The Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, a remastering of the sadly overlooked People Can Fly shooter from 2011 that features a healthy dose of Duke Nukem for some reason, will be out on April 7—that would be this Friday. And if it does well enough, as Meredith Hershey and Vincent Slaven of Gearbox recently told DualShockers, it might finally get a sequel.
Interestingly, the possibility first came up in a question about Duke Nukem, and whether the character's appearance as a playable character is intended in part to gauge interest in the possibility of a new Duke game. Slaven said no, emphasizing that he was added strictly as a bonus for fans because "Duke and Bulletstorm kind of have a similar sense of over-the-top adventure and the same type of humor and stuff." But he added that the remastered game is a way to gauge interest in a possible sequel to Bulletstorm.
"This Full Clip Edition is more or less a way to do that—because People Can Fly own the rights to the franchise fully—and they want to do more with it. And so they are kind of like—because game development is so expensive—they want to put this out to see like, 'Do people still want Bulletstorm? Is there like a different climate now that would be more receptive?' And if it is, there is definitely, probably gonna be an option for a Bulletstorm 2 following this," he said. "Duke Nukem 2, no, but Bulletstorm 2, I think: maybe."
I think a Bulletstorm sequel (without Duke Nukem) would be great. The original is enthusiastically juvenile and goofy—some might say stupid—but it made me laugh, and it was a nice break from the usual unsmiling business of saving the world from one apocalyptic horror or another. The action was great, too: Never forget that this is the game that gave players gravity boots not so they could climb on things, but so they could kick massively-muscled enemies hundreds of feet into the air. (And then blow them up with a rocket launcher for some bonus points.) I'd definitely be on board for more of that.
Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition is available for preorder on Steam for $43/£26/€39. The original is no longer available from Steam (or anywhere else, as far as I can tell), but if you have an Xbox 360 kicking around you can still pick it up from Microsoft, or just give the free demo a rip to see what it's all about.
