Awesome news guys! The developers of Bulletstorm will be playing Anarchy Mode online on March 12th and we want to play with you. Developers from both People Can Fly and Epic (including me!) will be playing with the fans for a few hours to Kill With Skill. Anarchy Mode is all about killing hordes of enemies as creatively as possible while working as a team. Teamwork is required if you’re going to score super high! From what we’ve heard so far, people really seem to dig Anarchy Mode because it breathes some fresh air into cooperative play online.

Epic Games will handle the North American event to be hosted at 12:00pm to 3pm Pacific Time (3:00pm to 6:00pm Eastern Time) on Saturday, March 12th. We’re super thrilled over this opportunity to get to play with fans!

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To sign up, just add our PSN IDs (above) to your friends list and we’ll invite people to games or accept invites from you. A full list of all the account names will be available on Bulletstorm.com shortly, so look there and add as many as you wish. It’ll all work out. During our play session, we’ll do our best to play with as many people as possible!

As a warm-up, I’ll give you a quick run-through on how Anarchy Mode works. You play in a team of one to four players as a bunch of enemies attack you. You have to survive and kill them all, but also earn enough Skillpoints to pass on to the next wave. Every wave have a set of points required, which will increase for every wave. As mentioned, between waves you get time to buy new gear and upgrades! If you kill everyone but don’t get enough Skillpoints you can try again, but you will not get to the next wave until you hit the required quota.

Teamwork becomes a must after a while to get enough points. Helping out with the Skillshots will give you A LOT more points. For example, two players can leash the same enemy at the same time, tearing him apart (haha!) to get a Team-exclusive Skillshot. Or one guy can kick the enemy and then someone else can shoot and kill him while he’s in the air. This way, both players will get points.

So there you have it. This Saturday from 12:00pm to 3pm Pacific Time, one player will slide into an enemy making him airborne, I will Flail him, someone else will set him on fire, and then you will use the Boneduster shotgun to send his sorry ass into the spikes of cactus! Deal? I hope to see a gazillion players online in Bulletstorm! I hope to see YOU.

Bulletstorm is out now on PS3! Its Echoes mode challenges you to complete levels using the most creative kills possible. Here’s a head start to a high score!

Layering Skillshots

Try and execute as many different Skillshots as possible on every single enemy. A lot of the Skillshots can be stacked with other ones. For example, you can get more skillpoints out of any enemy if he’s on fire when you finish him off – this will give you +50sp for the “Afterburner” skillshot.

You could also do this while affected by Nom Juice, giving you another +50sp for the “Intoxicated” skillshot, and another +50sp if the enemy is also being affected by Puffball gas at the same time (the “Antidote” skillshot) – there are a ton of different possibilities. Experiment!

New Bonus

Every time you perform a new skillshot for the first time in an Echo, the skillpoints you earn for it will be multiplied x5. Execute as many different Skillshots as you possibly can to take advantage of this!

Master the Peacemaker Carbine

The trusty PMC is well worth mastering early on, as you will always be carrying this weapon with you. Not only do you want to learn all the Skillshots for it, but you should also think long and hard about how you can combine them with other weapons. It’s also the perfect weapon to shoot running enemies in the legs with, to make them fall over.

Love the Toxic

Always make use of the Berserkers (the green charging melee enemies) and their Puffball masks. If you shoot their head the mask will explode, poisoning you if you’re standing close enough. While in this state, you get extra points (+50sp) for every enemy you kill, thanks to the “Toxic Love” Skillshot.
It’s often a good idea to wait a little before killing them, to be able to maximize your kills afterwards. Remember that if their masks are intact, you can still shoot dead Berserkers in the head to get the toxic effect – sneaky!

Time is of the Essence

The faster you finish an Echo, the more Time Bonus points you will get. Every second is worth 20sp, so try to find the perfect balance between spending an extra second or two to set up the perfect Skillshot, versus earning points for being quick. If the extra points you’ll receive for the Skillshot are worth more than the time it takes, then go ahead and do it.

Plan your Charge Shots and Thumpers

Using the Leash’s Thumper and all the weapons’ Charge Shots enables a lot of Skillshots that you can’t do otherwise, so make sure to utilize them. Keep in mind that it costs nothing to refill at the Dropkits – but you only have three of each between each Dropkit, so learn the Echoes well to know where to use them for optimal Skillpoints.

Change Weaponry for New Skillshots

Since every weapon has unique skillshots to perform with it, and you get a huge bonus for doing new Skillshots, switching between your equipped weapons is a must. When playing longer Echoes that offer a lot of weapons, make sure to equip new ones and replace the old when you reach the Dropkits, to make the most of the New Skillshot bonus!

With this in mind, it’s good to learn which weapons work best in which parts of the Echo. For example, maybe it’s better to equip the Flailgun in the later parts of a map with big groups of enemies, instead of using it at the beginning?

Nom Juice

In some Echoes you can find bottles of Nom Juice that will intoxicate you if you drink it, rewarding every kill you perform during this time with the “Intoxicated” Skillshot. Try and make the most of this time, but remember that your vision will blur and your balance is affected, increasing the challenge.

If you’re having a hard time doing Skillshots while intoxicated, or if you can’t reach the bottle, you can still shoot and break it for +200 points.

Check your Skillshot Database

At times it can become tricky remembering which Skillshots you’ve executed in this round, and what all the different Skillshots for each weapon are. Bring up the Skillshot Database and take a look, to see all the Skillshots you’ve discovered and executed so far.

The Echo timer stops while you’re browsing the Skillshot Database, so take your time – it may very well be the tool you need to get those extra 200sp needed to beat your friend’s high score!

