Take on hordes of enemies of evil zombies, soldiers, robots, and other baddies and then eat upon them! Yes, eat your defeated enemies to bulk up or fatten up in this RPG Hybrid shooter. Bite the Bullet is all about shooting, defeating enemies and eating them to grow!
General Gameplay
Bite the Bullet is an action/shooter light RPG 2D shooter where you take on the role of a soldier and go from world to world taking on enemies and eating them, yes eat them when they are defeated to get weight or lean out. By eating your enemies, you power up your character, weapons, and abilities. The Game Visuals in Bite the Bullet are presented in a pixelated format to showcase the game. The game characters, enemies, backgrounds, and bosses are in this 16-bit style to give it a retro feel. Bite the Bullet color pallet is more of bright and vivid colors and easy to see the colors in the game. As the game is bright in its visual design, the need for a colorblind mode for the game. In our play testing outside of pixelated blood and violence, there was nothing offensive in the game for younger gamers to see. Audio in Bite the Bullet is done in a 90’s inspired in heavy metal guitar rifts and sounds. The game has the standard sounds that you would hear in a shooter, from gunfire to enemy grunts, explosions, and other sound effects that you would expect to hear in a shooter. Bite the Bullet does a good job of creating the true audio feel of a 90’s style shooter. As the game has a detail story mode these is no spoken dialog to tell the story but text from characters. The game is in 5.1 surround sound as well 2.0 stereo sound. In our playthrough, we did not encounter anything that would be offensive to younger gamers. If anything, the game is more of an audio presentation for a shooter than anything else. Controls in Bite the Bullet are unique for a shooter like this. There is your standard buttons for jumping, weapons fire, dashing, and weapon selection, but the game allows you to choose from a novice setting for the controller as well a more professional setting. The controller in general for the pro settings are a little hard to get used to but once playing the game and getting used to the general controls it works well. Game reactions with the controller are fast and responsive and works well with the game. In our playtesting, outside of the unique style of the controller settings, we did not run into any issues with Bite the Bullet control settings. As the game is on the consoles, there is no need for a special controller to be used for the game and the standard controller for your console is fine to use for the game.
“A unique shooter where you eat your enemies to build your character, but repetitive levels, bland enemies, (pun intended) and some technical glitches prevent this from being a great shooter.”
Family Friendly
One the great and interesting aspects of Bite the Bullet is that you can eat your enemies. Yes, you are reading this correct! Most enemies and bosses can be eaten and from eating them you get your powers up, new upgrades for weapons and the path to become fatter, slimmer, or built. This is a great system that allows you to play to your style that you are a custom to. The RPG element between levels also allow you to go into a customization tree to cater to your consumption of the enemy types and what the calories and fat can be used to when burning it off in the levels. This is a great and interesting system to use for the game, however depending on your play style and what path you choose (meat eater, vegetarian, or a balance) this can help or hurt you. Another cool aspect of the game is that Bite the Bullet offers a local co-op mode. This is a fun aspect of the game and allows couch co-op play one the same console, so for those that are looking for a more recent couch co-op game you may like be more drawn to play this as well. Now as this is a great aspect of Bite the Bullet there are some things that stopped it from being a great game. Levels can at times become a little confusing and hard to know where to go next as well getting the necessary calories to get your upgrades going. At times there were moments of the game where you had maybe 2/3 of the necessary materials needed to go into upgrading your current or new weapons obtained and this may be the dealbreaker going into boss battles where an upgraded weapon would mean the difference between success or just unnecessary grinding and backtracking to get to the right moment of trying to get the right upgrade or power up to be able to take on later levels. Now is this a deal breaker? No but for casual shooter fans this may be something that may be a turn off for them. Also, when we were reviewing the game, we ran into a lot of technical glitches during level gameplay. There were times where our character would be stuck or even be off screen where we cannot recover, and we could not continue playing the game and had to go back to the base to restart the level. Also text and button labeling in the game was also off which cause frustration with our game testers. This was a frustration but at the time of the review, this may be fixed from a future update from the developer. Another thing that may be a turn off for casual shooters is how the levels are design, yes there are different areas that are unique in its design, and enemies but the game feels very repetitive in its gameplay. You go from zone to zone defeating enemies and going to a boss battle but that is all where we felt that there should have been more zones or even different level types to break up the action. Now to say that Bite the Bullet is a bad game, no, but more of an acquired taste for more hardcore platform shooter fans. Some gamers in your gaming family or you may be turned off by the gameplay style but again we feel that Bite the Bullet is more for gamers that are more into hybrid shooters/RPG style of games. Now in our special needs game testing, we did not run into any issues with the game visuals, audio, or even the controls. Outside of the technical issues with the game (which we feel will be resolved by the time of this review being posted) and some co-op gaming issues, the game is very special needs gaming friendly.
Closing
Bite the Bullet is a great game for those that are hardcore fans of action/platformer shooters. The ability to eat your defeated enemies is a great concept but with repetitive levels, technical issues, and bland enemy design this prevented the game to be great.
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