Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior review

It's a good job you've got your Fire Warrior space suit because otherwise destroying this gun might be more tricky.

I shan’t deny that I had a good few years of collecting Warhammer 40,000 armies, specifically the Eldar, as well as a couple of other Games Workshop titles (who else remembers Necromunda?). Because of this, on some strange level, I felt I owed it to the company to play through Fire Warrior. The game, a Halo-esque first person shooter, begins with you, as a Fire Warrior of the Tau race (who definitely weren’t a part of the game back when I was collecting), battling the Imperial Guard in a futuristic version of some classic Medal of Honor trenches.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, perhaps a little back-story is in order and the few brilliant FMV sequences that break up certain parts of the game help tell it well. A film trailer voiceover might explains it best with the line, ”The Tau, a technologically advanced race, have been targeted for destruction by the Imperial Guard and Space Marines, though a more deadly foe will make both armies join forces to overcome the evil newcomers.” Personally however, it’s not very important to know the story to play through.

Two many cooks…

Encountering a Space Marine while reloading is the metaphorical equivalent of trying to scare off a lion with your pants down.

Warhammer 40K: Fire Warrior seems to borrow aspects from various games to try and come up with a perfect fusion of gameplay features, but instead ends up as a pretty standard and unoriginal shooter - albeit with a few good features. Halo’s recharging shield system has been lifted, as well as the ‘two weapon swap’ feature that allows you to carry only two weapons at a time, so you must swap them out when a better one comes along or you run out of ammo. Undeniably inspired by the Medal of Honor games’ frantic warlike feel, the levels do all successfully make you feel like you are part of something greater, though they do allow you to make a personal impact on the war because of the very few sections where you are actually fighting alongside team-mates.

Unfortunately, it seems that not only good aspects of other games have drifted into Fire Warrior, as the oft repeated ‘teleporting in’ excuse for extra enemies appearing does little more than provide some cheap shocks and challenges for the unwary gamer (also, how come all these monsters always manage to appear right next to you?).

If in doubt, go find a key

There's nothing like encountering a magnificent piece of architecture... then wondering what it's for.

The standard objectives of finding keys and locating captured leaders are plentiful in Fire Warrior, which isn’t often a problem, because many of the levels are actually reasonably varied in terms of architectural design (or just colour), but I did encountered a bug that brought me to a situation where it was impossible to complete the mission.

Protecting one of my leaders en route to the extraction point I could see the end in sight, so rushing on ahead I decided to clear the area and get into the extraction ship, safe in the knowledge that the man I was protecting would keep coming. Unfortunately, he became stuck behind some terrain, or a crate of some kind and needed my assistance to help him out of this MENSA level challenge. However I had already entered the dropship, which froze me in my place. I was helpless but to wait there in the hope that he could make it, which he didn’t. After five minutes of boredom I finally resolved the situation by restarting from the previous checkpoint.

Gameplay over graphics

Dilemma: Continue and face whatever did this or run away? I'd suggest running...

Checkpoints are very important in Fire Warrior because if you happen to bite the dust, you’ll have to continue from the last checkpoint rather than the start of the level (which you’re stuck with if you reset your console) and the levels are pretty large. Twenty-one levels in total doesn’t seem like much, and in fact it won’t take you longer than a few days of gaming to beat them, but compared to many other console FPS games they are of reasonable length, which does however lead to a slight deficit of detail. Certainly the levels aren’t simple boxes meshed together, but they don’t look as crisp or intricate as some games, even on the PS2.

Character models too leave a lot to be desired and the enemies do end up looking rather similar after a few kills, but there is some progression throughout the game that leads to some variety. ‘Monsters’ are also referenced at some stages through the game, but instead of giving us a veritable nest of Tyrannids to deal with, the actual enemy turn out to be a little disappointing considering the richly varied Warhammer 40K universe.

Progressive doesn’t just relate to music

The Imperial Guard seem to have a penchant for the gothic and dramatic style.

When each new enemy arrives it can be a little daunting, since you are merely using the weapons of the next highest enemy perhaps coupled with your own Tau alternative, but in a sense this cleverly keeps raising the bar, adding power to the weapons while keeping a sense of challenge throughout the game. Once you’ve managed to vanquish one of the new super enemies, their powerful weapon can then be under your control, making dealing with the next group of them slightly less frantic.

Bosses are also of a welcome variety, though the first, a Harrier Jump Jet style vehicle which you must blow out of the sky is less than amusing since you have no reference for whether bosses in this game are dispatched by repeated shooting or some clever use of the world. (Just keep shooting it for those who are interested.) Sounds are individual and suitable, but range from the great atmosphere building ambience of war to the rather low quality of some of the star laden voice acting.

A load of weapons and extras

Replace spacecraft with tanks and you've got a rather good Medal of Honor competitor - with aliens.

There are seventeen weapons to pick up and use, and while that may sound great, you’ll end up with about seven styles of weapon that look or work significantly different to one another - the rest being variants of the others. Still, at least it seems like they’ve made some effort. In terms of how long you could play the game for a multiplayer mode is included which does add some life to the game after finishing it on all difficulties and managing to unlock all of the cheat modes (a challenging feat indeed), but isn’t worthy of a purchase alone.

Strangely hyped as a Halo beater, or at least the PS2’s answer to Halo, Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior is a fun blast for a day or two, but a Halo beater it is not. Fans of the genre will certainly get something out of the game, but this won’t be the one you’re showing all of your friends unless they’re Games Workshop obsessed. Halo was certainly a great game, especially for a console (two years ago at least), but if this is the best that the PS2 can throw into the ring to challenge it, I may have to buckle and purchase an Xbox after all, because when it comes down to it, I’d rather play Halo 2.