Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior

I can tolerate a lot of jank, bad graphics (old graphics), old gameplay, those are all things I'm perfectly fine with. But this game...this game. The guns have 0 impact. Enemies have no reactions whatsoever even when shot with grenade launcher (heavy bolter?) to the head. Worse yet, projectiles have HUGE tendency to just go through enemies. No, no, I didn't miss. Missiles just fly through enemy. Considering every enemy is borderline cheating (by running around like headless chicken and still 360 no scoping), and it takes 4-5 headshots to kill even basic PDF/Guardsman, game is borderline unplayable. Aiming is horrendous. You have a targeting reticle...but missiles will go outside of it 75% of the time. You can stand literally point blank to an enemy and miss. Often! Haven't finished it, thought I think I got near the end. It was just too much. Not worth the time or cheap, cheap, cheap price tag it currently has.

Fire Warrior gets a lot of flak and is often called one of the worst shooters ever made, this is far from the truth, In reality it's a decent shooter that deserves a chance. Fantastic atmosphere that nails the Warhammer 40,000 universe along with some simple (but fun) point A to point B gameplay. The shooting isn't anything special, but it works fine and the guns sound satisfying enough to use, the bolter especially is very accurate to the source material; basically acting as a rocket launcher. The game has a surprising variety in enemies although with most of them; all you have to do is circle-strafe around them to avoid getting hit, the bosses are also quite easy. The game won't take very long to finish, clocking in at about 5-6 hours absolute maximum, which honestly I feel is a good thing, the game never outstays its welcome. The real problem with this game is the port, this was primarily a PS2 and original XBOX game and the port here is very bare-bones, the GOG version does appear to be patched to a degree though and allows high resolutions straight out of the box (although you do have to hex edit to change the aspect ratio) and I had no audio, crashing or performance issues. The mouse controls however are absolutely horrendous; you cannot change the vertical sensitivity and there seems to be some strange reverse mouse acceleration that you cannot disable, the only way to make the game playable in this regard is to enable auto aim which can take awhile to get used to, but it works. Overall if you a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and want to play a simple yet fun shooter and can put up with the bad port, then I would recommend Fire Warrior, as long as you don't set your expectations too high.

The voice over, the lore, the music, even some of the graphics are beautifully done and clearly compiled with care and love for the source material. Tom Baker delivering the narration? Great idea! But the game, the core game, is UNPLAYABLE. Ironically your first weapon is referred to as 'accurate' but it fires four or five shots at random and never in a predictable pattern. Two of your constant weapons are indistinguishable except that one fires slightly faster: both are a scatter shot that has no precision at all. Damage states are non-existent. Shoot someone and if they don't die they are still running/gunning for you so you are endlessly wading into gunfire you cannot stem. Headshots are encouraged but nearly impossible. There's no way to duck or take cover so it's a war of attrition, just running blindly, firing blindly, hoping you hit something, hoping not to take so much damage that the guaranteed hit-scan shots of the enemy take you out. Your ammo isn't infinite either and your melee attack is useless. You can pick up enemy weapons but they're usually almost dry. It just isn't fun. You don't feel like a warrior, you feel like a target with limited means to defend yourself. Then there's there's the bugs, the places the game was clearly rushed (those in-game cutscenes are really rough) no clear level goals, randomly invincible enemies, inaccurate jumping puzzles. It's a mess at the heart of the game, which is a shame. Surrounding this broken FPS is a well told Warhammer tale, but it is simply not worth the aggravation to revisit.

IT'S QUIET Originally played on PS2, replayed it a few years ago. It's an incredibly poorly QA tested game. IIRC one of the QA testers said they spent much of their time testing the multiplayer portion of the game. As such, the campaign is buggy to a fault. Sound: Sound design is 95% garbage. SFX are unpleasing to the ear. This is from digital distortion. Result of poor handling of audio files and compression. It's really not the kind of distortion you want to subject your poor ears to. Rarely, some things sound "faithful" to 40K Lore (Tau Railgun sounds nice). Voice scripting is hilariously buggy, hence the title of this review! Pre-rendered cutscenes have great 40k voices (Sean Pertwee). Atmosphere: Good. Environments look the part of the universe. Very convincing in some ways. Bolters sound and perform as they should etc. Lack of music adds to "creepy" feeling. However, unengaging, unimaginative story. Pre-rendered cutscenes are great, others are boring. Gameplay: One of the worst FPS's I've ever played. Aiming is buggy with/without auto-aim. The "feel" of shooting is awful. Your character is unresponsive in an unintended way. Certain enemies feel "cheap" whilst others are colossal bullet sponges, notable when forced to use limited equipment. 'Nades are satisfying if you score direct hits. End game weapons mitigate some issues. Overall, combat is a frustrating experience. Level design at best is perfunctory, at worse the levels make you want to stop playing. Some maps are confusing and maze like with no visual landmarks/clues. Health packs given way too often. Some levels environments are very cool. Graphics: For the time, they were pretty cool. Now? It's dated. Some fire FX look cool and trench missions are evocative. Play if: you are in love with the Warhammer 40K universe. I played through this game a few times because I was so enamoured with the - few - visual setpieces in this game. If you're not a 40K fan this is a waste of money.

I really wanted to enjoy my time with 40k Fire Warrior but there really isn't a whole lot to write home about here. I'm not sure I will even finish the game. The level design is pretty straight forward and bland (outside of a secret objective each mission that the game doesn't tell you about), which would be fine if the gunplay was good. The gunplay is not good. Guns actively feel like they are fighting against you. The Pulse Rifle, Pulse Carbine, and Autogun all feel like spray and pray weapons. Accuracy is not a thing with these weapons. Weapons that seem like they should really pack a punch (Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Plasma Gun) lack any real good feedback or effect that makes them feel like powerful tools. Most weapons have a secondary fire that might make them a little stronger or accurate, but it doesn't help to make most weapons feel better. Grenades can be your best friend but they feel hit and miss. Game balance feels all over the place. Some mobs of enemies will just shred you and force you to restart from your last checkpoint. Other times it just feels like mobs are just paper and you blow through them quite easily. Most enemies feel spongy most of the time and I'm not sure if that is because the weapons feel meh or if the enemies are actual sponges. Enemy AI can be on point and take cover or just stand in front of you and tank damage. The audio in Fire Warrior gets repetitive real fast. You will hear the same "pew pews" for most missions. Not much to say here. I did enjoy the terrible voice acting. Aiming in the game is rough. It may have felt better back in the day, but it feels sluggish and with the help of the weapons accuracy being low, combat just sucks. Now, you can turn on the auto aim feature which did help me a little bit, but it didn't save this lackluster experience for me. Maybe on sale this might be worth it for you but there are much better games that you can spend your money on.