11/21/05 >> The Warriors (Xbox)
Genre: Action
I'm sure we all remember the movie from the late seventies, with it's over the top and often outright comical gangs... and if we don't, I'm sure we all went out and bought the conveniently reissued director's cut because it's related to Rockstar and we therefore fit into this game's target demographic. Sure, an okay movie, but is it really worth making a game for? Apparently somebody thought so.
Gameplay: The majority of the gameplay that players will want to see (read: combat) combines the generally frowned upon system that Coliseum: Road To Freedom had with a more typical button mashing/linear combo system somewhat similar to Dynasty Warriors. Much like Coliseum, you can pick up weapons, hit in a 360 radius around your character regardless of facing and battle of a handful of enemies with pretty poor AI. The system itself seems like something that would be hard to screw up, having been pretty consistent since the days of Battletoads, but Rockstar somehow manages it, with an engine much more clunky and uncomfortable than any of the aforementioned titles. To sum it up as best I can, the controls are non-responsive, the collision is noticeably bad, and the damage inconsistent and the combat were overall unimpressive.
The new and exciting "Warchief" function... functions exactly like the TCM on Socom 3. Like, dead on exact. You go into your little menu, order them to do something and they may or may not do whatever you just told them to do, depending on the alignment of the stars at that precise moment. Exactly like in Socom 3, the AI characters straddle the line of "non-responsive and useless" and "too accurate and over-powered" through their painfully bad AI, sometimes managing to decimate entire squads of enemies with no help or prompting and other times completely ignoring the fact that you're being pounded on by 3 people while they wander around picking up bottles despite being ordered to watch your back. The AI character's outright refusal to break away from combat once engaged is another fairly major problem I saw plaguing this game, and it really should not have been released in its current state.
The non-combat parts consist of running about and doing little mini-games, which is more tedious than anything else. Sure, Shadow Hearts does that acceptably with a quick ring spin that takes less than a second, but when it takes someone upwards of two minutes to unlock handcuffs or 40 seconds of rotating the left analog stick to steal a stereo, it gets to the point of being grating. Leaping to nonsensical locations and wasting spray paint trying to trace a giant "W", only to fail and have to waste 5 minutes going back to get more gets pretty annoying too. That's without factoring re-spawning enemies.
The promises of "free roaming" in this game are outright lies, with the character's turf roughly the size of one map area on Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance or the cul-de-sac area of San Andreas. The free roaming bonus objectives were also laughably bad, with such quests as "beat up the 8 guys that just showed up around the corner" and "rob the store across the street". This aspect felt extremely half-assed and should have been removed altogether.
Story: The prequel parts of the story read like a bad fanfic, with some fairly nonsensical parts that really must be seen to be believed. The only parts that didn't suffer from that were word for word out of the movie... so yeah. I guess I'm just not impressed by the epic saga of Rembrandt beating up bums just because or how Cleon was a Destroyer who left because he didn't get no respect.
Graphics/Sound: The graphics, as is fairly standard with Rockstar, are pretty bad, being quite a bit worse than Manhunt. Character models are pretty basic, with the user able to tell the characters apart with some difficulty. The city/backgrounds were fairly plain run-down-city-with-graffiti graphics, again, worse than Manhunt and pretty much the unimpressive Rockstar standard. Sadly, the city lacked that certain atmosphere that the movie did, seeming more like every other bad part of town in some random game than one faithful to the film, so that's a severe negative. Combat saw a gross overuse of blood, making up for it's near non-existence in the film, and it seemed entirely unnecessary, yet another thing distancing the game from the movie.
Sound was all well and fine, with a fairly faithful reproduction of the vibe of the movie. The music, though repetitive, seemed to fit as well, until breaking in to that almost droning sound that was used throughout the movie regularly, but to good effect.. The voice acting was also quite good, and true to the film as well. The combat sounds got repetitive really quickly however, with the various gangs sharing groans, taunts and other general sounds. Ambient noises such as sirens, breaking glass and similar sounds didn't seem to be terribly overused, but were fairly standard and nondescript.
Play Time/Replayability: Going through this game takes almost no time at all, with the missions being rather linear and quite easy to do, even on the highest difficulty. Unlocking stuff is another matter entirely... in theory. Unlockables are gotten by high scores and bonus objectives which are way too easy to get. Bonus objectives are announced in gameplay and easy enough to get if the user is paying attention, a harsh contrast to most games where bonus objectives are unannounced and actually take thought to figure out. High scores are even more pathetic. Due to re-spawning enemies, any score can be reached through sheer tenacity with no skill or even thought involved. Hell, the game awards you 5 points for walking into a pile of boxes and 100 for breaking a window... quite a bit when you only have to reach 5000. This game shouldn't take more than a week, maximum to complete 100%, and that's being generous.
Final Recommendation: I think the worst part about this game is that the movie license and the game are kind of feeding each other in a vicious cycle of idiocy. People want the game because they saw the movie because they heard about the game because... you get the idea. Without the movie license, the gameplay is simply not there, and with the license, it reads like a hackneyed fanfic, and I'm just not impressed on all counts. Nice try Rockstar, good job with the marketing though. Why don't you make a half-assed prequel for Dead Presidents or Se7en so everyone can conveniently "discover" that movie and claim to love it as well, then the game will sell because of interest in the movie! It's genius!
Anyway, I digress… This game is pretty bad, movie license or no, and I cannot recommend a purchase under any circumstance. Hell, Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance was quite a bit more entertaining, and that one is almost universally despised, which just goes to show that hype isn't always right.
------------------------------------------------------------
Game Score: 5.5
Reviewed By: Whyte Fox
