A dozen years later hail of bulletsSomehow it endures.
You wouldn’t expect that in a game that, in hindsight, feels more like a Duke Nukem-esque guilt-trip that falls far short of its sales expectations. Reasonably violent and absurdly rude (Anyone else remember “Hey, dick tits!”?), even if hail of bullets received rave reviews mainly because of its gameplay its ammunition economyit hardly seems like a game that could be described as “ahead of its time”.
But that’s true, emphasizes Radomir Kucharski from Incuvo, the Polish virtual reality port shop hail of bullets Manufacturer People Can Fly Acquired at the end of 2021.
“When we were looking for a next project, we looked around hail of bullets and thought that this game with its mechanics was actually designed for VR,” said Kucharski. “hail of bullets is so action packed, so close to the action and with such physical interaction that it just seemed like it was designed for VR.”
Back then, Incuvo was independent and fresh off the VR adaptation of two horror titles by Bloober Team – layers of fear And Blair witch, for both Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR. Incuvo was finding success adapting established games on a commission basis, and Kucharski was looking for another hit to keep the studio going. It also helped that, like Bloober Team, People Can Fly is a Poland-based developer.
More important, said Kucharski, is the cult status hail of bullets continues to be fun. Electronic Arts and Epic Games all but abandoned the property after it fell far short of earnings and revenue expectations. People Can Fly, which Epic acquired in 2013 and spun off in 2015, retained ownership of the franchise and still had enough audience to warrant remastered console releases in 2017 and 2019.
“I was a huge fan of first-person shooters,” said Kucharski, a developer who worked on Medal of Honor and other military-style shooters the previous decade hail of bullets‘s launch. “I found hail of bullets very unique; I found the gameplay very fresh, something that was groundbreaking at the time.”
The game-changing components that seemed to take a back seat to all the swearing and violence in the original marketing were hail of bullets‘s “Skillshot” gameplay loop; using the environment to creatively eliminate enemies; and the “Lash of Energy” used by the hero Grayson Hunt to lasso, stun, or fling enemies to their demise.
The leash, Kucharski said, is the most VR-ready feature of hail of bulletsis the original gameplay. For example, reloading a weapon is a more meaningful experience. Kucharski argued that the dual-handling of a weapon in one hand and the leash in the other could be more easily expressed by having a dedicated controller in each player’s hand. “It just wasn’t possible with standard controllers or a keyboard and mouse.”
Bulletstorm VR is definitely not a rail shooter adaptation of the franchise, Kucharski pointed out. Players can move freely through the levels just like in the original. The adaptation also stays true to the original story, though Kucharski said the game isn’t a “copy-right copy.” I want to say it’s a new game, but it’s the same original story.” Half of the levels are exactly the same as the original hail of bulletshe said, “but there’s new content,” even if it doesn’t mean narrative changes.
“We used a lot of assets from the original game,” Kucharski said. “We had to redo some things, of course we had to switch the engine from the old Unreal 3 to I think 4.27, which is what we’re currently using. We had to recreate a lot of things, but the assets are based on the originals.”
Bulletstorm VRannounced in early June will be coming to Meta Quest and PlayStation VR 2 later in 2023. For all his talks about it hail of bulletsKucharski said that this game will still adopt the same smirking tone as its predecessor due to the advanced gameplay.
“Yes, the game is still pretty violent,” he chuckled. “The violence is very exaggerated. It’s not serious; it is fun.”
