The genre of busty, scantily clad female heroine in an adventure game was spawned by Eidos over a decade ago. Since then, several imitations have come and gone, and Bullet Witch seems to be one of those that, after playing for a little bit, makes you wish it was already gone.
In Bullet Witch, you play a character named Alicia, who possesses magical powers, as well as a big gun known as the "gunrod." It should’ve been called a "gunbroom," as it essentially looks like a big giant broom which she can swing and melee with. Alicia travels from area to area, fighting off demons while she deals with her own internal demon. The premise is that it’s the year 2013, and Earth has been invaded by demons. You alone are the sole person who can stem the hordes. Sound peachy?
Bullet Witch is a third-person shooter, so you are staring at your enemies over Alicia’s back, much like other games of the genre. She has a few (and I do stress few) moves that limit your freedom of movement. Not that you would move around too much, since much of the game consists of ‘long hallways’ and big rooms that are dressed up and look like the outdoors.
You’ll find yourself doing the typical strafing, running for cover and sniping. Either way, there seems to be too much open, flat space where you have to run across to not feel exposed. Unfortunately, as you’re running past static buildings, demons spawn seemingly out of nowhere. The NPCs that speak when you get near them don’t seem to do very much in the way of adding to the story or the atmosphere. They just end up being mobile, vocal annoyances.
The graphics are less than stellar. In fact, it seems this game could have been an original Xbox release, looking at all the aliased (jaggy) graphics. The color palette is equally drab; however, since this is supposed to be a post-apocalyptic future, I guess it was intentional. But, combined with the fact that there’s little environmental interaction other than levitating and throwing cars and trashcans, it makes for little motivation to continue.
The one saving grace of Bullet Witch is its intuitive use of the d-pad to select and cast spells. Many console games, when dealing with magic, decide to limit the selection to the player or have the spells accessible through a big menu system. Not so with Bullet Witch, as you tap the d-pad in different directions to select family of spells and the level. Spells come in handy at times, allowing to levitate vehicles and throw them into a gas station to cause a giant explosion (easily the most amusing part of the game) to simply burning your foes alive.
Bullet Witch seems to try hard to be many things, but because of that, it suffers from lack of direction. The story focus on Alicia specifically is much more interesting than the background of the demons invading, albeit she herself is directly involved. The graphics could have been much better, especially for a game released on a next-gen console such as the Xbox 360. In the end, Bullet Witch is just not worth suffering the dreary and repetitive shooter syndrome for a weak story.