“Kill with skill” sums up BulletStorm’s M.O. admirably. But now that the ultra-violent PS3 shooter is nearing its February 22nd release date, long-awaited details are finally coming to light.

Details including the game’s multiplayer mode, which has remained shrouded in mystery since the game’s unveiling. While BulletStorm won’t include Versus, it will feature a separate four-player Anarchy mode designed for co-op play. While Anarchy may draw instant comparisons to the co-op modes found in other online shooters, Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski pointed out that Anarchy is “not like a Nazi Zombies where you just have to survive.” Watch the video above to learn more about Anarchy’s unique score-based progression system, CliffyB’s all-time favorite kill combo in BulletStorm, why BulletStorm on the PS3 will “very much take advantage of what the PS3 is capable of,” and why he’s a fan of Blu-ray’s storage capabilities.

Based on my hands-on time with BulletStorm, the game is a radically different beast than the current crop of realistic military shooters. Though you can aim down the sights a la Call of Duty, this isn’t a game where cautious ninja sniping will get you far. Instead, BulletStorm takes a page out of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater handbook by challenging you to create the most punishing, destructive combo of attacks possible. When it comes to launching a kill combo, your yo-yo-like Energy Leash and powerful kick set up your target for a series of devastating follow-up attacks that can clean out a room like Hercules washing out the Augean Stables.

That’s not to say that traditional FPS tactics won’t be useful in BulletStorm. Though I didn’t encounter any sniper rifle-type weapons in my hands-on time with BulletStorm, Bleszinski noted that not all of BulletStorm’s weapons have yet been revealed. While Bleszinski hinted that long-range weapons may make the cut, he stated that if they did, “they would have to have a unique twist” to match what he called “some of the most unique weapons of any first-person shooter on the market.”

While Bleszinski’s enthusiasm for BulletStorm is infectious, we found time to discuss a host of topics, including his recent podcast with BioShock Infinite director Ken Levine and his recent comments regarding Heavy Rain. Read up on the rest of our talk below.

Q: One of our readers had a question: “We want a BulletStorm beta!” Actually, that’s not a question…
A: We haven’t announced anything about a beta with BulletStorm. I don’t know where we’re going to go with that. I have a feeling you may get hands-on with BulletStorm at some point, potentially without buying it. You’ll have to wait and see.

Q: On that note, you’ve spoken before about your philosophy on betas. So what’s your beef with betas?
A: Well, there’s a difference between a beta and a demo. You have to be careful. Sometimes certain gamers might play the beta and then feel like they’ve had enough. Lately, I’ve come to realize there’s a lot of value in doing a beta, especially with online multiplayer. Gamers get to feel like VIPs, they can suss out issues and contribute to make a more solid product, and you get a little hype bubble before the game hits. So I’m more of a fan of betas now than I ever have been.

Q: One PlayStation.Blog reader wanted to know what kind of environment variety we’ll see in BulletStorm. Are you going to mix up the visual variety later in the game?
A: Without spoiling too much, certain sections might take place in outer space. And the planet is a big place and the city you are in is huge — there are all sorts of different locations that you go. It’s definitely not all desert or all city. We’ll have tons of variety and tons of different textures.

Q: There was an old PlayStation game by Shiny Entertainment called Wild 9 that, from what I remember, had some similarities to BulletStorm. Was Wild 9 a gameplay inspiration?
A: I don’t know if it was deliberate. That game encouraged you to keep your enemies alive as long as possible — like a cat playing with a mouse. BulletStorm is very much like that! In most shooters, it’s all about killing enemies quickly and moving onto the next room. But in BulletStorm, you see a bunch of enemies and say, “Ooh! I’m going to farm you for 5000 points and farm you for 4000 points and then we’re going to buy a bunch of cool stuff.”

Q: You and Ken Levine have been talking! What do you think of BioShock Infinite so far?
A: I think BioShock Infinite is amazing and I want to have its children. I’m a big fan of Ken Levine, I have a lot of respect for him. He’s incredibly intelligent, far more intelligent than I am. I was up in Boston recently and swung by to do a podcast with Ken. That’s something I’d like to see more: to see a lot of the creative types in the industry get together and shoot the breeze.

Q: You’ve recently gone on the record with some suggestions concerning Heavy Rain. Would you like an opportunity to clarify them?
A: I think Heavy Rain is an amazing game. As a gamer I wasn’t sure I was going to get into it, but then I started playing and I loved it. It’s one of my favorite games that came out this year. I think there may have been a bit of a missed opportunity to appeal to a female audience. It’s essentially an interactive crime thriller. And if I know anything about women, it’s that they love two things: true crime and queso dip.

Cliff Bleszinski is a not an easy man to find. When he’s not Tweeting away, he’s cooped up in Epic Games‘ Raleigh, NC-based studio working on his latest ultra-violent fascination.

This time that fascination is BulletStorm, an off-the-wall shooter spectacle that will grace the PS3 sometime in 2011. Cliff himself is a big fan of PS3 titles like Heavy Rain and the God of War series, and in our one-on-one interview for the PlayStation.Blog, he expressed excitement that BulletStorm will strut its stuff in front of PS3 players.

In the following video interview, you’ll also learn much, much more about BulletStorm’s unusual shooting gameplay and Cliff’s design inspirations. Sure, you can kill. But can you kill creatively? Let’s let Mr. Bleszinski answer that question (and many more!) in his own words.

If you want to see more of BulletStorm’s high-octane shooting, sandbox combat, and carnivorous plants in action, watch the debut trailer below. And be sure to sound off in the comments!