Six hours. That’s how long it took me to finish the single player campaign in Bulletstorm – and that’s including restarting at a handful of checkpoints in the earlier levels. Needless to say, this game won’t be winning any awards for replay value. It’s a “one and done” shooter, regardless of what Epic or People Can Fly try to tell you.

I had high hopes for this game. I bought into the hype, believing Cliff Bleszinski when he told people that this would be a shooter unlike any other. And in many ways, Bulletstorm is a shooter unlike any other. It puts a unique twist on a genre that’s otherwise been one big disappointment after another over the past few years. It’s gorgeous, too. Think Gears of War meets Borderlands with a bit of Modern Warfare style cinema thrown in.

Unfortunately, it’s also got a lot of flaws that make it hard to recommend the game.

For starters, the controls are clunky – and that’s being polite about things. You don’t have the range of motion that you should have, you can’t jump, the iron sights are useless, and it just doesn’t feel smooth. The camera doesn’t keep up at times, either, which can make the larger fights – especially bosses – a big pain in the ass.

The slide gimmick gets old fast, too. I became increasingly frustrated with it every time the game decided to drop me from a run into a slide. It’s especially maddening when you’re in a fight and you suddenly find yourself smack into the middle of a horde of enemies that you’d otherwise planned to take out from afar. Had I not had such a blast with the leash and all of the various skillshots, I’d have quit the game out of frustration long before finishing.

And that’s really what it comes down to: the skillshots. Bulletstorm is what it was billed as – an arcade style shooter that rewards you for coming up with unique ways to take out your enemies. It was all a bit too scripted for my taste but you have enough freedom in how you approach combat situations that you can have a lot of fun if you take a minute to figure out how you can use (or, rather, abuse) your surroundings.

Bottom line: it’s worth buying, but I’d wait until it drops to $19.99 a few months from now. And believe me – it’s going to. This game has no staying power whatsoever.