Fire Warrior

Today was my first full day home for spring break. So what did I do? Game, of course.

My brother kept the 360 at school, and the old Xbox is so enormous there's no room for it under theTV, so I got out the slim little PS2. For whatever reason, I decided to play Fire Warrior, mostly because it was on the top of the drawer. I soon regretted that decision.

The opening of the game is really clean and promising, and I love the Warhammer 4ok universe. We're talking Tao, Imperial Guard, Space Marines, Necron, etc. This game sits on some really solid game design and source material, and rolls those premade races together into a really nice opening cinematic and exposition (first level is a rescue mission for a kidnapped leader).

Then everything goes down hill. I'm dumped into a set of trenches that seem to be ripped from Medal of Honor (in a bad way). I try venturing down on tunnel, but an artillery blast caves it in. Too bad the timing was late, and I got caught mid-cave-in. Grenaded myself to death to restart. That same cave-in graphic caused another glitch death when I backed into another blocked-passageway.

The Halo-style set up (2 weapons, rechargable shields, "Charge-in-and-and-shoot" style) makes the game playable, but doesn't exactly make up for the rest of the game's shortcomings.

I gave up on the game after being one-shotted by some distant snipers (ya, I'd been running through pwning everything, then I just suddenly die... then i go back, and same thing happens. This is the first instance of snipers in the game, and they just totally rock you, since you don't have a sniper rifle).

I can't decide if this is just how PS2 first-person-shooters were in 2003, or if this game was just bad. I do know that I'd rather play halo. Or checkers...

Now the question: Is this evidence for or against me buying a PS3? Certainly, it's just one game, but I believe a proper examination of any one sample can tell volumes about the whole (meaning that if you take a really good look at Fire Warrior, it will reveal truths about Gaming as a whole).

The game did a lot of things right. The controls weren't hard, the story had legs (if only a minimal brain), the levels showed thought (even if they included color-coded keys (keys = goofy glow sticks)), and the AI was reasonably competent (although unlikely to pursue me once my shields got low). But the game sucked nonetheless, and I don't think the the PS3 is going to guarantee that there aren't other sucky games in the future. They're just going to be more expensive.

So ya. Maybe instead of coming out with new hardware, they should've just come out with a way to smack people who make glitchy games. Like, after a month on the shelves and a bunch of "mediocre" reviews, games like Fire Warrior should just have to go back to the lab like a potroast that's not quite pink enough.

Or maybe I should just be all "oooh... polygons..."