"The Warriors is a well-executed homage to the titular movie - and an engaging beat-em'-up to boot."

Rockstar Games is a videogame publisher that is not afraid to take risks. The entire previous console generation was seemingly a parade of high-controversy, high-risk titles developed and released by the business, many of which most other publishing companies likely wouldn't have touched. From the headline-grabbing Grand Theft Auto titles to the downright sadistic Manhunt, Rockstar has consistently demonstrated that they are willing to stick their necks out to bring dicey IPs onto the videogame market.

The Warriors is yet another Rockstar-published game with a pedigree that would make many CEOs cringe. Based on a cult classic film license, The Warriors is a tale of gang warfare as seen through a comic book-style prism in 1979 New York City. Yes, that's right: the game is based on a twenty-five year old movie. This factor alone would be enough for most publishers to can the game early in its development – even without any consideration to the extremely mature themes presented as a part of the license. Luckily, though, Rockstar forged ahead with their plans to distribute the game, and now gamers have a chance to play perhaps the most solid beat-em'-up to be released in the past several years.


Visuals:

Before you play any game, the first impression it makes on you stems from its visuals. For better or worse, seeing is believing, and there are many players out there who are all too willing to dismiss or accept a game based solely on the way it looks. The Warriors could potentially fall into the former category; to be frank, is not a particularly good looking game, and that lack of polish may end up scaring some players off.

The most apparent problem with the game's graphics is that they are extremely low-res. Environmental textures are fuzzy, character skins look washed-out, and the entire game overall just feels like it's being rendered at about half of the PS2's capacity. It's likely that the developers wanted the game to feel dark and dingy – the movie that it's based on captured that feel fairly well, too – but in the process of synthesizing that look, the game just turned out ugly. There's some nice graffiti art present in the game world, but it can't cover up everything.

To its credit, the game does run extremely smoothly, with slowdown practically nonexistent. Most of the character models are very blocky and light on detail, but you can't really tell when you see them in action, given how many bodies there are on screen at once. All of the gameplay animation is top-notch as well, which is a good thing, given how many different attacks are available to the player; you'll also notice that every combatant's body visibly gains bruises and cuts as they take punishment, which is a nice touch. It's only when you see the characters up close, such as during cutscenes or pauses in the action, that it becomes all too obvious just how bad the basic graphics look.

On the whole, it's quite clear that technical merits won out over aesthetic ones when building The Warriors, as the game looks merely good in motion, and thoroughly unattractive the rest of the time.

Score: 5/10


Sound:

In stark contrast to the production value of the graphics, The Warriors showcases an audio arrangement of extremely high quality. Of course, it helps that the developers had access to many of the assets and characters from the movie.

As you're playing, one of the main things you'll notice about the fighting you'll engage in is how chaotic it sounds. One would expect a full-on brawl between a dozen gang members to be a rather loud affair, and it definitely comes across as such here throughout the course of gameplay. You'll regularly hear gang members screaming at each other, bottles and other weapons breaking against objects (or people), bodies slamming into and shattering pieces of the environment, and so forth. It all conflates together to add a great level of immersion to the proceedings.

The gang member voiceovers you'll hear all sound extremely accurate to the source material, thanks to the fact that many of the original actors lent their voices to this game adaptation. They all sound a bit more mature now – after all, 25 years will do that to you – but their performances are all very appropriate to the characters, which is to say that the parts were fairly cheesy to begin with. One exceptionally striking aspect of the voice acting is the back-and-forth banter that occurs between members of your crew as you play; although it repeats a bit, most of this comes across as genuinely organic, and it adds even further to the feel of being a part of this gang. Most of the other performances are as good as your Warriors' as well.

Being based on a film from the culture-saturated 70s, naturally this game includes some musical tracks from the time period. These songs represent a fairly wide swath of genres, and each disparate track's appearance coincides nicely with the setting that utilizes it. There's little music during the course of the actual gameplay, but the din of battle is more than suitable here.

