Bullet Witch! Here’s a game that was originally developed as a japanese game and recently ported to the U.S. The premise is you (a witch), with a gun that is just a tad bigger than your entire body, must defeat throngs of undead soldiers. Obviously, you can use your gun to kill them, or you can use “magic”. The reason I put magic in quotes is that it’s not like fireballs or lasers that you can shoot from your hands, it’s magic that you can use to push a car into a bad guy, or heal people, or put a wall in front of you to stop incoming bullets.

While not entirely helpful, there are basic points that you have to use your magic. For instance, when  you battle the tanks in the first level, you have the ability to rain down lightning. One aspect about this is when you go to your magic screen and select the lightning, you end up mysteriously moving backwards to actually use it. It took me about 4 tries before I was able to lock on to the tank as it kept putting me out of range.

Another downfall of this game is the enemy. The AI was stupid. That’s to say it nicely. They also tend to blend in with the background. What was nice during the game was that since I couldn’t see the enemies all the time, they would give themselves away by shooting directly into the ground. Thanks, bad guys! Another reason why it was hard to see the enemy was because the surroundings would always tend to be in your way. When running along a line of bushes, there should be no reason why you can’t see through them. I can’t tell you how many times I ran along a path of foliage only to turn a corner and run into an enemy either shooting into the ground or standing there as dumbfounded as I am.

Which leads me to my final point. The gun itself is slow and awkward. The aiming has to be directly on the enemy to inflict any damage, which, in itself, is difficult because the controls seem to move at different speeds. There are 2 aiming mechanisms. The first is traditional 3rd person and the second is a 1st person view. I found myself constantly “left-clicking” between the two, as it was hard to maneuver around the screen with one set viewpoint. Not to mention the enemies that would randomly pop up next to you during gameplay.

One last quick add is that there is no true jump. When trying to get over a car, ledge, random obstruction, you hit the left trigger to do some aerobic spinning and twisting before you actually go airborn. If I wanted my character to do that much exercise, I would have rented DDR.

Now, I know this is pretty negative for my first review, but there are some pluses for this game. You definitely don’t have to think too much and you can’t get lost as you’re on a set game path. Additionally, the lead character is easy on the eyes! But all that can’t take away from the poor quality of the game itself. This is one game that feels rushed and poorly put together. That’s a shame, cause the idea is pretty kickass.

My vote for this game is 2/5. Could be so much more if it spent a little more time in development tho.