Bulletstorm PC specs: is that it?

By Robert Purchese Published 11 January, 2011

Your machine stands a good chance.

Perhaps consoles aren't that powerful after all - Bulletstorm's PC system requirements are relatively pedestrian.

Recommended by Epic Games are a QuadCore 2.0 processor, 2GB RAM and a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 or ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card.

You'll also need 9GB free hard-drive space and, gosh, a 16 speed CD/DVD drive!

Turn those Bulletstorm settings to minimum and you'll only need an Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon X2 processor running at 1.6GHz to power the game. The lowest supported graphics cards are a 256MB NIVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS or ATI Radeon 2400 Pro cards. You're not advised to go below 1.5GB RAM.

Bulletstorm, a bonkers shooter that involves scoring points for over-the-top deaths and a fantastic electrical whip, is made by Epic Games studio People Can Fly. EA is publishing.

Wrote Christian Donlan for Eurogamer: "Bulletstorm is a shooter where you're looking for the juicy racing line that runs through each level. Its high score arcade ethos has been tried before - notably with love-'em-or-hate-'em oddities like The Club - but it's never been done with this kind of big-budget assurance and hillbilly humour. Fling that together with a single-player campaign packed with set-pieces and huge bosses and you can see why EA's excited about this one."

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (34) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • HisDudness #1 1 year ago

    Does this game have multiplayer?
    I can only find mention of a score attack co-op...
    When I first heard about this I thought it was an Unreal Tournament type game.

  • merseymal #2 1 year ago

    Well the consoles' specs are pretty pedestrian compared to PCs of the last few years and it makes sense to make PC games that are playable on as many PCs as possible rather than aim at the few who have forked out a fortune for top end Quad SLI'd beasts.

  • Xardan #3 1 year ago

    Obviously Epic employ very good coders.

  • telboy007 #4 1 year ago

    You don't have to have a powerhouse PC to make something look pretty, but it does help. :)

  • Haloboy #5 1 year ago

    Shitstorm avoided.

  • infernox1 #6 1 year ago

    does it work on windows xp??

  • carlitoswagon #7 1 year ago

    @HisDudness

    Yes, it has multiplayer. Team based games etc. Looks interesting.

  • roquey Verified Lead Quality Assurance Tester and Compliance Specialist, Universally Speaking #8 1 year ago

    Kinect integration patch anyone? would be wierd/kinda cool to be able to recognise whips, kicks guns etc. Hey, whats those men in white coats doing here?

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #9 1 year ago

    Obviously Epic employ very good coders.

    Nah, it's just compatible at a minimum with PCs that are roughly spec-equivalent (3x as much memory notwithstanding) to the HD consoles that are the real optimisation targets.

  • sneetch #10 1 year ago

    Ah, another example disproving the myth that you need to update your PC every 2 days.

  • cianchristopher #11 1 year ago

    It's got Games for Windows LIVE integration, though. So, add that to your list of "minimum requirements" and see how many people are happy with it.
    Edited by cianchristopher at 11/01/11 @ 10:28

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #12 1 year ago

    I know it's advert spam:

    …… , . – . – , _ , ………
    ……… ) ` – . .> ‘ `( …….
    …….. / . . . .`\ . . \ ……..
    …….. |. . . . . |. . .| ……..
    ……… \ . . . ./ . ./ ……….
    ……….. `=)\ /.=` ……….
    …………. `-;`.-’ ………….
    …………… `)| … , ………
    ……………. || _.-’| ………
    …………. ,_|| \_,/ ……….
    ……. , ….. \|| .’ ……….
    ……. |\ |\ ,. ||/ …………

    but can anyone tell what that ascii art is intended to be?

    Edit: a rose? I was confused since the leaf at the bottom looked a bit like a dangling glans. Paging Dr Freud...
    Edited by MENTAL1ST at 11/01/11 @ 10:30

  • Malek86 #13 1 year ago

    While it's true that a mid-range PC can probably run any console game just fine, it will also depend on the developers. For example, on my HD5750, if I run NFS HP at min details, it will still lag a bit. At minimum details.

    ... then, if I put it on max details, it will lag pretty much the same. What was the point then?

    Basically, the only real problem with PC gaming today, is how many companies aren't willing to spend money to optimize their console ports. Of course, this being Epic, i think we can expect at least slightly better results.

  • cianchristopher #14 1 year ago

    These days, thanks to the almost complete lack of optimisation given to PC ports of console games, you do need a PC with 3 or 4 times the power of the consoles, just to be able to "brute force" your way to a good framerate with nice detail.

    It's unfair, but that's the way it is.

  • Haloboy #15 1 year ago

    Yep. The whole 'you need a beast of a PC to run anything these days' didn't just start to occur when Crysis came out. It also came about when shitty PC ports kept being churned out and it's become a back breaking hill climb to run any of the cunts since.

    Shit PC ports. Just say no.

