Despite my laundry list of things to write about, I’ve been having trouble getting in the appropriate mood. Every time I have even half a review written for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or Dead Space 2 I wind up scrapping it. I’d like to continue my game of Fable 3, but I just can’t motivate myself to do so. I’d like to work a bit more on learning how to build games in Flash, but I’m just too tired after a day’s work.

I’ve lost my mojo.

This is one of those times when I just need something simple to sit down and play. A game that doesn’t require much in the way of thought. Pure, unadulterated fun, the sort I grew up with. Well, Bulletstorm hit shelves this week and it has been seeing high praise, even from sources like The Escapist and Wired. I may feel like the “stupidly fun” concept is cluttering the video game market, but what the Hell? I loaded up the demo and sat down, ready to experience some low-brow entertainment.

It was…well, it certainly was. There were ugly guys, and they did get kicked, and shot, and thrown into the environment. Yet there really wasn’t much else. At the very least MadWorld had the “advantage” of being a third person brawler, a genre not nearly so numerous as the all too popular first-person shooter, to give it a special sort of flavor. Bulletstorm just doesn’t feel very interesting. In fact, it feels kind of like Borderlands, only with more polish on weapon accuracy and some additional combat options.

I’ve been completely desensitized to over-the-top violent gore-fests in video games. Whatever other reviewers are seeing, I didn’t get any of it. I mean, that’s not to say the game wasn’t fun, but I feel no impetus to go out and drop sixty bucks on it. In fact, I’m pretty sure that sixty is too much for a game like this. Over the top violence has been done before, as has tossing uglies into the environment. If the game didn’t have the leash or the kicking it wouldn’t even be a good shooter.

So instead of playing a simplistic game of over-the-top violence, I sat myself down with Valkyrie Profile on the DS and had a much more engaging time. The game doesn’t demand too much thought from me, but just enough that I can shut the rest of the world out and forget all my worries and stress. It’s just me and the game, and that’s how it should be.

I’m disappointed in Bulletstorm, but not because it fails to be any sort of work of art (it totally fails in that regard). I’m disappointed because it wasn’t even all that fun, something that is supposed to be its primary goal. Instead, for all of Epic’s marketing and People Can Fly’s talk, they made a pretty “meh” game.

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