I-War

"Painless enough way to kill some time."

I-War is essentially a FPS shooter whereby you pilot a virtual tank in a VR world. Within the game itself you are tasked with roaming levels, destroying enemies and collecting power ups and datapods. The aim being to collect all the datapods within a level to proceed to the next level, nothing here that will tax your brain, all very straightforward roaming, shooting with the odd simple switch related puzzle thrown in. The basic premise of the game is that the cyberspace realm known as the “I-Way” is clogged up with mutated viruses and it's your job to remove these and restore the system back into operation in your virtual tank.

Atari did a fine job of the presentation of this game, there's a decent looking title screen and leave this on for a 30 seconds you'll start seeing some introductory texts, staff rolls demos of the game in action and the like. There's also an option that allows you to view the enemies you'll encounter in the game complete with stats showing their speed, firepower, aggressiveness and such, which is a nice touch. When the game begins you're given the choice of three types of tank, a light tank with is ultra fast but lightly armed and armoured, a medium tank that is average in every department and a heavy tank with is heavily armed and armoured but somewhat slow. Though the game is in FPS you can change the viewpoint via the Jags numerical pad.

Particular mention has to go to the sound track of this game, the rhythmic techno music fits the game well and is composed to a impressively high quality. Sound effects are relatively bland however, and the computer voice that keeps repeating “damage critical” when you're close to death is monotonous to say the least, it's generally best to turn the sound effects off entirely and stick with the music tracks.

Graphics in this game are fully 3D, though 3D isn't exactly the Jags strong point Atari seems to have pulled off a relatively aesthetically pleasing 3D game despite the systems lack of polygon crunching power. The reason for this being everything is done in a very minimalist fashion, low on detail yet colourful, seeing as this game takes place inside a computer I-War can generally get away with this look, realism isn't important inside a virtual world after all. While the 3D graphics of I-War are somewhat crude by today's standards, or even for the standards of the time, they are presented in such a way for them to not be an eyesore, and you can see what everything is supposed to be.

The biggest problem with this game comes down to the unwieldy control of your tank and the fact that this game lacks a strafe capability, when engaging an opponent you must just come to a stand still and trade off shots until either you or your opponents explode. Other than that it's generally a case of negotiating the levels the best of your ability, hitting the right switches and collecting all the power-ups and you find on the way. Power-ups include items such additional rocket launchers, upgraded lasers and a radar system, showing the proximity of nearby enemies and such. Once you collect all the necessary datapods the gateway to the next level located at the start point is opened to you. On completing the level you are presented with a bonus stage where by you fly down a tunnel collecting modules on the way, collect 75% of the modules in the tunnel and you are awarded a bonus life. Nothing all that exciting but it breaks the monotony seeing as all levels look and play near enough the same, just with a different layout. Some of the levels do have the odd interesting feature such as bouncing pads that bounce you up into the air, blue blocks with huge spikes that destroy your tank on contact and force-fields that deactivate allowing passage for only a brief moment. Being able to save your game between levels is a welcome feature as the game does get challenging in later levels, and it takes a while to play through.

Overall I-War is a well made game for it's time, you can see the developers took time to make the game look and sound as good as it could be. It's a good enough game to spend a few minutes on now and then, but boredom is always around the next corner. This is however, in part thanks to it's excellent sound track and generally slow gameplay an excellent chill out game. I-War won't be everyone's cup of tea but it's still a game that's well worth a go if you own a Jag. Generally however I'd only recommend I-War to those who collect games such as this. As an early 3D game and one of the last few games Atari (as the original company) would ever make this is an interesting piece of video game history.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/06