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Nice Idea but Poor Implementation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: June 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

Average ...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: March 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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 Gears of War .

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.

Bullet Babe!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: March 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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!

An (overall) decent game that heavily lacks polish

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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).

Good Third Person shooter

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: March 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As third person shooters go this one is actully very good. It feels like a cross between 'Devil May Cry' and 'Silent Hill' with a stronger lean towards shooting instead of melee. The storyline is also detailed enough to be intersting but does not overload the gameplay. The effects are great, and the overall visual and realisim level are quite high.

The controls are not overly complex and the weapons/spells available are cool. The game physics are also awesome, most anything can be blown up or you can use willpower to force cars, planes, trashcans, barrels, etc into your enemies. There is no need to track ammo in this game, you reload by summoning ammo using a tiny amount of magic and it's fairly quick, so there's no conservation strategy required. Health and Magic regen over time. The only upgrades are purchased between stages, so you're not hunting for the elusive upgrades/weps.

I rate this a 4 for Fun, and 5 overall because this is the best 3rd person shooter I've seen, I'm not usually a fan of third person shooting.

A side note, seeing a female from third person is quite a bit nicer than staring at a guy for hours on end, at least from my perspective.

Avoid this witch's lame spell

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: March 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Bullet Witch is bad. Atari and Cavia's third-person action game is so bad, in fact, that I don't even feel like it deserves a flowery introduction. Toss in a terrible game engine, embarrassing graphics, and don't forget to leave out all of the A.I. You're bubbling up a stew of Bullet Witch, kiddies!

Protagonist Alicia is busy running around killing demons after years of horrible events wipe out the vast majority of humankind. She's quiet but she's got a sharp attitude and a hot trigger finger. This is the premise of Bullet Witch, and very little else is explained as the game progresses. Alicia doesn't like demons. She wants to kill them. It's that simple.

Unfortunately, it actually isn't that simple. Alicia, despite being an attractive heroine, controls like a grumpy old man with a crooked walker. She's got some nimble dodge moves mapped to the Xbox 360's L trigger, and these moves let her avoid everything short of exploding cars, falling objects, and snipers that are evidently so sharp that they can nail her mid-jump. In other words, you won't be avoiding much as you hop around wildly and steer your cow-like character around the levels.

You also won't be shooting much; the game's collision detection seems random at best. I would often stand a few paces from an enemy, unloading a machine gun's entire magazine only to watch the enemy mow down Alicia using his machine gun. Lame. The collision detection rears its ugly face anytime the game's "Walnut Head" enemies come around. Walnut Heads are floating bodies with huge, pulsating brains-they control magical barriers that Alicia has to break down to continue through the levels, meaning that fighting Walnut Heads is mandatory. Walnut Heads have the power of telekinesis and telepathically throw cars and other huge objects at Alicia, commonly killing her before she's even spotted them.

Alicia can use her broom-like gun (imagine that) to kill enemies, and the player can even change the gun into different forms. By finishing levels, you earn skill points and can upgrade the machine gun into a shotgun, sniper rifle, or gatling gun. Unfortunately, none of the unlockable forms are as efficient as the machine gun. Since there is unlimited ammo, and Alicia doesn't seem to die quickly, there isn't much need to think while shooting. Alicia's spellcasting powers are terribly done; using the bumpers you'll scroll through different types of magic. Some magic, like the "Ancient Wall" ability, is completely useless. Ancient Walls completely obstruct your view and break down quickly. Natural set pieces like blown-up cars and corners provide much better cover. Offensive spells like meteor storms and lightning bolts are powerful but use most of your magic points and therefore can't be utilized often enough to be considered helpful. Annoyingly, animations are loaded up as Alicia conjures up her destructive powers that prevent her from avoiding any attacks whatsoever and even freeze her in place for seconds after casting. Even worse, you can't hotkey any of the magic spells to the otherwise unused directional pad-what's the deal with that?

Artificial intelligence is completely missing from this product. In the second level you encounter a few building-sized buffoons with huge machine guns; they're designed to look absolutely monumental and terrifying but are actually gentile giants. Each of them that I encountered in that level actually stopped walking toward me, stopped shooting, and calmly allowed me to shoot their pulsating hearts until they exploded and fell to the ground. I thought the first giant might be a fluke, but indeed the next ones just stopped their terror-inducing rage when they laid eyes on Alicia. The basic grunts are so incredibly stupid that they'll actually walk away from you and into walls after being shot. Still, they've got heart-they're so hell-bent on killing innocent humans that they'll ignore Alicia filling their backside with lead and lightning bolts. I've seen daddy long-legs missing all eight long legs put up more of a struggle than these brainless dolts.

Bullet Witch is among the ugliest of the Xbox 360's library. As I ran through the post-apocalyptic settings I couldn't help but think of Majesco's Xbox sleeper Phantom Dust-but even that bargain Xbox title looked better and ran better than this Xbox 360 one. There are blurry and undetailed textures everywhere, little to no particle effects as a result of shooting the ground, walls, or glass-hell, the only visually-pleasant sights are the game's menus and the trails of smoke that accompany smoldering, exploded and destroyed cars on their trip back to the ground. Remember those giants I was just going on about? After completing that level, you see a newspaper clipping with a sub-headline that reads, "Who's going to remove these giant corpses from the streets?" No one, silly! The bodies disappear when you move away from them! Other objects do the opposite, appearing as Alicia approaches their vicinity. Clipping must be one of Alicia's witchcraft powers, because she can walk through what appear to be solid chairs, tables, fire hydrants, crates-the list goes on.