  • arcam #16 1 year ago

    I think that's overstated. I finally upgraded my PC last year after running the same innards since 2006 (Athlon X2 4400+, 7900GT) and the only games I had problems running were GTA IV and Arma II.

  • sneetch #17 1 year ago

    @cianchristopher
    These days, thanks to the almost complete lack of optimisation given to PC ports of console games, you do need a PC with 3 or 4 times the power of the consoles, just to be able to "brute force" your way to a good framerate with nice detail.

    Unfortunately, that's a very good point.

    Games like Metro 2033 show that, launching with a terribly sub-optimised build that have to be patched or "hacked" into playable form. It's sloppy stuff.

  • photoboy #18 1 year ago

    Yeah I cannot stand PC ports that need a super high end PC to run just because the devs were too lazy to optimise it. I think the worst offender I've ever seen is Saint's Row 2, the PC version was fucking appalling. That said, Bulletstorm is using the Unreal Engine and most PC ports using that (Mass Effect 2, Mirror's Edge, Arkham Asylum) all run very well on weaker hardware so hopefully my M11x won't have any problems running it... ;)

  • Haloboy #19 1 year ago

    I spent an entire month hacking the fuck out of Black Ops PC just to get it running as it should have first day of release.

    Hey I don't mind a good challenge but that shit aint my job.

  • DUFFKING #20 1 year ago

    Epic's engines are usually nicely scaleable so it's no surprise their own game is quite friendly to more dated specs.

  • Haloboy #21 1 year ago

    Saints RoW 2 PC was diabolical. The fact you couldn't drive a car in a game that required it so much due to the obscene lag they never fixed was just crazy.

    UE3 games I never tend to worry about. Transformers: WFC plays and looks just as it should right out of the box for me. I wouldn't worry too much about Bulletstorm ending up as another hill climb.

  • Bibbo #22 1 year ago

    Got it all pre-ordered ready and waiting. We need a little bit of bonkers fun in FPS at the moment, and this is ticking me and my friends' boxes. I believe it's competitive co-op or something like that too. Looking forward to it!

    Very good on the PC specs too, was expecting the usual high end rig stuff to run it.
    Edited by Bibbo at 11/01/11 @ 11:25

  • Rack #23 1 year ago

    Another report in which a PC game requiring completely outrageous specs is listed as being easy to run. A quad core to run a console game, really?

  • thesonglessbird #24 1 year ago

    Will my PowerVR card work with this?

  • orangpelupa #25 1 year ago

    Nice, my asus laptop will able to play this at med-high :D :D
    too bad asus use ELAN touchpad, not Synaptic... this ELAN cant do multi click :(

    so when on the go, i still need to bring mouse...
    or just use my acer laptop that have Synaptic touchpad, but have slower VGA.

    ah decission, decision....

  • MattyD #26 1 year ago

    Doesn't the PS3 run on an Nvidia 7600 GSO? No surprise the specs are so low then.

    You'll want a better rig than that if you want to play it at PC monitor native resolutions and still get 60 fps though.

  • knightmt #27 1 year ago

    There is a massive difference in these specs A radeon 4870 (1200 GFLOPs) is probably 20 times faster than a 2400 pro (42 GFLOPS).
    I do not mind if someone corrects me here with a better benchmark, I am still under the illusion that a pc is a calculator.
    Crap my pc would of been Max last year.

  • Noble6 #28 1 year ago

    Yes ofcourse, my laptop has more power than a ps3 and a xbox 360 combined. But I still play on consoles though. Its quite obvious that consoles are well dated.

  • Noble6 #29 1 year ago

    Yes the consoles are multicore too. However do you think the Xenon or the cell can even touch the performance wave length of say.... the new Intel i7 Sandy bridge ? Definitely not but that's understandable as the x360 and the ps3 have been around for years now. At the same time, you can still play this game on a x360 that only costs £149.

    Fair trade off.
    Edited by Noble6 at 11/01/11 @ 17:24

  • TheGuvernor #30 1 year ago

    How dare you call my beloved GTX 260 pedestrian?!
    Still serving me maxed out dx9 graphics after 2 1/2 years!

    Bulletstorm deserves GOTY for their ads alone.
    Did you catch the promo about gramps & shooting out a guy's arsehole?
    Funny, funny shit!

  • graysonavich #31 1 year ago

    Let us just hope it's not locked to 30FPS!

  • Rack #32 1 year ago

    "Any system bought in the last 2 years should have one"

    Which fits rather nicely, albeit with a touch of hyperbole that you need to buy a new computer every 18 months. What it absolutely does not do is explain why you need a processor that costs more than a 360 to run a 360 port.

  • orangpelupa #33 1 year ago

    ouch, 360 only 150$ ? thats cheap...

    on my country
    - 360 arcade = 300USD
    - PS3 slim = 350USD

  • acra #34 1 year ago

    @orangpelupa; That's the same price... using a currency converter, 300USD comes out at £184, so not much more expensive where you are :)