War World

Review from Yug - Sunday, 29 October 2006 @ 12:00am

There’s just something about giant robots fighting that appeals to gamers. Everything from Transformers to Voltron, I remember growing up on the TV shows alone, and that was before I even started playing the games. I’ll always remember the first time I played Mechwarrior 2 on the PC, I had no idea what I was doing, didn’t have a clue how to configure anything, but god damn if the actual assaults weren’t intense and gripping fun. These days you can pretty much class a Mech game into two categories: Sim and Arcade.

Sim Mech games being represented by anything from the Mechwarrior series to the full on Steel Battalion on the Xbox. These type of games try to simulate the feeling of piloting a real Mech robot into battle, have a massive amount of detail, and generally come packed with an instruction manual at least 100 pages long.

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Arcade Mech games as an example MechAssault on the Xbox or even the latest Chrome Hounds on the Xbox 360. Much less about a realistic robot piloting experience and leaning more towards the blow stuff up and cause as much destruction as possible as quick as you can.

War World leans more towards the latter category. Fast, frantic and fun, this is a game that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is: the best online action Mech game on the PC.

Remember when you first played Serious Sam and realised it was all about the old school game play and NOTHING else? Well that’s what it felt like when I started playing War World. Three clicks and you’re into a game, whether it be online or off; running, jumping, strafing, fragging, sniping, thrusting, etc. It couldn’t be any more simple and straight forward, something which was actually a little off putting to begin with, because at first glance there doesn’t actually seem to be that much to the game.

There are 4 single player modes you can choose from – Arcade, Death Match, Team Death Match and Custom Game. However all these modes mostly consist of different objectives set in the multiplayer maps against bots. It’s the equivalent of getting a 2nd disc full of special features when you buy a DVD – nice to have, but hardly the reason you bought it in the first place.

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Getting down to the brass tacks then (what does that mean anyway, why would anyone get down to tacks), the multiplayer modes you can choose from – Death Match, Team Death Match, Capture the Flag, Bomb Assault – are all extremely standard. In fact, the whole game has a very ‘Unreal Tournament’ feel about it in almost every respect.

One aspect that definitely sets the game apart of course is that you are piloting huge robot Mechs (duh), and that they come in 5 different types, from very fast but light armour, to very slow but strong armour, and all the way between. Add to this the nice amount of additional firepower and extras you can purchase (credits matter in the single player, not so much in multiplayer), from Miniguns and Lasers, to Mortars and Mine Launchers, to Thrusters and Shields. Although there are a multitude of variations on all equipment, most of games I played didn’t have any credit restrictions, so the best weapons were always selected. The only real choices were whether to get 2 miniguns or 2 lasers or a combination, and what kind of thrusters to get. There is a good paper/scissors/rock with these weapons, although it isn’t initially apparent and took a bit of play to figure that out.

As much as I want to applaud the game, especially considering it was developed by a local Australian developer, I can’t sit on the fence forever. This is 2006, and this game is about 2 years behind the most cutting edge technology, graphics wise and gameplay wise. Mind you, the graphics do look sharp, the textures are well done, the levels are large and detailed, and the Mechs themselves animate nice and quickly. The fact that WarWorld is extremely streamlined and simple in its execution however is something that will divide gamers down the middle. It’s worth noting of course that this game is alot cheaper than most new games on the market as well.

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Personally, I really enjoyed it. Maybe it’s because I had been playing too much Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare recently and enjoyed the less complex combat, or maybe I haven’t played a good PC multiplayer game for awhile and I miss using the keyboard and mouse. Or maybe I just enjoyed it because it reminded me of how fun games like this used to be.

The last point I need to make is unfortunately the one which will determine whether you buy the game or not. As much as I enjoyed the multiplayer games I played, and how simple they were to join, I simply found that there were hardly any people out there actually playing this game. I mean I would load up the game and go searching for a game to join only to hear crickets chirping. It’s a tough sell, because frankly if more people bought the game, more people would play it, and this glaring problem wouldn’t actually be a problem at all. But it is.

Summary

A straightforward and fun multiplayer Mech game that is channelling Unreal Tournament of old, however a few tricks and a cheap price tag isn’t enough to counter the lack of other people online to play against.

Pros

Good clean fun, simple and easy to play, animations and levels are smooth and detailed, cheap, will run on just about any computer, multiplayer is great fun ...

Cons

... when you can find players online. Graphics and gameplay is slightly dated