Bite the Bullet Critic Reviews

Outside of these fixable issues Bite The Bullet is a fun action title that adds in a unique mechanic to proceedings, in eating foes to gain abilities. It’s challenging without being too punishing, has a pretty good sense of humour, and offers plenty to sink your teeth into in its upgrades, hidden areas, and side quests. Plus, that soundtrack is just awesome. Like, seriously excellent.

Bite the Bullet brings the joy of the 2D old-school side-scroll games like Contra and tries to gives to the players more rules, abilities and stats to explore instead of "just killing for kill", but in its attempt, some small issues probably were not taken into account. Although it's a funny, replayable and enjoyable game, some small changes on the final design would've been great to the purpose. Nevertheless, it's still a great option for those who wants the "Contra experience" solo or with the classic 2 players coop mode.

While Bite the Bullet didn’t blow us away, it’s still a fun diversion for fans of old school run n’ gun action. Unfortunately, it came out a scant two weeks after Carrion, another much better side-scrolling retro pixel game largely also centred around eating people. If you only play one game this year about chomping on people, go that route. If you have room for two though, this Bullet is worth a taste.

Bite The Bullet doesn’t take itself seriously, even for a second. The writing and puns within are written well and quite funny if you take the time to read everything. The eating mechanic is an interesting take on the classic run and gun gameplay, and while it works and is completely unique and full of humor, I kept having to stop the flow of moving forward to eat everything I could. For classic Contra and Metal Slug fans, or someone that has always wanted to eat flying robots and bullets, you’ll find an entertaining few hours on your hands that’s satisfying like some fast food. You are what you eat; literally.

From my time with Bite the Bullet on Xbox One, its charm and uniqueness was made clear, but the more traditional sides of its game design and combat ultimately let me down. The RPG systems are rather shallow and progression feels hollow throughout most of the game. The general level design, whilst pretty decent, does not reward exploration, and some of its systems don’t really matter that much to the overall experience.

Bite the Bullet has an aesthetic that long-time players will love, but that their Bugs will make it hard to play. Once solved it has great and very original ideas.

Every level felt the same and even in the bonus stages I always seemed to be running around like a grotesque hamster. The only thing I truly enjoyed was the boss battles. There were a few fun moments while playing, but the riddle of where to go next was beyond frustrating. I never gained any bandanas (gives you perks) because you have to beat levels in under ten minutes, which is a ridiculous target. I don’t know how you could memorize where to go. I’m still confused about how everything works, even after several hours of playing. With a map being no help, and everything just looking bad (on purpose I’m sure), this is the kind of atmospheric experience I can’t recommend.