Bulletstorm: Gun Sonata DLC Review
With just about a week to go before Bulletstorm gets you early access to the Gears of War 3 Beta, the DLC titled Gun Sontata announced upon its release has made it to the marketplace. Gun Sonata brings 3 new multiplayer maps and 2 new echoes along with 5 achievements worth 125G for 800 Microsoft Points.
Along with the three new multiplayer maps are several new skillshots related to each map. Die-ahhrea consists of knocking a baddy into the restroom on the Hotel Elysium level. This level is, as you may guess, basically the lobby of a hotel and has several new ways to kill people including Fanny Hack for knocking someone into the ceiling fans and Shattered for kicking someone into the glass to kill them. This is probably the most fun of the new maps just because of all the fun ways to kill your victims.
The Sewer map takes place in......the sewer! Wow where do they come up with these insightful names? Anyhow, this map's most prominent feature is an area with two valves, both of which turn on a powerful flame (gas leak maybe?) from a nearby pipe. Making for short work of the non-boss enemies. The Villa map has a similar prominent feature, a giant bell. Leashing this bell will cause it to fall and create a small blast radius, usually killing all standard enemies within the area. Both of the main features in these maps also net you new skillshots.
Well what about the new Echoes Mini? Well....at first I was very excited because these Echoes are NOT something pulled directly from the campaign, it was new material! My excitement diminished however when I completed them both in a matter of 15 minutes and much like the other echoes found almost zero replay value (barring achievements of course). To be honest, these just felt like a tease for a possible future DLC that involves a new story mission, nothing to get too excited about.
Now the question you may ask now, is it worth it? Well to those of you who enjoy playing the multiplayer with your friends or are desperate to get to level 65 and can't stand to play the maps shipped with the game, you might feel you are getting your money's worth. To the rest of us, this DLC is nice, but offers nothing more than a change of scenery for co-op mode. Bottom line 6/10.
Achievement notes:
The 5 achievements in this DLC are pretty straightforward, with the most difficult being to kill all the enemies at the end of the "Guns of Stygia" echo. This requires you to kill about 15 enemies BEFORE some explosions happen taking them out. The timing is very tight and is not an easy task. The remaining achievements are relatively simple although they might take you a few tries. Again for 125 Gamerscore and little replay value 800 MS points is a bit steep.....unless you NEED to have you completion back