce some remarkable results.  During the demo we were shown various way of getting different types of kills, all with their own names and points attached and all of the names are remarkably adult.  The “Gang Bang” kill was the one name that really stood out for a lot of people and has now been lasered into the press’s brains like some sort of branding.

Objects and items can be picked up, thrown, kicked, exploded using a variety of weapons and skills.  One weapon we saw launched a wire with grenades on the end that latch onto enemies and also the cover they have which is blown to smitherines with deadly effect and provides a healthy, yet bloody, reward for taking some time to look at a different way to kill or even to get rid of something that has decided it wants to be a little trickier than your standard opponent that will stand there and shoot.  One such kill that was demonstrated was the “Mercy” kill and made a few people cringe in its approach.  The premise of this kill?  Well shoot your enemy in the plums so he goes to his knees screaming in pain which then gives you two options, one to headshot him, the other to kick him in the face and both options will reward you with the skill kill. There are tonnes of these skill kills in the game, some are easy and others are very hard to get but we have been promised that the harder ones will be visually spectacular as well as rewarding for the player.

If you think that this will be just a run and gun bulletfest then think again.  The question that was going through our minds was “how can a tongue in cheek shooter that is fun to play have some sort of longevity and deliver a solid campaign?”  Their answer is to bring in Rick Remender who not only worked on the graphic novel, Fear Agent, but more importantly for us gamers scribed the core story to Dead Space.  People Can Fly, the studio working on this project who is owned by Epic, felt that with that sort of expertise then Rick was perfectly qualified to try and marry the storyline and crazy action romp shoot em up together.

Overall, most of the press were left stunned.  I’m not sure if it was to do with what they were hearing with the catchy one liners and shocked about all the sexual innuendo that was flying around, “you’ll never find out what this man-eater’s tongue can do” was one that warranted a double take or if it was the fast paced flowing action that was taking place in front of their eyes.  One thing is for sure.  Bulletstorm is a real eye opener in more ways than one.  The fluidity in the mechanics of the game flowed really well and although we could not get hands on with demo from what the press saw the game will be nothing short of amazing and a breath of fresh air.

Bulletstorm is due for release in 2011 on 360, PS3 and PC.  We will, of course, bring you as much news as we can in the coming months.