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| Firewarrior PS2 review | |
| developer | Kuju Entertainment |
| publisher | THQ |
| author | Chris O'Regan |
| date | Oct. 27, 2003 |
| graphics |   |
| sound | |
| gameplay | |
| value | |
| reviewer's toast | |
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Chromehounds
NA Review by Marcin
Oblivion-The First 3 Hours
PC Quicktake by walTer
Comic Quick Takes January 25, 2006
Feature by Mike
Video game technology has progressed to such a degree now that the quality of games should start at a certain level. Certain innovations, especially in the genre of First Person Shooters, have now become commonplace to the extent that it's very difficult for developers to get it wrong. Despite this Kuju have managed to do just that.
War? What is it good for? Well for Games Workshop, IT'S GREAT!
Games Workshop, the British RPG, Tabletop wargames and board game creators have made a lot from their Warhammer 40,000 franchise. Firewarrior is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe which is dominated by the Human Imperium. This vast empire covers a huge chunk of the galaxy and is constantly defending itself against attacks from both without and within. The latest threat to the Imperium is a young race known as the ‘Tau’. This race follows a caste based system that sorts its population depending on how they serve the Tau empire - and everyone serves. In Firewarrior you take on the role of a young soldier, Kais, who has been sent with his brothers in arms to rescue one of the Tau’s spiritual leaders, Ko’vash from an Imperium prison.
Firewarrior has now arrived at platform 9
Firewarrior is a first person shooter with all the baggage that comes with such a game. You run around with a gun of some description shooting everything that moves. All of this takes place over a series of missions that run along a very straight line in true gaming on rails fashion that oh so many shooters still roll along. All this despite games such as Deus Ex and Project IGI which encourage the player to experiment, introduce alternate paths, or provide varied ways to accomplish objectives. No such luck with Firewarrior.
Take a good idea and try and jam it into something that’s already broken
It's interesting to note that Firewarrior takes some ideas from another, much more polished game. You see, in Firewarrior you can only carry 2 weapons and you have a rechargeable shield. For those gaming aficionados reading this there is no need to highlight fact that both of these gameplay mechanics can be found in Halo, the current game of choice for FPS fans. The trouble is it doesn’t quite work on Firewarrior. The shield is very weak, and is regularly wiped out within one or two hits, and the recharge time is very slow. This forces you to lay low and wait for the recharge for a useless shield. It would appear the developers even admit this due to the number of health packs that litter the levels.
Graphics and Sound
The version tested was the PS2 one which suffers from the low power of the now 3 year old console. The textures are a bit ropey and some of the missions are very dark making it difficult to see what is going on. Nevertheless Firewarrior is one of the prettier PS2 games out there.
The sound is reasonably atmospheric with Imperium soldiers sounding like British squaddies and gun fire sound effects being quite convincing. What really shines however is the voice acting of Tom Baker of Dr Who fame, Brian Blessed of Flash Gordon and Black Adder (series 1) taking on the role of Constantine and Burt Kwouk from the Pink Pather films as Lusha, Kais' mentor and advisor throughout the game. Their presence lifts Firewarrior from being dire to ‘almost ok’.
Game play
Why do developers keep on doing this? Do they think they can get away with it? You can’t bolt together ideas from other games and hide the fact that the AI is dumber than Dubya, the level design is abysmal and the weapons are about as balanced as a soccer match between USA and Brazil - and hope no one will notice. We will, and WE HAVE! Firewarrior deceives the player into thinking that it’s something special. With the lush presentation and high quality FMV sequences you might start thinking that maybe, just maybe someone has actually played Halo/Deus Ex/Halflife and think 'yeah, that works'. Right then you will marvel at Medal of Honour beach assault ripoff which occurs on the first level and realise that you’ve just boarded the Firewarrior train to dullsville as you follow the mission along its ever so carefully plotted course.
Multiplayer
Despite the fact that the single player game is abysmal, Kuju and SCE have seen fit to make Firewarrior playable online via the PS2 Network adapter. The games on offer are the usual affair with Death Match, Team Death Match and Capture the Flag all available. The net code for the game is ok but I did notice some lag issues even with servers with sub 50ms pings. Sadly these games suffer from the poor balancing of the weapons which can turn a player into an unstoppable killing machine. Ho hum.
Summary
Firewarrior is an FPS by numbers. The only thing that encourages anyone to continue is the rather interesting story that runs through the single player game. Like I said before, it’s dull and that a game should never be. Should you buy this game? Well if you’d read the rest of the review you’d know my answer to that....no!