Set in the 26th century, the game's story follows Grayson Hunt, a space pirate and former black ops soldier who gets shot down on a war-torn planet while trying to exact revenge on General Sarrano, his former commander who tricked him and his men into committing war crimes and assassinating innocents.

Adrian Chmielarz and Cliff Bleszinski served as its director and designer respectively, while Rick Remender, the author of Fear Agent, wrote the game's story.

Grayson Hunt (Steven Blum)[b] is the leader of Dead Echo, a black ops team under the command of Confederation General Victor Sarrano (Anthony De Longis).

Ten years later, the ship carrying Grayson (now struggling with alcoholism), and his comrades Ishi Sato (Andrew Kishino), Rell Julian (Chris Cox), and Dr. Whit Oliver (Robin Atkin Downes) is intercepted by the Ulysses, Sarrano's flagship, near the ruined planet of Stygia.

They return with the cell, and Doc manages to replace most of Ishi's body with cybernetics, including an AI processor for parts of his brain.

However, in the middle of the operation, marauders break into the ship; Doc and Rell are both killed, and while Ishi survives, he is left permanently disfigured by the incomplete surgery.

As they work their way towards the nearest city, the AI processor in Ishi's brain takes over several times, fueled by his anger at Grayson's selfishness and refusal to give up his vendetta.

Grayson eventually learns that Trishka was Novak's daughter; after Dead Echo inadvertently saved her life, she joined the military to hunt down the "separatists" who killed him.

Trishka holds Sarrano at gunpoint and demands answers; he manages to throw her off the roof and informs Grayson and Ishi that the Ulysses is carrying a "DNA bomb" designed to wipe out all life on Stygia so it can be repopulated.

An argument ensues, and Sarrano then uses his own instinct leash to hijack Ishi's body and force him to attack Grayson and Trishka.

[19] PCF's Adrian Chmielarz directed the game, which was designed by Epic's Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski, and penned by writer and producer Rick Remender.

[16] Originally, the studio did not plan to have any unique gameplay feature or an ambitious goal for the game and only wanted to "offer a fun high adventure".

[25] While the studio had created a playable team deathmatch prototype, they did not incorporate it into the final product because they believed that the market was crowded with competitive FPS at that time.

[22] Bleszinski added that the unusual firearms featured in the campaign would not translate well to a competitive game environment, and it would have required PCF to rework all the systems.

[22] Chmielarz recruited Rick Remender in 2009, impressed by his work on comic book series Fear Agent and Black Heart Billy.

[27][28] The game's story focused on "redemption and revenge", and the planet Stigya, a tourist paradise destroyed by a natural disaster of unknown origin, was to evoke the same feeling as BioShock's Rapture.

The Epic Edition includes bonus in-game content when playing Bulletstorm online, and early access to the multiplayer beta of Gears of War 3.

[40] Following this announcement, Bleszinski wrote a tweet on January 14, 2011, saying the demo was only for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, which game reviewers considered was a way of making fun of PC players.

The remastered version includes new content such as the Overkill Campaign Mode, which starts the players with access to all the game's weapons and six new Echo maps.

Despite this, he was disappointed by the game's linear design, making it difficult for the player to control the battlefield when they were facing multiple enemies at once.

The characters were conflictingly considered rounded or one-dimensional,[70][71] and VanOrd called the profanity-filled dialogue "cringe-worthy" and undermined the studio's attempt at serious storytelling.

Nick Chester, writing for Destructoid, said the entertaining story complemented the gameplay fairly well, though he noted the narrative relied on pulp fiction clichés and predictable plot twists.

[71] Donlan liked the Echo mode for being a distilled experience, which disregarded the story elements completely and compared the leaderboard competition favorably to that of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Zuma Blitz.

[61][63][62] Scott Butterworth of GameSpot praised the upgraded textures and visuals, "impressive" draw distance and stable frame rate.

However, she noted the original game showed its age due to the presence of invisible walls and the lack of a dedicated jump button.

Gaming blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun analysed Lieberman's claims, and found only one of eight sources she provided had anything to do with the subject at hand.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, a professor at Nottingham Trent University, whose lectures focused on video game addiction, described Fox's news piece as "sensationalist" in a Guardian interview.

He added it would be very difficult to prove that exposure to sexual content in video games contributed to rape crimes because of the large number of confounding factors involved.

Its vice president of public relations, Tammy Schachter, wrote the publisher had followed the policies established by the ESRB and marketed the game only to a mature audience.

[91] Capps added that the game did not sell well on the PC, citing piracy as the main reason behind its disappointing performance, though he admitted it was not a very good port.