Bulletstorm impressions

I've been waiting to try out Bulletstorm since I first heard about it back in the spring.  As soon as the demo was available, you better believe it was in my queue.  Come on, anything with a tagline of "kill with skill" demands a look.

Developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games, this first-person shooter is unique to say the least. With a multitude of over-the-top weaponry, you must dispose of enemies using a skillshot system.  Basically, as shown in the video, the more absurd, bizarre and somewhat comical way you can take out these foes, the more points you rack up.

I have to say, this game is extremely fun.  Instead of the typical mindset of how can I beat this level, I found myself trying to maximize my score by kicking, sliding, shooting and doing whatever I could to score more points. While the demo gives us just a brief glimpse of the game, I loved every minute of it.

The demo is now available for download on Xbox Live and Playstation Network, so definitely give it a try. 

Thanks, Joystiq

Okay, so here's the deal.  Back in December, right before Christmas, I entered a contest at Joystiq entitled: 12 Days of Joyswag.  For those of you who don't know, Joystiq is a very successful video gaming blog with tons of readers. So, with countless readers and free items you can imagine my thought process.

Free items + many people who want free items = chances of winning not so good

With no expectations I quickly stroked the keyboard with my entry in the form of a comment to the post...two days later Christmas came early for me.

Much to my delight (seriously, ask my wife. I kind of acted like this kid) I was informed that I had won the Splatterhouse, Terror Mask statue, and weird collapsible speakers giveaway.  Me! Out of 704 people I was randomly chosen!

All right.  Great job.  You won.  Well, here's where the story gets even more interesting.  I got an email from Justin McElroy, who's the reviews editor at Joystiq.  Long story short, there was a mistake made in the post about what system the game was on. I was supposed to receive an Xbox 360 copy of the game but all they had was the Playstation 3 version.  So to make up for the error he ended up sweetening the deal.

Here's what I was supposed to receive:

-Splatterhouse for Xbox 360

-Terror mask statue

-Two speakers

Here's what I actually received:

-Two copies of Splatterhouse for Playstation 3

-Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 for Xbox 360

-Borderlands: Game of the Year for Xbox 360

-Terror mask statue

-Two speakers

-Some advice about the game industry from a well-known journalist at Joystiq

Pretty sweet, right? Here's a couple more pics.

So, this is it. With a name like Cook the Grenade, you're probably wondering what kind of blog this could possibly be. In short, it's going to be about video games. I'm not exactly sure how it'll shape up, but know this...it's gonna be awesome. Just bear with me while I learn the blogging ropes. Since my wife is already a pro at this whole blogging thing, it shouldn't take long.