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I didn’t realize it until just now, but Bullet Witch reminds me a lot of Product No. 3 for Gamecube. The comparison may be obscure to those that didn’t play it (and there’s a lot of you) but it’s a pretty good comparison none the less. Add one slender, sexy female for the lead character, dash in some acrobatic combat, and a somewhat interesting concept. Oh yeah, and they both suck.

Seriously, though, Bullet Witch at least sounded interesting when I first heard of it. The screenshots didn’t provide anything overly promising, but the final product is less than exceptional, hell, it’s less than good. You control Alicia, a (you guessed it) witch on a mission to save humanity from a ‘homicidal virus’ (not even kidding) that turns humans into monsters. Along the way, she encounters other survivors, who turn out to be formidable allies in her fight against the demonic threat. The premise is simple enough, and could have worked had the gameplay kept things engaging, but unfortunately, such is not the case.

As Alicia, you have constant access to your mega-sized rod gun. The rod gun, for those wondering, fires ‘magic bullets’ that cannot harm humans, and because they’re magic, you have an unlimited supply of ammo at your disposal. When turning a city street into a bullet festival just won’t cut it, Alicia also has a range of magical attacks available to use in her battle against evil. These spells, admittedly enough, can be pretty cool. With one attack, Alicia throws rose petals on the ground and in a few seconds, they explode into spears that shoot out from the ground, impaling any sucker unfortunate enough to be standing over top one. Other spells include wall barriers to block oncoming attacks, a force push-like attack that only affects objects, and my personal favorite: the ability to call down a lightning bolt from the sky and decimate anything in the area. Alicia also has the ability to dodge attacks using acrobatic vaults from side to side, or backwards and forwards.

As cool as some of the magic spells are, however, they just don’t make up for the fact that the game is simply not fun to play. After three levels, it becomes painfully clear that there was little imagination put into the gameplay of Bullet Witch. With the exception of introducing new enemy types and the occasional boss, you’ll find yourself going from one mob of enemies to the next, firing away, until you find the next Chestnut Head enemy. The Chestnut Head enemy type is essentially a floating body with a massive brain. These enemies use psychic abilities to launch large objects at you in an attempt to crush you (an instant kill). However, the main function of the Chestnut Head is to block your path, albeit only ever temporarily. As whenever a Chestnut Head is nearby, you can guarantee there’s a color coordinated magic barrier blocking the path to the next area of the level. As you can imagine, killing the Chestnut Head kills the barrier, and you can go on about your demon hunting business. It’s a very basic style of gameplay that we’ve bested years ago in the early days of… hell, there’s more complicated games on Nintendo 64. I’m not really going out of my way to take hits at the game, as I did honestly give it a fair shot. The problem is that it just doesn’t feel like the developer tried at all.

Graphically, Bullet Witch gets the job done, albeit barely. While nothing in the game is particularly ugly, nothing stands out as impressive either. Alicia animates well enough, though her movements are jerky at times. The enemies animate decently enough, though again, nothing to write home about. The big gripe I have with the game visually is that Alicia clips through objects a lot. You can walk through most any box or garbage can or barrel you see strewn about the streets. Despite the graphical mediocrity of the title, though, there are some ‘wow’ moments strewn about. For instance, early on in the game, you’re given the chance to lay waste to an entire gas station by ‘calling down the thunder’ (actual in-game definition, I swear). The result: a huge explosion and enemy bodies flailing in the air. Oh, what a site.

On the audio side of things, Bullet Witch doesn’t fare very well. As is the case with most lower grade titles, the voice acting in Bullet Witch can, at times, be cringe worthy. The characters lack any sort of real emotion in their voices, and everyone sounds like they’re reading their lines off the script for the first time. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is poorly written, either. In terms of sound effects, the enemy grunts and groans seem pretty run of the mill, and the soundtrack is just as forgettable as anything else in the game.

Overall, Bullet Witch is a waste. It’s a waste of a decent concept, a waste of the developer’s time to create it and a waste of your time and money to play it. The game has very little to nothing going for it, and many hits against it. It’s not every day that I’m forced to judge a game so harshly, but take into consideration this fact: Even if Atari released Bullet Witch 5 years ago, it would still feel dated. Stay away.