Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior

A lot of people really love to bash Fire Warrior but it's really not all that bad. Fire Warrior was the game that pretty much got me into Warhammer 40k so i have a little bit of a soft spot for it. I played this game originally on the PS2 back in 2003 when it came out and after currently playing this version on GoG i have to say that the PS2 version is still pretty much the superior platform to enjoy this game on. The PC version has various issues such as wonky aiming, no mouse support inside the game menus, graphical bugs that are not present in the PS2 version and is even missing dialogue in-between mission loading which is simply replaced with a quick flash of text that disappears within 2 seconds due to load speeds on modern computers making it impossible to understand what the hell is going on in the story. Fire Warrior has it's ups and downs but it does portray the 40k lore rather accurately and is even one of the few 40k games to get boltguns correctly. If you can get past the mediocre gameplay and enjoy Warhammer 40k and want to experince 40k in first person then give Fire Warrior a shot but i do highly suggest playing the PS2 version if you really want to play this and can some how get your hands on it. The developers at least redeemed themselves by making a much better game called Battalion Wars for the gamecube so that's good i guess.

The controls are a bit wonky and take some time to get used to. The Audio is weird in that some voice lines come out fine and others are barely audible (like when a character is literally a foot in front of you and you cant here him). Also wish the enemies had more to say (hearing "It's Quiet." when an artillary barrage is coming down is just stupid). The Shooting is fine, but the aiming is a bit weird in that no 2 shots hit in the same spot (i.e. volume of fire over percision). Had to force V-sync, AA, and had to turn my mouse sensitivity almost all the way down to get the game to look good. It's an OK game. A few problems here or there but it's not unenjoyable. Everything at least works how it's supposed to, and there are fun moments throughout.

Is this game good? By today's standards, no, not at all. Was this game good back in the day? Ehhh. This game was my childhood, I can remember sneaking out of my room to play it late at night when my parents were asleep, and I was so happy to see its on GOG Lets start with the good: This game gets the 40k universe right. The art style is perfect. And, it's also nice to see a 40k game not focus on the Spehs Mareens! for the 60th time. The weapons feel correct for a 40k game (bar the Tau weapons which are really short range and inaccurate. My experience playing against Tau in tabletop says otherwise). The voice acting, for the most part, is very good, particularly Severus and Admiral Constantine Now the bad: There is a bug in the game in which all the Imperial guard enemies constantly say "It's quiet". The audio options are very limited, sometimes I couldn't hear what people were saying and there is no way to adjust this. The gameplay is also really janky, but this is because it is a bad PC port. Turning on auto aim helps a lot, but this is a game from the early 2000s. In conclusion, if you are not a 40k fan, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. But, if you are and want to experience a game from a time in which 40k games had a bit more polish than they do now (DOW III *cough*) then go ahead and pick this up. It's only $6, so if you don't like it, its no big deal.

Most reviews make this out to be a failure of a shooter mocking it as a relic of a bygone age of emulating better games. While this game has not aged outstandingly well I'd say a fair number of small issues have been glaringly over nitpicked by the community. The games runs surprisingly decent with few bugs on my end, and while the sound design isnt great it is still quite servicable. The guns are mixed bag but I'd still say the shooting is still satisfying, with the imperial guard being fun to fight against. Is this Halo quality? No, not by a longlas shot. But its better than its made out to be and should be given a fair shake.

I just don't get it. There are so many different directions you could go with a story set in W40k franchise but every single videogame insists on telling the same boring plot about a psyker or an inquisitor who betrays the Space Marines in the middle of an alien invasion and summons the forces of Chaos by the time third act kicks in. Except this time it's even a bigger cop-out because you're not playing as a Space Marine. You're a Fire Warrior of the T'au empire and I guess you could call it an interesting twist, since you're experiencing the invasion from a perspective of a xeno but it ultimately ends up being the same exact plot as any other W40k game. The lack of creativity in the writing is astounding. But anyway, the gameplay itself isn't particularly stellar, and the game is not very polished so its janky nature will become very obvious within the first few minutes of playing. But it never gets really tedious or infuriating and some of the weapons are actually pretty fun to use. I guess it strikes the balance between janky and fun, to the point where it could be called a guilty pleasure especially if you're a fan of the Warhammer 40k universe. It certainly retains some of the elements which are faithful to the source material. Like, for example, when you first pick up a bolter, it's not just some automatic machine gun - in the small hands of a T'au warrior this thing actually looks and feels like a big-ass gun that fires bullets the size of a rocket. When it comes to W40k licensed shooters, nowadays your best choice is the excellent Space Marine from 2011 but if you find yourself really starved for an action game set in this universe, Fire Warrior is also a fairly solid recommendation.