A third-person shooter, Bullet Witch was released in Japan last year to minimal reaction and sales. Cavia aren’t one of the most notable developers on the surface of the planet, and the game was not a particularly big budget one. Faces were pulled at the somewhat ragtag graphics, including slowdown, scuzzy textures and a distinct lack of reflectivity (bathrooms with no mirrors), lousy collision detection and extreme brevity of the game, with only six levels - the first being essentially a tutorial.

Still, there was free downloadable content provided, including new costumes and some remixed levels/challenge stages. Then Atari announced it would be releasing Bullet Witch in the West, and improving the game to boot, allowing (their words) Cavia to actually “finish” the game properly. We’re not sure what Cavia did with the extra time bountifully allotted by Atari – probably touched themselves a lot whilst watching Evanescence videos.

The game’s lacklustre story concerns the last days of human civilisation. Following a series of cataclysmic natural disasters, a demonic invasion occurs in the form of the Geist, a horrific race of skin-wearing mutants who have used the calamities as a precursor for attack. Humanity seems on the brink of extinction, but then a sexy witch named Alicia, who is very sexy, fights against the invading hordes using her sexy ways whilst all the time being quite sexy.

Alicia, being a witch, has a broomstick. But not just any broomstick! No way buddy! It’s a gun! That looks a bit like a broomstick. She doesn’t fly on it though. Alicia’s broomy “Gun Rod” initially only has one mode - machine gun - but as the player progresses, upgrade points are earned based on stage performance allowing other modes to be unlocked, namely shotgun, cannon and Gatling. One can flick between these quickly and their power (as well as Alicia’s health and magic pool) also further upgraded via point-earning - which, through a glitch, can be done by churning through the first level again and again if desired, making Alicia fully powered-up for the remaining stages.

Alicia, being a sexy witch, also has sexy black magic powers, a bit like Nicole Kidman in one of the films where she plays a sexy witch! A press of the Right/Left Bumper brings up a frankly shockingly intrusive wheel-selection system where her various magicks are displayed: the player also has to clumsily cycle through various wheels before the full panoply of sorcery is unveiled. This system is clunky like a Gobot convention. Alicia’s magic pool is recharged by killing Geist, and obviously some spells (the Great ones) are hugely more costly to use than others. It's galling then when magic is wasted whilst desperately fumbling to get Alicia away from enemy fire - which can kill her in a couple of seconds - since she’s extremely vulnerable whilst casting spells, finger-chompingly so.

Alicia can enchant her ammunition (via Elemental Shot), providing incendiaries, gale-force shotgun rounds, sniper rounds, and electro-shock rounds. Also included in her sortilegious arsenal of blasphemies are: Rose Spear, which causes a handful of rose petals which Alicia tosses at her enemies like sexy Amy Lee and causes them to be impaled on gigantic thorns which erupt from them; Ancient Wall, a temporary barrier shielding from enemy fire (and isn’t particularly practical); Will Power, a psychokinetic force that throws almost everything in front of Alicia flying into the distance, and which when fully powered up is easily the game’s most fun feature; Sacrifice, which enables Alicia to spray sexy goth blood on fallen allies to resurrect them and Raven Panic, which makes the ever-present ravens that accompany Alicia, because she’s a goth, fly into the faces of enemies and cause them to 'panic', funnily enough.

In addition, there are three Great spells that are unlocked for stage-specific use as you progress through the game: Lightning destroys anything targeted with a huge lightning bolt (an awkward process whilst under fire), Tornado can destroy helicopters with its mighty winds, and Meteor can destroy entire streets with its cosmic inundation.

Outside of the rank English dub (including enemy squad leaders so camp Dick Emery would be tempted to punch them limp-wristedly in the face) the improvements for Western release are near invisible. The ropey collision detection is still there, including being unable to shoot through wide gaps between trees or past fallen enemies because their hit box is still hanging there in the ether, the enemy and ally AI is still sub-cretinoid, and the graphics, despite “higher resolution texture replacement” are still pretty grotty. And the slowdown is rife, like running through treacle. Weapons have also been “balanced”, mainly the machine gun being made less powerful, which isn’t really noticeable in Normal or Hard modes, but in Chaos or the groin-smashingly hard Hell mode (home of the infamous 1 Gamerpoint Achievement for completing the toughest mode in the game) it feels like you’re spitting at most enemies, even with fully powered-up weapon forms, hence Enchanted ammunition becomes vital.

