Does Bullet Witch, a third-person shooter for the XBox 360 made by Atari, have what it takes to make you forget about Gears of War? Read the review to find out!The year is 2013, and the Earth has been overrun with hell-spawned demons. The human population numbers below 1 billion, and it probably won’t be long until that reaches zero. But humanity has one last hope — a young woman named Alicia, in possession of extraordinary magical powers as well as a large, shape-changing gun. She’s the Bullet Witch, and she’s ready to track down the source of the demons and put a stop to their reign of horror.

As mentioned previously, this is a third-person shooter, as you look over Alicia’s shoulder as she shoots and casts spells. In the game’s six stages, you make your way through the different environments, trading gunfire with Geists — the evil souls of humanity given form and an armory, it seems — and taking out the occasional behemoth and floating brains. Your main source of dealing out pain is your gunrod, a large “broomstick” that can take on four different forms. You begin with a standard machine gun, and this is what you’ll be using the most. As you gain upgrade points after clearing stages, you can buy a shotgun, sniper, and gatling gun form. Your ammo is unlimited, but you still need to reload after every clip. Each reload takes a small bit of your magic power, depending on the gunrod’s form.

Your secondary source of offense/defense is your magical abilities. You begin with a simple lineup of spells — you can clear away obstacles (and hurl them at enemies) with willpower, you can summon a wall to block enemy gunfire, and you can sacrifice a small bit of your health (don’t worry, it regenerates) to heal any injured person you find. Using your end level upgrade points, you can purchase new abilities and power up ones already in your cache. There are also Great Magic spells that you learn in game at certain points in the game. The first of these is a lightning strike that can level larger threats, such as tanks. The second is a series of tornados that will sweep up your enemies and their equipment, and the third is an impressive meteor shower that will literally bring down buildings on the demons’ heads.

Sounds impressive so far, but how does it really fare?

Graphically, the game looks like it belongs on last generation consoles. It does look nice — in places — but as a 360 game, it pales in comparison to games like Gears of War and Crackdown. Our heroine, Alicia, looks spectacular, though, as a lot of work was put into her character renders and various free downloadable costumes. Not surprising, as you’re with her for the entire game. Other characters, such as the leader of the Human Resistance force Maxwell Cougar, look bland and generic. The six levels you traverse are also very generic and uninspired, and are often too dark and muddy to make sense of. An option to adjust the brightness in-game would’ve really helped.

The music is minimal, but effective. Sound effects are your typical gunfire and explosion sounds, as well as the click of Alicia’s boots as she moves. Where the game really fails is the voice acting. Alicia doesn’t speak very often, and when she does it’s average at best. The voice you’ll grow to hate as soon as he opens his mouth, though, is Maxwell Cougar. He comes across as a total jackass. I suppose his lines don’t help, either. The localization is laughable, at best. Bright spots include your buddy, Darkness — Alicia’s inner demon and what could be the source of her powers. He will often provide a comment about what’s going on, give you help, or crack wise about the “normal humans” that you are helping. The demon soldiers you fight are funny as well — often times, they will surrender to you, begging you not to kill them and giving you several funny reasons why not to (”I’ve got three little demons at home!”).

The gameplay isn’t bad. You have an on-screen reticle to help you aim. Clicking on the right analog stick will zoom in a bit so you can aim better, and the reticle will change to blue when an enemy is in sight, and red when it is firing range. The right or left bumper brings up your spell menu. There are three levels of spells you can click through using the bumper buttons. Spells are mapped to specific buttons, as well as a cancel button. Spellcasting does not pause the game, so you have to be careful. Unfortunately, most of your spells aren’t very useful. The magic wall is the best of the non-Great Magic lot, as you will need this spell to avoid one-hit kill sniper fire. Also, to achieve the best score and get the most upgrade points, you’ll need to use your sacrifice spell to heal any injured folks you see. Your upgrade points are based on how many enemies you kill, the time it takes to complete a level, and the healing of the injured.

You would think that after all of that, I hated the game. Despite all of its flaws, it was still fun in a “so-dumb-it’s-good” way. I can see Alicia becoming one of the next video game supterstars — she’s gorgeous, and the building blocks for a truly great game to carry her are there. If Atari decides to make a sequel, here’s hoping they iron out all of the bad stuff and really devote their resources into making a game that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Gears of War. I would suggest to them to license the Unreal 3.0 engine from Epic, triple the budget spent of visuals, and hire some decent writers. Alicia’s too good of a character to let drift away.

Bottom line, it’s a fun diversion. Rent if, it can be finished in just a few hours. Otherwise, check for it used at your local games store or Ebay — you needn’t spend more than twenty-five dollars on this. It’s a game with a lot of potential for future installments, but for now, it’s barely average.

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