I haven`t this much fun since... Duke3D maybe.
First thing I noticed was main menu. Usually, awesome games that become remembered years later start here. Its music and presentation that matter and one used here is great. With games like this I often spend many minutes just staying in menu to observe beautiful art while listening to its music.
Then came graphics. Game may use older Unreal engine, but this is one of the most beautiful game ever made. Not because number of polygons, shaders or other crap - for that there are better games like Crysis. But simply how beautiful and original levels and environments look. There have been many cool looking games in the past like Gears of War or Crysis, but I think this one probably beats them all IMO. Where Crysis try to win by numbers and engine, Bulletstorm put all its stakes on imagination and fantasy. During my play I was stunned from start till end and couldn`t believe what scenery my monitor kept throwing at me. I don`t care if its console port, if textures are not so sharp... not here at least. Graphics in this game were an epic experience on its own.
I say it again: "For me, until this date, this is the most beautiful looking game I ever played, despite of being not best at technical." Period. Make sure your monitor is well calibrated as colors are quite saturated, it could look bad on uncalibrated set. Also, I can only imagine this on 30"+ screen...
Then there is voice acting and characters. Perfect work. Hero is original, great and memorable. Voice acting is as awesome as graphics, script is so wild and fresh it give characters true personality. Just like in GTA 4, simply excellent production values of highest grade.
But professional voice acting wouldn`t mean that much if script itself would be weak and uninspired. This is a reason why I wrote into headline what I did. Dialogs your companions throw at each other made me many times ROFL, there were moments when I literally had to stop playing for a moment just to laugh-out crap of me because otherwise I could not concentrate. For example at one moment I reached dead end and companions started to argue. One of them, she told me to have solution but gave me 15 seconds to figure out on my own. I really got 15 sec. timer counting - I failed to find solution... and her response? "Oh jeez, you really ARE grade A retard!" Script may not be exact but it was something like that. At that moment I had to stop and LOL`d like there is no tomorrow. You may not feel it as much when I write it here but in game it was fabulous and because of these fresh, wild dialogs characters have very strong and memorable personality.
So game look and sound gorgeous, have top grade voices and cool memorable characters. Now lets speak about gameplay. I was a bit worried about killing system but rest assured, its fun and never really get old(despite others saying opposite). Never because its not a grind, its easy to do, its often easier to kill enemies that way and every environment have some cool traps to use. It often also help you conserve ammo, why to spend magazine on enemy when I can kick him into spikes? Sure, headshot is not easy if even possible to do with one bullet on anything else than sniper rifle and enemies in general take a lot of bullets, its because game encourage you to use other means and it was designed this way. But I tell you I haven`t problem with that, I would have in other games but not this one. In fact, I would still use same methods even if I didn`t had to.
You get extra experience points from sophisticated kills that are used to buy ammo and upgrades. Do not worry about it though, you don`t have to force yourself to these kills, just do what you like and it will come all as you play. I didn`t care at all to find new kills or unlock anything, that would be grind. I just played how I pleased and eventually I got all upgrades and weapons.
So because of this, game is a lot of fun and new system actually add more fun to it, gameplay is therefore alright, but those crazy characters and dialogs make it look better. It is very linear game as any other today, but it is also very heavy story driven game and thanks to new mechanics and small RPG elements it feel a bit more deep than others.
Ending was disappointing which is a reason I gave it less than 10, it left window open for the sequel. Too open, unfortunately.
Some tips. Make sure you turn off aim assist functions in menu and I also encourage you to download utility called Bulletstorminieditor(google) which is used to open config files(otherwise encrypted). With that utility make sure to disable mouse smoothing and you can adjust other things as well if you will. Otherwise game is not that bad port, having all other necessary options including antialiasing and vsync.
In the end, I find it very strange this game did not receive at least as much praise as Gears of War. I love both games and their awesome unique characters/heroes(with cool script and voices) and stories, not to mention incredible production values. Bravo.