Mad Bullets

 
Developer: isTom Games Kft.
Steam Release: Jun 2016
Hours Played: 1.5
Similar To: Blue Estate The Game / Drive-By Hero / Major Mayhem / Western 1849 Reload
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Typically, an iOS game ported to PC with the asking price of £1.59 will raise eye-brows, not to say a few alarm bells. But in seas of mud and mediocrity you'll find buried treasure if you dig around hard enough. If you also want to step up for some madcap mayhem while feeling like a kick-ass sharpshooter then look no further than this frenetic on-rails shooter set in the wild wild west. The game is played in first-person view as it takes you slowly on a journey - like a snail's pace runner - through small towns and camps of old North America. As you move forward, an assortment of assassins will pop up or slide into view at regular intervals and throw or fire missiles at you in an attempt to halt your journey. With just the left-click of the mouse, you frantically shoot down this motley crew until you lose your three lives.        

BALANCE & PACE
It's a simple premise but Mad Bullets, with ample twists and turns, is done remarkably well. For a start, ammo management in the form of constant reloading is thrown into the mix so you'll want to avoid disaster when that huge bullet, deadly syringe or flying skull is heading straight at you. Additionally, friendly characters (in green as opposed to red) pop unexpectedly onto the screen to test your reflexes. Shoot these guys - which can be hard not to during the mayhem - and you'll suffer an annoying penalty. For an extra challenge you can shoot small items attached to some of them like padlocks and pints of beer for extra points. To improve scores, the game has an upgrade system to attributes such as magazine size, power-up effects and headshot score which you can utilise between runs by visiting the store. 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The main game is crisp, colourful and clear with characters drawn in a cartoon and comic-like style. Environments are extremely varied and vibrant. Enemies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes from rednecks to cowboys with shields to young boys totting catapults that fire angry birds at you. There is also a huge list of non-human items just lying around and begging to be destroyed for extra points. For seconds, kills are accompanied by showers of shattering shards that help to make the experience explosive and fun. The rocking soundtrack is punchy and chunky and also fits in very well with the aggressive mood of the game. Finally, there are plenty of intuitive and user-friendly menus outside of the game that keep you well informed of upgrades and high-scores.  

PROGRESS SYSTEM
Mad Bullets is a high-score based game and comes with five modes of play including classic, hardcore and time attack. You can buy upgrades with sacks and this obviously helps you to gradually increase your score in each of the modes. Unfortunately, the spectre of in-app purchases is present here meaning upgrades are expensive and take a long time to max out which adds a grinding element to it. On the positive side, the game has a very extensive high-score chart with high-scores in all modes being displayed with an online rank. Nerds and geeks also need not worry as other stats such as longest time, shots fired, headshots, hostages freed, objects destroyed and even number of reloads is shown. 

CONCLUSION

As an intense and madly frantic experience for releasing stress and tension, Mad Bullets is ideal to do in short blasts but is not really the type of game where you'll want to do more than two or three runs per session. However, with its huge roster of bad guys along with the little intimidating comments that they make to goad you on, Mad Bullets is so jam-packed with character that you'll not want to uninstall it from your system. Added extras like power-ups, whack-a-mole type areas and an abundance of other objects that lie around for target practice just make Mad Bullets a game you'll likely warm to and want to try again and again.