Bite The Bullet – Nintendo Switch Review

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Fast Facts

Bite The Bullet

Developer: Mega Cat Studios
Publisher: Graffiti Games
Website: https://megacatstudios.com/pages/bite-the-bullet
Genre: Shooter, Action, Platformer, Arcade
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Age Rating: PEGI 12
Release Date: 30/07/2020
Price: £13.44

A code was provided for review purposes.

Story

In the near future, an economic crash caused by under-population and pollution leads to huge food shortages and starvation across the world. A reprieve from these desperate times is granted in the form of a unique device called ‘Bionodes’ which when implanted in a Human allows them to eat anything. However this device has side effects of its own which turned most of the population into mutants and are known as “ghoulification”.

Due to this, most of humanity has fled to the stars where under careful planning, these humans have flourished. Sadly not everyone managed to escape from Earth, and those who stayed are transformed into horrific monstrosities. Years later, the DARWINCORP Corporation is created for the unique task of the preservation and research of Planet Earth. To aid them in this endeavour, DARWINCORP recruited two unique individuals who both had a talent for eating, and both had a hunger for success.

Eat or be Eaten!

The gameplay of Bite the bullet is a really unique concept. We play as a character who has quite a unique skill set in which he can run, shoot and even devour our enemies. Each enemy also has its own ingredients that you can consume to either grow larger or leaner depending on what enemies we eat. Enemies also vary in which some are planet-based while others contain meat and protein. Eating too much of one resource type will either make you fat or leaner, which affects your characters stats in certain ways. Being bigger will allow you to take a lot more punishment against attacks due to an improved defence, but you’ll also be a lot slower as a result. However eating a healthier enemy will allow you to become leaner, which in turn makes you quicker and stronger. It’s entirely up to you in how you diet with each diet being useful in certain situations.

My issue here is I never really felt any stronger going down either path. I could see subtle changes in my character, but nothing seemed any different in terms of gameplay. You simple constantly run to right-hand side shooting everything that moves and eating everything… until you arrive at the scales at the end of the level. Once we’ve hit the scales, we literally puke out… (yes, you heard me correctly!) all mass we have consumed on to the scales to see which side you fall. Either the healthy vegan side or meat-eater side then we start again as we process to the next area.

Another criticism I have is that the levels feel way too long. I was playing the opening level for roughly 30 minutes which felt far too long, and a bit drawn out. I actually stopped playing for a bit because of this as the shooting and eating started to feel repetitive and never really changed. Controls are also bad, and my character felt like he was skating on an oil slick which due to this, the controls felt slippery at best. Sadly this also means that the simplest of tasks such as wall jumping felt unwieldy and unsmooth in their actions.

Long Haul – Challenges

Before each level, we’re given a variety of challenges to complete. These challenges vary from eating a certain number of enemies to eating a special target or collecting certain resources. We’re also given a greater challenge to complete the level within a certain time limit, which is a nice addition. These challenges give you something to strive for, but I never felt compelled to do any of them. The rewards for completing these challenges never seemed to be worth your effort in doing them, which is a shame as they add something different to the repetitiveness of the shooting.

Skill Tree

As we play through Bite The Bullet, we earn experience that allows us to use the Skill Tree. The Skill Tree has multiple branches of progression that we can journey down to create our all-powerful vegan or flesh-eating monstrosity; it’s entirely up to you. Each skill branch offers a permanent selection of skills and perks to choose from. Once you’ve chosen to be certain eater there’s sadly not an option to turn back, and you are locked into that choice permanently, so pick carefully. Most skills we can choose from range from increasing our health and eating abilities.

These upgrades add an insignificant amount to our stats and only increase them by +1 point, for example. As we progress with our skills, we can unlock more unique and useful abilities. These allow you to grow other unique perks which end up turning your character into a powerhouse! I ended up picking the “eat everything”skill tree for my character, which further developed my transformation form, which allowed me to turn in huge ghoul for a period. This ghoul form also allowed the use of a powerful melee strike which is used to destroy your enemies, which I found very cool to use.

Devour, Shoot, Get Bored

Bite The Bullet‘s concept of eating and shooting on paper sounds like a great mix, which to be fair; it is a pretty unique mechanic. Sadly I found it all a little too repetitive after a while. Bite The Bullet also features some fast-paced action and in this respect its a thrilling experience pumping lead into the undead ghouls that ravage the Earth. One downside is that whilst the action is fairly fast-paced, it slows down when you have to stop and eat. Eating only takes a few moments, but this interrupts the flow of combat, which can make eating feel like a chore.

Minigames, Dialogue & Upgrades

There are a few minigames to play in Bite The Bullet which see you finding a teleporter device that transport you to a new area. This new area then gives you an objective to either; destroy all enemies or ride a zombie hamster to a goal. Finding these teleporter minigames provided some comical moments, and were a nice distraction to the game. Bite The Bullet also features a lot of fairly quirky dialogue. This is more prevalent when speaking to characters in the hub area. Secondary weapons also feature a unique upgrade system.

This system fits into the bizarre world and sees you seeking enemies who have happened to reach their best before date…much like real-world food. If you do choose to consume these enemies, you can then spend your hard-earned mass on upgrading your secondary weapons. The downside to this is that eating too many out-of-date enemies makes your character sick, which not only results in the character puking on the screen, you also suffer a debuff for the rest of the stage.

Sound & Vision

Graphics in Bite The Bullet pretty decent, with levels featuring multiple scrolling backdrops flashy effects and explosions. Performance of the game did suffer throughout and made me feel a little queasy at times. As mentioned earlier, controlling your character feels really slippery and doing most basic actions has your character jumping all over the place. Nothing really feels refined, and there were a few instances where I kept dying because the characters movements were so unwieldy.

The soundtrack features a lot of Rock inspired tunes but nothing that I would consider great to listen to. The sound effects are really loud most of the time which drowns out the soundtrack. This means that for the majority, you’ll be hearing the sound of your guns and nothing else.

My Verdict

Whilst Bite The Bullet is a great concept; it sadly doesn’t make a great game. The repetitive nature of running-and-gunning mixed with stopping to eat, meant that I got bored pretty quick. If run-and-gun games are your jam, then there is a lot in Bite The Bullet that you’ll enjoy. Just prepare yourself for mass puking, eating and repeating…

Rapid Reviews Rating

You can purchase Bite The Bullet from the Nintendo eShop.