Despite this, Bullet Witch can be fun, in spite of itself, much like pulling a meaty woman at a nightclub. It’s nearly inevitable though to pine for a more refined experience (especially when score-attacking) a la P.N.03, but it’s simply not to be.

As a wannabe fast-paced shooter, Bullet Witch just isn’t fluidic. Everything feels stodgy and unpolished. When pulling the gun rod from Alicia’s back, it becomes extremely noticeable, especially at higher difficulty levels, just how long it takes. Similarly, Alicia can’t shoot whilst jumping, so whilst the game teases with Matrix-style cartwheels, Alicia is no Trinity and can’t fire whilst doing so, which destroys a whole aspect of the game which would’ve stitched together its combat. Magic is the USP (well, vaguely unique for a shooter) and although sometimes impressive, particularly the powered-up Willpower spell, Cavia’s physics routines just aren’t as sturdy as something like Psi-Ops. True, Bullet Witch facilitates throwing stuff around on a scale that Psi-Ops could only dream of and is the game’s main next-gen credential but it does so like a clumsy ogre. Random death syndrome occurs constantly as Alicia gets lightly grazed by a piece of rubble that’s she’s magicked into the collective face of a crowd of Geists, yet walks through fire unscathed. Such things make a mockery of serious play when asked to attempt score attacks at higher difficulty levels simply because the frequency of death at the fault of the game, not the player, is too common to countenance. Well, not without smashing the pad into pieces with your brainpan and sending each tiny fragment with a dead rose to Cavia.

Again, damningly, the game is muddy visually on occasions too numerous to describe (though we can but try). The third-person viewpoint is fine most of the time, but in interior sections and corridors Alicia’s (sexy goth) ass gets in the way of the recticle. Clicking the right thumbstick zooms in for more precise fire but if using enchanted ammunition such as the incendiary rounds that cause her gun rod to blaze, it’s impossible to see past the stupid flaming implement. Not being able to flick between left and right bias whilst behind Alicia, a la GRAW, is also infuriating. Stage 5 (The Bound Soul) with its endlessly cheap instakill snipers, is spectacularly foggy, so much so that it feels like a particularly miserable night in Grimsby, or running into an endless sheet of grey sludge, which is essentially the same thing. Even when Cavia aren’t fogging up the joint the lack of colour in their palette and the generally desaturated nature of the graphics conspire to force the player to endlessly squint into the screen, tempting the God of Glaucoma to blight them several decades early.

Bullet Witch gets by on the fun nature of the physics and occasionally spectacular setpieces (the Up in Flames at 10,000 Feet boss encounter on the back of a jumbo jet, or downing multiple enemy Chinooks with a Tornado) but the incessant dourness and spartan environments can become rather depressing simply on an aesthetic level without bringing frustrating game mechanics into it. Since the game is incredibly short (beatable in an evening in Normal mode) and there’s no multiplayer, it’s hard to recommend as anything other than a budget purchase, which is what it should’ve been released as, scrappy jumble that it is.

As a small addendum it should also be noted that Atari shamefully have opted to charge (20 MS Points each) for most of the extra content that is free on Japan Marketplace. The downloadable extra costumes are still free, but the “remixed” stages (costumes aside, the DLC is just unlock keys for stuff already on the disc) are barely remixed, retaining the same paths through levels and just plopping in tougher enemies from later in the game, which is just plain lazy. Some of the challenge stages are fun but some, including completion without taking a hit in a level nearly entirely populated by snipers, are just plain grind. Also unlockable (at a 20 point hit for each stage!) are the Great spells, so you can use them at any point in the game – as a free download this is fine, but CHARGING for something that should unlock on completion or would’ve been a cheat in previous years is just despicable. It’s also worth noting that you can’t play any of the extra or remixed levels until you’ve completed the game at least once.