From top to bottom, The Warriors features an outstanding acoustic score that compliments the action in and out of gameplay perfectly.

Score: 10/10


Gameplay:

When developing The Warriors, Rockstar Toronto very obviously wasn't aiming to do anything revolutionary with the gameplay. Instead, they took many of the better aspects of brawlers past, combined them with a strong gang-command system, and added in a handful of stealthy sections, to create one of the best-realized translations of the beat-em'-up genre in recent memory.

And what is a good beat-em'up without a solid fighting system? Not any good at all. Thankfully, the combat here is both easy to learn and difficult to perfect, putting a great number of options at your hands as you ‘bop' your way through the course of the game. You're given a basic weak and strong attack to start out with, as well as several combos of the two. In addition, you're able to grapple your foes, at which point a whole new set of moves becomes available for use. Throw in an array of weaponry and a special ‘rage' mode that leaves you temporarily invincible and you've got the gist of the fighting system.

The heft of your time in combat will be spent using some amalgamation of the basic attacks and grapples as you waste groups of up to a dozen enemies at a time. Skillful players will find that utilizing the more complex combos and grapple moves results in rewards of higher scores on each level, as well as immediate boosts to your rage meter. More importantly, though, those difficult attacks look and feel absolutely brutal (in a game with no shortage of violence, mind you), so you'll always be looking for ways to sneak them in as you battle. In general, the system feels very well balanced between the fundamental and complex moves, although it can devolve a bit into button-mashing during more hectic fights, when it becomes a hassle to grab and hold an enemy.

Luckily, when the fighting starts to get a bit crowded, you'll typically have a large party around to back you up. As you move through the course of the storyline, you'll control many of the different characters who make up the Warriors gang. The common thread between each of these fighters is that you're always accompanied by at least one (and up to six) other members, who you're always in command of. At a touch of the R2 button, you can easily order your posse to perform a number of actions, ranging from destroying everything in sight to splitting up to avoid heat.

By and large, the command system works great. The control it affords you on the fly over your gang's actions comes in quite handy, as you'll often find yourself in situations where you'll strongly desire a helping hand. Your team is mostly comprised of very capable fighters, and they come across as genuinely helpful during just about every confrontation. In fact, the game manages to convey a sense of leading a group of veteran fighters into battle superbly, which is probably the title's most remarkable feat. It helps that, aside from an occasional quirk, the A.I. for your buddies is excellent. Naturally, your opponents have access to the same smarts, so you'll continuously find yourself matching move for move with individual fighters from the different gangs around New York. The occasional police presence also works to keep you on your toes, as a group of cops can very easily take you down.

That is, if the cops can find you. The Warriors incorporates some rudimentary stealth gameplay into its missions, complete with shadowy corners to hide in and covert instant-knockout attacks. This facet of the gameplay is the least fleshed-out by far, and the game never actually requires you to hide to complete your objectives. While it can feel rather contrived to sit in a corner while an enemy paces at the edge of the shadow, looking for you but never walking into the darkness to find you, it's still a nice touch to be able to hide if you're in need of a breather. You likely won't make much use of it as you play, although it's worth mentioning that the stealth kills feel very rewarding to land.

Most of the missions involve moving from one end of a level to another, accomplishing goals along the way. These goals are fairly commonplace, normally involving some manner of robbery or assault against a specific target. You'll also get to perform opportunistic goals that pop up as you progress through each mission, such as covering gang tags with your own colors. In general, all of the stages are designed intelligently, and are broken up into appropriate chunks to diminish the likelihood of repeated playthroughs. The game is fairly short, clocking in at ten to twelve hours, so there isn't much of a chance to run out of new things to do along the way; also, while it's not the toughest game in the world, the challenge level feels about right on Normal, with Easy and Hard being suitable for neophyte and hardcore fans, respectively.

