You are what you eat, the old saying goes. For most of us, a heavy diet of Roman’s Pizza, a pint of melted chocolate and a quick rinse of diet Pepsi because we’re trying to be healthy, has turned us into a sack of lumpy potatoes and an imminent heart attack. What if you got some more iron in your diet though, gobbled up ghoulish fiends and decided to chew the scenery around you harder than Jeremy Irons when he appeared in the Dungeons & Dragons movie?
You’d get Bite the Bullet, which easily lives up to its mad premise. It’s Metal Slug dipped in a vat of Legion of Superheroes comic books starring Matter-Eater Lad, set in a future where humanity has buggered off to the stars and protected by chronic masticators such as Chewie or Chewella. It’s up to you to run, gun and munch on anything that gets in your way, grabbing victory by the skin of your teeth as you fill up on an eating plan of action.
It’s not just a gimmick, but a key part of the game that defines your hero. Fill up on everything from fresh corpses to freshly broken robot parts, and you’ll keep your health topped up, you’ll have calories to burn away on unfortunate foes and you’ll earn DNA that can be used to unlock some handy new upgrades. Depending on what and who you eat, you may even unlock special classes based on your regular snacking of flesh or strict adherence to a vegan lifestyle, with your choices reflected in characters.
There’s something oddly hilarious about seeing a chunky bunker-buster tear through enemies while their love handles jiggle with glee. The problem here is that while the core eat to survive feature is novel, it breaks up the more traditional and fast-paced flow of the otherwise meaty combat.
Constantly stopping for second breakfast gets old real fast, a problem that’s exacerbated by the gunplay also suffering from a lack of precision and characters who appear to have coated their feet with a non-stick spray as they pivot around a level with reckless abandon from the most gentle of nudges. The visuals also take a knock, as even the lovely animations and quirky retro stylings of Bite the Bullet suffer from a cluttered user interface and massive performance dips during hectic showdowns.
Last Updated: August 25, 2020
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Bite the Bullet is a game of great ideas that are hamstrung by terrible controls, performance issues, and a flow of combat that’s at odds with the very gimmick that makes it stand out from the pack. All of that makes for an experience that bits off far more than it’s capable of chewing.
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| Bite the Bullet was reviewed on PC | |
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100
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