Story is irrelevant. All you really need to know is that the world has gone to pot; Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies; the dead rising from the grave, earthquakes, volcanoes... dogs and cats living together -- mass hysteria. As it turns out, the only person who can stop it is a leather-clad woman in black wielding a broom-shaped gun and magic.
Gameplay is about as straightforward as it can get; playing as our leather-clad heroine, Alicia, much of your time is spent navigating linear paths through a city dominated by weapon-wielding zombies. Your goal in each level is to hunt down creatures called Walnut heads, which are big floating brains that sound a lot like Cousin It if he were played by James Earl Jones sucking helium. After finding the Walnut heads, it is your job to kill them, unlocking parts of the level that were, until now, blocked by colored walls. The whole thing is like something out of a 90’s era FPS and would get really boring were it not for the magic system.
Though limited at first, Alicia’s powers are unlocked by spending skill points. These include the ability to summon as wall for cover, a telekinetic push and the ability to summon a flock of crows. Later on, she can also unlock the ability to summon Tornados, Meteors and Lightning. These latter two powers are, as you would expect, pretty powerful. The trade-off is that you need to aim them, which is a little harder than you’d think. Still, the damage is enough that you probably won’t notice that you’re off the mark.
Spells are fun to use during the game, and it is only after you start using them that you finally “get” Bullet Witch. At the same time, spells aren’t integrated into gameplay all that well and are rather finicky. The telekinetic push only works at certain distances and can only move predetermined items. While you can push a water tower down the street with on telekinetic push, the same exact power can’t be used on a lowly grunt. The unpredictability of spells goes much deeper than this. More than once I used a telekinetic push with the intent to pushing something in front of me, only to push something behind me.
Problems like these are what ultimately kill Bullet Witch. I can stand the visuals not being up to par, but the gameplay lacks direction and just seems thrown together at times. Even the areas that seem intricately planned never seem to work out the way they were supposed to, instead leaving you to try and improvise a way out. I’ll never fault a game for including improvisational play, after all that’s what makes games fun, but when it feels forced because the “real” way is broken – then we have a problem.
As far as length, Bullet Witch is about as long as Alicia’s pleated skirt. The entire game can be completed in short time. In its defense, more levels are supposed to be available for download, though as far as I can tell none have popped up for download yet.
