- Great beat 'em up action
- Simple combos and controls
- Variety of mission objectives
- Lots of extras, including wheelchair races
- Many items to use as weapons
- A few too many F-bombs for my
liking
- Default camera is a bit too close to the action
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The
Warriors
Score: 8.4 / 10
Beat ‘em up sidescrolling games are dead.
Even Capcom, maker of the Final Fight series, has abandoned the
well-worn, left-to-right fisticuffs. Unfortunately, not many developers
have figured out how to translate the traditional beat ‘em up to a fully
3D environment and still make the game fun to play. Enter The Warriors.
Based on a film from 1979 (also titled The Warriors), the game does not
feature the same kind of movie tie-in that gamers might expect. Though
the last bit of the game is pulled right from the movie (with plenty of
running away), most of the game takes place as a flashback to flesh out
the core group of characters – how the Warriors was formed, how
individual gang members joined, the background of the gang rivalries –
leading up to a monumental meeting of New York gangs in a vainglorious
attempt to mobilize a grand gang army to control the city. The break
from convention – shoehorning elements of the movie to fit into a game –
is a welcome one. Besides that, The Warriors is actually a great beat
‘em up game with
The Warriors’s Coney Island HQ serves as the hub to the rest of the
game. From here you access the story missions, flashback missions, bonus
missions, upgrade your fighting stats by working out (mashing buttons),
and take part in a variety of Rumbles. (In a good move, Rockstar Toronto
also includes a two-player option in the story mode.) Upon the
completion of successful missions, the game
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saves your progress automatically and offers mid-mission checkpoints
that are useful for extremely long missions (but are lost if you quit).
Completing various missions and bonuses unlock further flashback
missions and Rumble modes – there are some really, uh, delicious extras
to be found in the Rumble mode.
Surprisingly, the missions aren’t all about beating up wave after wave
of respawning drones. You’ll often be tasked with objectives that are
extremely unlike beat ‘em ups, like following a gang member making his
rounds while staying out of sight or taking part in the chaos of a New
York City blackout by stealing things and performing random muggings or
tagging opposing gangs turf markings or wasting a car with your bare
hands. Other tasks include just running like hell away from a pursuing
gang – leaping from rooftop to rooftop – or running after an escaping
gangster. These sections are included to mix-up the combat, which there
is a lot of. Also of some surprise is that the combat itself is varied.
There are the basic two and three button combos, but you’ve also got
throws, grapples (best performed while straddling your foe and dropping
elbows), tackles (just run and jump into a group of foes), and context
sensitive and power moves (like performing a throw while you’re
positioned near a wall results in a nifty and powerful head slam). On
top of that the characters you’ll play have slightly different-looking
combo moves and there are all manner of objects in the environment that
can be picked up and used to smash some heads like bricks, bottles, two
by fours, garbage cans, chairs, pool cues, jagged bottles, knives, and,
my favorite, Molotov cocktails. So not only do you get use your
reflexes, there’s also a fair amount of “planning” that can go on.
The script is laden with profanity. I’m getting old, I know, but there
were a little too many F-bombs. Capturing the mood of the street and the
dynamic verbal interchange between two opposing gangs is one thing, and
it does indicate the kind of people we’re dealing with, but it actually
managed to get on my nerves! F this, F that, F them – okay guys, we get
the point. (It’s in contrast to the movie that doesn’t actually feature
that much profanity.) The actual delivery is great – it especially helps
that a few of the actors from the film have contributed with some very
good voicework, reprising their roles from 25 years ago.
In order to accommodate some pretty big brawls, the graphical details
have been turned down – textures aren’t as sharp as they might have been
and the color scheme is limited. It’s a trade-off that I don’t mind. My
one real issue with the game graphics is that the camera is often way
too close to the action. Simply clicking the right thumbstick brings the
camera out a little alleviate the feelings of claustrophobia, but it
never feels like it’s out far enough. The camera can also be controlled
with the right thumbstick but the default view is usually adequate,
though sometimes the camera will be blocked by something in the
environment, which is not a big deal – if you’re not in a fight.
Overall, you’re not going to find a better beat ‘em up, action game
leading up to Christmas than The Warriors. The language is a little
salty, but it has so much going for it – especially the fact it doesn’t
descend into repetitiveness and has an interesting story to tell – that
it would be shame if you missed it.