All of the above problems are silhouetted by the fact that Bullet Witch is about six hours long. There are six levels, each takes about an hour to complete. Doing so earns you some Xbox 360 Achievements, but there is no way that even the most addicted Achievement freak should spend $60 on a video game that offers six levels. There are currently plans to release more content via Xbox Live, but this is a $20 product trespassing in a $60 box.

If Bullet Witch had a consistent physics engine, artificial intelligence of any kind, and even a trace of collision detection it might be an average shooter. As it is...well, in the first sentence of this review I said, "Bullet Witch is bad." I just repeated it, and it doesn't need to be said again.

Bullet Witch belongs in a ditch.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There are a lot of things I could say about this game, but what it boils down to is this: rent it first.

For the sake of time and clarity I'm going to mention what's bad and leave it up to you to find what's good - if there is any, that is.

1) Camera Angle. Ever wish you could see the world through a cats eyes? Now you can, as the camera is located mid south on the screen and gives a disassociated feeling by placing it about where the eyes of a small following animal would be viewing from.

2) Aiming. Closely tied in with #1, when you aim you can barely see the area. Since this is hard to explain I'll say this: take your favorite shooter, aim at a ceiling, look directly out (w/your eyes) and you will see how shooting/aiming in bullet witch looks.

3) Shooting. Your bullets have very low damage, it's hard to "lock-on" to a target because of how the aiming is and generally gives a "n00bish" feel. Think spongebob with a gun - that's how it feels. This game is a shooter like jail is a hotel - it takes more than a bed to justify the label.

4) Melee. One move with two parts - very exciting. They made no attempt to add any color here and it basically shows the lack of quality and care given to the game.

5) "Spells." These are not traditional projectiles (as far as I've seen, anyway). They rain from the sky in a two part process which demonstrates further lack of care. During the second phase, the aiming, you are completely vulnerable to attacks while you fiddle with the target and if your enemy even half deserves the attack you're preparing, you will probably be dead before it pulls. Don't worry if you missed, reloading from a checkpoint is only a few clicks away.

To sum the game up a bit better I'll say this: A good game gives you a character you can relate to, with a story worth hearing and a character whose controls permit mastery - so what is this game? The opposite. Within five minutes of loading this game you will know all you need to as to whether you will like or dislike it.

As far as being a "witch" I'm not sure having a few "magic spells" constitutes a trait worth mentioning. You could have said she was a genetically enhanced gerbil with plastic surgery and it wouldn't have mattered. For effect, I assume, they gave you a gun which looks like a broom and thus solidify her position as a witch.

If you like numbers just examine the steep price drop bullet witch has experienced in contrast to games such as Gears of War, Oblivion, etc - might save you a few bucks!

Good luck!

Is There A Spell T o Refund My Money?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Too bad you can't use curse words on Amazon, because there would be a ****load right now. This game is filled with good intentions and some nice ideas, but just not thought out as well as it should have. Mowing down demon soliers in a suburban neighborhood should be alot funner than this. And while the magic effects are nice, the overall feel of this game is very mediocre; The movements are awkward, and while some of the graphics are nice and sharp, the overall bland enviornments will just have you shaking your head. Sure, all the explosions look 'purty', but don't they all on Next Gen? This could have a been a really fun guilty pleasure with a little more effort behind it, but instead it's just very ho-hum. Another year in development could have maybe turned this around. But....

Just play Bloodrayne 2 again.

BULLET WITCH REVIEW

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 15
Date: March 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If it's one thing I have to say, it is if you hate this game you can go f*** yourself ***hole! This one of the best games I've played in a while, and I still want to keep playing it even though I beat it. Sure, the graphics don't meet Xbox 360 standards and the controls need work, it's funner than you'd think from some of the problems I've mentioned. If you're someone with A.D.D. I wouldn't recommend this game for you because it requires a lot of time and patience to figure out where to go. What helped with this problem was I always looked for signs of shooting. The spells you get to use on the game are awesome, such as tornados, meteors, lightning, ravens, walls, the ability to toss cars and debris, and the power to heal fallen comrades. The gun the main character Alicia gets to use is part broom, but it's a very powerful and amazing and you can upgrade it to machine gun, shotgun, and a gatling gun. Luckily your health recovers on it's own, but what helps to prevent you from losing your health completely is by the effective jumping mechanism your character has the ability to use. Whatever you do never trust magazine reviews of this game, because most people I've talked to have said this game is fun, not ok, but fun. The music score from this game is excellent and brings out this game's beauty, it's not just a shooter, but also a game where the storyline and emotions keep you captivated and take you away from the usual mindless hardcore shooters where you feel nothing. So you must buy this game and experience something truly amazing and addicting to play. Although there are only six missions they're long, difficult at times, and awesome to play. This game can even be purchased for kids because it's only mature-rated for blood, language, and violence. This game can also be for pyromaniacs because you can blow cars up along with buildings, tanks, and helicopters with your powers. So please buy this game, do yourself a favor and give yourself something amazing and beautiful to play.

Worth every cent I spent on this charming yet lethal witch

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: May 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Maybe I am bias because I like games with strong-will female as the lead plus some magic stuffs include but still I am saying that BW rocks!I've never been interested in games with shooting element but BW changed my perspective.I am through with the final stage but yet I am still playing it trying to upgrade all the magics and gunrods.It's so cool thinking that the last game that I couldn't stop playing were X-Men Legend I and II and Marvel UA.Man I can't get enough of this game but as I am so crazy about it, I still have to agree that BW has flaws that need to fixed such as graphic enhancement to meet 7th Gen standard and make the game longer for as Malaysian, I can't buy extra Concept Missions from XBox Live (Microsoft..how could you..) so I have to be contented with the game itself.To conclude, BW ROCKS!

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