Armies of the Night
Oh, lord, we couldn't think of a better title for this review of The Warriors? Wait till you see how lazy the rest of the review is.
Published: March 18, 2007
When those attacks are turned on you and you get a couple bruises, a huff of Flash will quickly get you back into the game. Yes, that's right; you do drugs to refill health. Cute, isn't it? This isn't some random pill pickup, either, you clearly snort the stuff, and it's a bit like a giant "Hey parents, you're retarded if you let your impressionable, mentally unstable child play this" neon sign, though it's doubtful the parents will actually notice.
The Grand Theft Auto III engine has served Rockstar well, and though it bears little resemblance to the original RenderWare-powered version seen in 2001, bits of the tweaks made to it for Manhunt are evident here, like your character's hand slowly cocking for a stealth strike in the game's slightly uneven (but thankfully open) sneaking bits.
Given the game's graphical roots, it's not a surprise that it's no kind of late-generation showcase. It's no visual stinker, but it's not really much of a looker either. There's quite a bit of variety in the textures from one part of the city to the next, and the sheer number of characters fighting on screen in some parts is a sight to behold, but aside from the raw polygon count and AI being scripted on the fly, there's not a whole lot to impress here.
Stuff breaks like it should, the animations are solid if a bit repetitive -- almost all the different Warriors you use will move more or less the same - and the levels themselves manage to be boxy and gridded-off like city streets without seeming like an endless set of corridors and right angles, usually thanks to the clever placement of low fences which can be hopped smoothly at full sprint in a move that just feels awesome every time you do it.
If the game's not expressly a treat for the eyes, it is for the ears - provided you can handle profanity. There's a ton of it in the game, more per capita than even GTA: San Andreas, so if you cringe at the sound of a the f-bomb, you're going to be in a constant state of facial contortion.
Of course, it's delivered, and many times by the original cast of the movie (Ajax, Cleon, and Cochise are all played by their big-screen counterparts). In fact, every single performance in the game is great, and not a single line rubbed me the wrong way, delivery-wise, which is rare, though I do wish I could've heard a pre-Carmen Sandiego Lynn Thigpen as the radio DJ again, but the performance there is quite good as well.
The rest of the audio is equally superlative. Punches and kicks have a visceral smack to them (though they're nothing like the sounds in something like Fight Club, they just tend to straddle the line between a hard hit and something vaguely cartoony), glass shatters and boards break with aural thunder, and the soundtrack... ooh, the soundtrack.
It's rare that I find a game's score sucking me in as much as a movie, or find that it's as fitting with the stuff on screen as I did while playing this game. Honestly, the work Steven Donohoe's and his band NeveroddoreveN fits so perfectly with the core theme and work Barry de Vorzon did on the original film, it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other picks up, and all of it, across the board is at times soothing, foreboding and angry without it ever interfering with the game itself. Awesome work, guys. It should be noted that plenty of music was lifted from the film, and still more was licensed from around the late 70's, so the overall mix of the audio is definitely in like with the rest of the movie.
In the end, The Warriors does nothing more than assuage my fears that the beat-em-up genre is dead. At no point does the game try to bite off more than it can chew for too long, nor does it try to create and overly complex system, yet it keeps from being a classic button masher enough to claim the crown as the best beat-em-up of the past couple years. This is a fantastic game, and so long as you're old enough to appreciate the movie and buy the game, there's no reason why it shouldn't be experienced.
