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Not quite a magical experience, but it may cast a spell on you despite its flaws.

The Xbox 360 library is hardly wanting for shooters. Amid high profile titles like Gears of War and Lost Planet, a game really needs to stand up and shout to make itself known at all. Bullet Witch... does not do that. Instead it hides behind the others hoping that someone will notice it and bring it home, and then look past all of the glaring errors that may kill the experience for just about everyone. I'll be honest, though; despite all of the major gameplay mistakes, I still liked Bullet Witch.



This was supposed to be another "save the 360 in Japan" title, releasing there first and promptly doing nothing to assist Microsoft in the Land of the Rising Sun. Atari brought the game over here to a similar reception, and unless you were watching the title like myself, you may have not even heard of it until you happened to see it on a Gamestop shelf.

The game puts you in the high-heeled boots of Alicia, a dark and broody witch who is out to shoot a lot of demons. The storyline is nothing new, typical mosters over-running humanity stuff, but the tale is handled well and it does entertain. There are a few twists and highlights along the way, and it's honestly what gives the game most of its personality. The characters really don't flesh out too much, and you'll want to put a bullet into Maxwell Cougar's head (too bad you can't hit innocents or ally soldiers), but overall it has flashes of fun tucked away amid the cliches.

The gameplay is third-person shooting, flipping, jumping and blasting the hell out of every enemy you come across. As Alicia you are equipped with a "gunrod", a large weapon that looks a bit broom-like. When you start out you have the machine gun, but as you progress you can purchase a shotgun, cannon (think a sniper rifle type weapon), and a gatling gun. You can also upgrade each gun a few times, making them more poweful by spending the points you earn at the end of each level. The shooting mechanic is clunky, as you don't have an auto-lock and going into "shooting mode", which pulls the camera in closer to your character and makes the reticle larger, doesn't really offer any big improvement over just running around and shooting in the regular mode.

You'll be killing pretty much the same few enemies throughout all six levels, and while a couple of them are really cool and creepy (the weird mutant people that shoot spikes out of their chest while spouting gibberish, for example), most of them are skeletal people that yell the same few lines and shoot at you. They're definitely not the cream of the demon crop, either, as the AI in this game is pretty bad. While running through a subway tunnel I saw an enemy walking into a wall, and another knew I was on the other side of a truck and kept shooting the vehicle in the hopes that the bullets would somehow pass through and hit me.



None of them really react to being shot until they fall down dead, and generally they just stand where they're supposed to and shoot at you until you kill them. To add to the gameplay a bit, there are soldiers and innocents that may be shot down by the enemies, and you can spend a bit of your own health to heal them. Since the game doesn't give you any indicators as to where these wounded souls are, though, you have to get lucky and run across someone who needs aid.

Of course, you'd expect a game called Bullet Witch to have magic as well as weapons. The spells themselves in the game are really cool. You can summon ravens to distract your enemies, put up a shield to protect you from a sniper, or even call down lightning to blow up a tank. It's a shame that the system to use magic is so clunky that you'll hardly bother unless a specific obstacle demands it.



To bring up your magic, you hit either of the shoulder buttons. This will bring up the first "ring" of spells. Tap the button again, and you'll flip to the second ring. A third press will access the third (and most powerful) ring of spells. You're still being shot at while you scroll through these rings, though, and now you're standing still while trying to navigate and find the spell you want. Once you have a better handle on which spell is where you can speed up the process, but most of the time you just won't bother. You earn some of the magic as you progress, other spells you can spend points at the end of the level to obtain, but you really won't find yourself using any of them very much unless you have to.