Bullet Witch

The Good
All in this game points to the direction that the developers wanted to at least make a good effort. The game mechanics are pretty nicely designed, The character design and writing is pretty decent, the levels are pretty atmospheric and fun, and at no point does the game become depressing and frustrating. Yeah, I got killed a lot - but playing the game never turned boring.

The Bad
While the developers clearly made a good effort, they didn't apparently push this game to the perfection, which is a bit sad. The graphics and level design, while not hopeless, could have used a little bit more polishing. Enemy AI is not the brightest in the world: the giant enemies have the tendency to just stand there and get fooled by proper use of cover. (I usually don't mind stupid AI, but in some parts of the game, you really notice the bad AI to the point that you find it ridiculous.) Some of the levels have walled-off areas, which are justified in the game but look a bit mechanical and contrived. Also, it is a relatively short game, with only 6 levels.

The Bottom Line
How would I describe this game to others? Oh, I like this game, and I have described this game to the others... with the exact words of "it's like Mass Effect, but not as good."

Which, of course, is kind of unfair. Bullet Witch is a third-person shooter with RPG elements; the witch Alicia learns new spells and upgrades her battle-broom with new gun abilities as the game progresses. In this post-apocalyptic vision of a world, Alicia mows down demon-infested people and tons of weird creatures with the help of a few surviving human soldiers and searches the source of this evil infestation.

Well, it's perhaps not the most original game, but at least the makers made a good effort towards making it original and memorable, which is a lot more than what can be said of a lot of zombie-fighting - excuse me, demon-fighting games. We get strange spell effects - some are quite helpful and fun, like the distracting flock of ravens or the one that makes spears sprout from the ground. We get newspapers. (How many fictional post-apocalyptic worlds have working newspapers? Not nearly as many as there should be.)

It is a very dark game, but not depressing. It's a post-apocalyptic game that actually genuinely made me smile in the end.

I've heard some grumbling, but mostly from the crowd who paid full price for the game. I'd wager this is just a perfect bargain-bin or rental game, though. Who knows, with a little bit of extra polish and maybe a few more levels, this could have been a real classic...