If you were lucky enough to come along to our recent Bulletstorm event at Atomic HQ (report and pics coming soon, promise!), you would have seen a fun, classically retro-style shooter with a great co-op mode.
What you wouldn't have seen, however, is the GIANT PAIN THE ARSE the game is to setup.
Thanks to Games for Windows Fail... I mean, Live, getting the game working first time is an exercise in both frustration and stupidity. For example, once you set up a new GFWL account, for instance, the game asks you to quit so new GFWL content can be installed.
Only, there's no access to anything like a game menu, as the process takes you back to the 'Press Enter to Start' screen, which then restarts the LIVING HELL that is the whole GFWL process over again, which - you guessed it - ends in another request to Quit and restart the game, before again take you to the Press Enter screen and then...
It's like a test for stupid people. The only way you can progress the update to is to force quit the game, which is pretty fracking poor.
On top of that, there's whole swathes of game settings that are hidden from PC gamers, and some pretty dumb control settings, too (like multiple actions being mapped to the one key - good one!). Thankfully, the big brains over at Ars Technica have a great guide to getting to grips with these issues and turning Bulletstorm into a proper PC game.
It's a real shame to see these issues, because Bulletstorm really is a lot of fun. Check out our full review in the next issue, 123 - on sale in a couple of weeks.