The only real negative about the mission layout is the way that bosses are handled. There are plenty of gangs vying for control of this strange version of New York, and many of them feature a charismatic leader who you'll end up going toe-to-toe with. None of these fights are ever as climactic as they should be, though. Sometimes, you'll face a gang leader in the middle of a posse of his cohorts, so that you won't really be able to attack him one-on-one. Other times, you'll be stuck fighting a boss from a distance, using the game's clumsy throwing mechanics to chuck bottles or bricks at your target until he falls. Only occasionally will you actually get a chance to go head-to-head with a boss, and from there it's usually just a matter of outlasting him. It would have been nice to see a bit more originality to these encounters, although to be honest they comprise only a small percentage of the gameplay.

The Warriors makes excellent use of a strong group fighting system and a well-built combat engine to present a gameplay experience that any fan of brawlers past or present will enjoy.

Score: 8/10


Story:

Being a licensed game, The Warriors features a built-in storyline that has already proven appealing to a fairly large audience since its initial film release. Despite this, Rockstar did not rest on the laurels of the prepackaged storyline, instead choosing to significantly flesh out the backstory of the Warriors' universe through the course of this game.

As a matter of fact, only about a quarter of the game is actually set during the events of the movie. The campaign proper begins almost three months before that infamous meeting of New York's gangs, and it encompasses both the time period leading up to the movie as well as several flashbacks to the origins of the Warriors crew. Anyone with an appreciation of the film will find plenty to enjoy in learning the backgrounds of the various characters that make up the Warriors, while players who have never been exposed to the source material are likely to find it engaging enough to seek out a copy.

The Warriors has a very strong plot to support its alluring gameplay, due as much to the strength of the property it's licensed from as to the efforts made by the game developers to expand on that world.

Score: 10/10


Features/Modes:

Like most games of its kind, The Warriors offers three difficulty settings to players from the get-go. Completing the game on the highest one, or achieving high scores and completing all of your objectives during the game's 20+ levels, unlocks some goodies for use in the game's Rumble mode, which is essentially a fighting game based on the gameplay engine from the storyline campaign. Rumble mode can be a somewhat fun diversion, but it's nothing that will attract your attention for long after you've completed the game – especially with no online support whatsoever.

What may keep you playing a little while longer is the inclusion of a cooperative play mode. At any time, a second player can join up with you to tag-team your way through any and all of the storyline missions. Utilizing cooperative play just feels like experiencing the game the way it was meant to be played, providing you a consistent partner to engage in wanton acts of violence and destruction with. The screen positioning can be a bit harsh (the camera shows both players on one screen when you're close to each other, but jarringly breaks off into halves when you separate), but this is a relatively minor complaint.

Perhaps the coolest bonus available is a full-fledged 2D-style game called Armies of the Night. Basically, it's a Double Dragon clone featuring the gangs from The Warriors, and it plays like a flattened version of the regular game. It's fairly long, and it maintains its fun all the way through, thanks to all of those cool squads you'll be facing. The game is completely compatible with cooperative play as well, which makes it even cooler.

Cooperative play is clearly the best way to get your money's worth out of The Warriors, although you'll definitely want to check out Armies of the Night.

Score: 8/10


Total Score:

It takes a lot of guts to publish a game based on a twenty-five-year-old movie license. Rockstar Games, of course, are known for being a publisher with no shortage of intestinal fortitude – they knowingly took that chance in developing and publishing The Warriors, and then gambled even further by allowing the gameplay to move in the direction of an oft-overlooked genre. While it's not the most polished or innovative title to ever hit the market, that risk feels like it ultimately did pan out, as The Warriors is one of the most franticly fun beat-em'-ups to come out in the last ten years.

If you're a fan of story-driven games with solid fighting gameplay mechanics, then The Warriors is a good bet for purchase. If you've seen and enjoyed the film that The Warriors is based on, then you should definitely pick this game up to see how well that world is filled out by the events in this game. Finally, if you're a fan of action games in general, and you can handle some decidedly mature content, then you should give The Warriors a rental to see if it's something you would enjoy.

Score: 8/10 (not an average)


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Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/03/07

Game Release: The Warriors (US, 10/17/05)