Warhammer 40k: Fire Warrior

Review

Published by: THQ
Developed by: Kuju Entertainment
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Number of Players: 8
Release Date:
US: November 17, 2003

After picking through Movie Gallery's game *ugh*, Pilon found this game. I remembered seeing screenshots of the game around it's release but never actually read anything about it. So we rented it hoping that Kuju Entertainment did a good job creating a Warhammer 40k environment, that the fans of the table top game would enjoy. So after watching beginning trailer, we were excited to try the actual game out. We started by checking if there was a Co-op mode, nothing, so we decide on a nice team deathmatch. It wasn't really a team deathmatch, seeing the game didn't have any bots, so it was more of a throw back to the Goldeneye and Quake games that seemed to entertain us for hours on end on the Nintendo 64. That isn't bad, but it wasn't up to speed for games like Timesplitters 2, which have both co-op and bots. So I was a bit disappointed about the multiplayer, instead we try out taking turns on singleplayer. The first levels were all about the trench warfare, we were the Tau going into the enemy trenches and killing everything in our path. Finding keys was usually easy to do, seeing that they were usually on the captain that had a chainsaw blade. The screen would slash diagonally and burr a bit if you got hit by it, which was a nice touch. The Tau battlesuit also recharged if you sat around a bit. But going through about 5 levels of trenches it gets tiring seeing the same enemies pop up, finally, we found a Spacemarine, and boy was he tough... till Pilon used gernades on him.

Closing Comments

Fire Warrior was a solid game, great level design, I found the controls were something to get used to but I think we had fun with this game. I could have used more enemies, but the last level we went through they changed them a bit so I wont complain about that. Multiplayer also used the multitap, which could have been good, and it had online capabilities for up to 8 players. After playing through some of singleplayer, I now want some company to make a multi-race warhammer 40k FPS. Though making that many races and that many campaigns would take a very long time. I guess it will have to sit on the shelf like my free roaming zombie FPS. Some day...

Final Score: 8.3

Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution

I bought Virtua Fighter 4 awhile back at Wal-mart for about 30 bucks. Since then I have played through a bit of the quest mode and tried a bit of Vs. mode, and that was about it. So, not wanting to think this game was a waste of money I started to go through the tutorial mode. This mode shows you first hand what types of moves you can pull off, via computer controlled fighters, and then lets you practice them afterwards. After going through most of the tutorial, I started to get a bit scared of all the technical moves they built in. For example, they have a throw escape, evade, evading throw escape, recovery and all that other jazz. It seemed like a million things to remember! I don't think I would have time to think about escaping or evading when a human player is charging at me! But I guess you just have to spend some more quality time with this game to start getting the hang of things. After a few hours of evading and escaping throws I was, somewhat, ready to tackle the Quest mode. This is where you get to custumize your character, giving him/ her a unique look with accessories that you can unlock by going through tournments or completing quests. The quests are a nice addition to the fighter genre, on each level of tournment you get different objectives to fufill. One might be winning 10 matches in a row or throwing someone 5 times... of course these quests get harder as you work your way through the tournments. Finishing a quest will allow you to buy new accessories or costumes for your character and of course you get gold to buy said new items. There are also movies that can be purchased showing off one of the character's special moves... but you don't want to buy them.

Quest Log Update

April 12 '06 playtime: 1 and a half hours

I have just finished off the first two tournments with very little difficulty. The third one scares me a bit with it's three match win system instead of the normal 2. In order to get into the tournment you must fight a given amount of computers before entering, just like an actual tournment. Alright, so I have to fight 30 characters at 3 matches each? Even if I win ever match that is still 90 matches! As I enter the first match I notice the fighter's name, each character in the tournies have different names, so after awhile you start to hate some of the characters. For example, I had to fight Overbite 5 times! He was about my level, which by the way you get promotions for every now and then, so we were about equal almost every match which is good seeing nobody wants to just walk through a tournment in a fighting game. Finally beating all 30 requirement characters, I gain entrance to the tournment. First time, I made it to the second match, and had my ass handed to me by a lightning fast character. Second time was a cake walk, even the final round was a joke! I could have laid on the X button and would have won. But I was a gentleman, I threw in some throws to feel like I earned the win. So, now I start onto the fourth tournment, I assume this is where hell breaks loose.