bulletstorm posts

While more and more game soundtracks are being released as paid separate products the folks at developers People Can Fly and Epic Games have decided to go ahead and release the music from the recent first person shooter Bulletstorm for free.

The soundtrack contains 24 separate tracks totaling 55 minutes of music from the game's composers Michal Cielecki and Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz. Unfortunately the soundtrack doesn't have the "Disco Inferno" track that is heard in the game while your character is in a, well, futuristic disco. However you can't go wrong with the price and quite frankly we would like to see more soundtracks release for free.

Download the Bulletstorm soundtrack at Big Download

It was a busy day for news, as we predicted. We wonder what will happen tomorrow:

• In less than 12 hours the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle has generated over $300,000 in revenues.
• New automatic updates on the Steam service are now available for Magicka, Total War Shogun 2 and ProtoGalaxy.
• New League of Legends Easter-themed character skins have been discovered.
• As promised, the US-based servers for World of Tanks have now launched.
• Yet another Trackmania 2 screenshot has been posted on the Maniaplanet forums.
• The Bulletstorm Gun Sonata DLC map pack has been released for consoles; the PC version is due out "soon".
• Trainz Simulator 12 has now been released.

The ultra violent and very cool sci-fi first person shooter Bulletstorm has been lacking a free PC demo, unlike its console versions. That made PC gamers, understandably, not happy. That situation changed today as Epic Games announced that the demo for the title is now finally available via both Steam and the Games For Windows Live client software.

It's not immediately clear what content is in the PC demo but we are betting that it will be identical to what was put into the console version. That demo was released a few weeks before the main game itself shipped to stores on February 22.

Today was Pi Day. How did you celebrate; with eating pie or by doing deep math equations?

• Steam has a new automatic update available for download for Gratuitous Space Battles.
• Steam has now added Atom Zombie Smasher to its lineup with a 10 percent discount until March 21.
• Bioware seems to be hinting at the next Mass Effect 2 DLC on its Facebook page.
• Now you too can have your own Portals right inside your home (but not really).
• EA Games head man Frank Gibeau apparently loves Fox News and its coverage of Bulletstorm; just not the way that you might think at first.

Electronic Arts is switching around two of its executives this week. VG247.com reports that at a GDC 2011 related press event David DeMartini, the long time head of the EA Partners division, announced that he would now be the head of the publisher's e-commerce division. Taking his place is Brian Neider who will take on those duties in addition to being Chief Operating Officer of EA Games.

DeMartini has been with EA since 1998 and for the past several years has been head of the EA Partners division which works to publish and/or distribute games that are not developed or owned by the publisher. DeMartini helped to bring titles like the Left 4 Dead series, Bulletstorm and upcoming titles like Crysis 2 and the unnamed game from Respawn Entertainment to the EA Partners brand.

Wrapping a guy in an explosive flail and then kicking him into a set of spikes before detonating it. Knocking over a man with a huge cannonball, then exploding it. Shooting a radio-controlled bullet into a man, then steering him into a huge wall of spikes. These are but a few of Bulletstorm's 131 skill shots. In telling you them, we hope to emphasize a singular, focused point: Bulletstorm is not a normal first-person shooter. You won't really be challenged to avoid dying, and enemies mostly serve as cannon fodder for your rather impressive arsenal. Rather, it's a surprisingly smart shooter that is genre savvy in its plot and exceedingly intelligent in its mechanics. While it's a bit short (for single-player enthusiasts, anyway), it's also quite fantastic and merges arcade scoring with oh-so-satisfying murder.

Check out all Bulletstorm downloads

Bulletstorm fired itself out of the gate and found itself on top of Steam's latest list of its top 10 best selling PC games for the past week. The first person shooote from developer People Can Fly and Epic Game was followed in second place this week by Valve's upcoming puzzle shooter sequel Portal 2. Third place was claimed by Trion Worlds' fantasy MMO Rift which launches this week.

The full top 10 list is as follows:
1. Bulletstorm - Epic Games/People Can Fly/EA
2. Portal 2 - Valve
3. Rift - Trion Worlds
4. Dragon Age 2 - BioWare/EA
5. Magicka - Arrowhead Game Studios/Paradox Interactive
6. Fallout New Vegas Dead Money DLC - Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks
7. Crysis 2 - Crytek/EA
8. Civilization V - Firaxis Games/2K Games
9. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II Retribution - Relic/THQ
10. Command and Conquer 4 - Electronic Arts

Friday's here. Anyone still playing Bulletstorm? Anyone trying to sign into those Rift Head Start servers and having to wait hours and hours before finally being able to play online? It's the joys of PC gaming

• This week Valve brings back the Bleed Out Mutation gameplay mode for Left 4 Dead 2.
• Dragon Age 2's soundtrack features a song from currently popular band Florence + The Machine.
• Bulletstorm has a very interesting unlockable weapon skin. And by "interesting" we mean "dirty"
• Happy 15th anniversary this week to the release of Qtest, the first public demo version of Quake.

Bulletstorm has had plenty of goofy trailers that poke fun at the skillshots and overt machismo, but this trailer is an oddity: one that is completely serious. Given that it is backed by a suitably epic soundtrack, this is no surprise. It shows off a lot of the major points of the story in preparation for players getting hold of the game, but it doesn't show any gameplay. This isn't really a problem, though, since this trailer is more to get you pumped than to make sure you know how it plays. It it does a great job of that.

Download Bulletstorm Launch Trailer
Check out all Bulletstorm downloads

Bulletstorm officially comes out for the PC and other platforms today but the first person shooter's co-developers People Can Fly and Epic Games already have plans to offer up some additional content to the game in the near future. Today Bulletstorm's publisher Electronic Arts announced plans to release the downloadable Gun Sonata map pack sometime later this spring. While the press release that announced the pack didn't mention a PC version Big Download confirmed with EA's PR rep that it would be made available for PC players as well.

The map pack will cost $9.99 and will add five new maps to Bulletstorm. Three of them will be for the game's four player co-op themed Anarchy mode while the other two maps (Crash Site and Guns of Stygia) will be for the game's single player (with online leaderboards) Echo mode. The Gun Sonata map pack will also add two "enhancements" (the Flamingo and the Pulp) for the player's Leash weapon.