Bullet Witch

There's this moment about halfway through Bullet Witch where our hero, a gun-toting magic user named Alicia, is forced to fight a flying serpent monster on the top of an airplane. It's every bit as over-the-top and ridiculous as you would hope, with eyeballs flying everywhere and explosions coming from all sides. If this is kind of goofy fun you're expecting from a game called Bullet Witch, then I want to start this review by telling you to look elsewhere. The few brief moments of absolute lunacy are surrounded by a mediocre third-person shooter with terrible gameplay and a laughably lame story. Even at just 4 hours, this game is too long.

This is not my first encounter with Alicia. Back in 2006, I reviewed the game when it first hit Xbox 360, and I wasn't a big fan. It was the kind of bad that is easy to forget. It wasn't fun to play and had very few redeeming qualities, but it also wasn't so much of a train wreck that it scarred me for life. The truth is, I had completely forgotten that I owned the game until just last week, when XSEED decided it would be a good idea to bring Bullet Witch to PC. I'm not sure why this is happening after 12 years, but it gave me an opportunity to give this game a second chance. And the result? It still sucks.

Like I said at the top, this is the story of a witch named Alicia who uses her magical abilities and broomstick-shaped machine gun to fight zombies. She seemingly comes out of nowhere and is filled with mysteries, two things that will be explored as she fights through six action-packed stages and teams up with a bunch of confused soldiers.

On paper, Alicia sounds like an incredible action hero. She has a memorable gun, loves blowing stuff up and can even summon lightning and tornadoes like Halle Berry in the X-Men. Toss her into a world where giant demons are literally tearing the city apart in front of our eyes and you have a game that pretty much makes itself. If only it were that easy. What we get instead is a third-person shooter that seems to be made by developers who don't understand why people like third-person shooters.

Let's start with the gameplay, which can best be described as sluggish. Alicia lumbers around at a slow pace and the combat reminds me a lot of the old PlayStation 2 game Gungrave. She can leap out of the way and cast magic spells to get out of trouble, but there's no getting around that she is slow and stiff. The result is a game where you largely just walk up to bad guys and shoot them until they die.

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Actually, that brings me to one of my more unusual complaints. The bad guys don't react like you would expect in a third-person shooter. That is to say, you'll unleash dozens of bullets into them and they won't react. There's never a sense that you're injuring the bad guys until the very end, when they fall to the ground and die. There's nothing satisfying about shooting a bullet sponge, and that proves to be one of the big problems with this game.

Unfortunately, it's not the only problem. There's also the issue that the levels are too large for what the developer's do with them. Some of these levels are so large that it's easy to get lost and not know where you're supposed to be going. They are also empty, completely lacking in bad guys on screen. Sure, there are times when you'll have to deal with tanks or shoot down a giant demon, but that's usually after you spent 5 minutes wandering around a lifeless city with no personality. There's nothing remotely fun or interesting about these stages.

And that's the problem I had throughout the entire four hour adventure. There are certainly moments that stand out, but they are sandwiched between some of the worst third-person shooting you'll come across this year. This is a game that felt dated in 2006, and the last dozen years of action games haven't magically made this game feel fresher. This isn't a throwback to a simpler time, but rather an example of how far we've come in the last twelve years.

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What they probably should have done is simply remade the game or given it a proper sequel. Alicia isn't a bad character and her story is interesting enough, but it's clear that the gameplay could have been handled better. Scrap everything from the original 2006 game and give us a much more agile character who isn't stuck in a painfully bland third-person shooter. Is that too much to ask?

I honestly don't know what people expected from this way-too-late PC port. Bullet Witch isn't some hidden gem that was misunderstood at the time, but is rather a poorly conceived action game that wasn't good then and is even worse now. Some gamers may get a kick out of the terrible voice acting and the two boss battles, but there isn't enough here to warrant the price. Bullet Witch was at its best when everybody forgot it existed.