Game

Preview for Game Fans

The Warriors game is based upon the 1979 cult movie of the same name which follows a gang of nine guys from Coney Island (The Warriors) as they head up to The Bronx for a big meeting. The meeting was called by Cyrus, who is the leader of the biggest gang in the city, as he wants to create a 60,000 strong gang which can overpower the police. Under a truce, nine members from each gang attend the meeting where Cyrus begins his speech of unity. Just as he finishes detailing his plan, he gets shot dead by Luther who is from a gang called The Rogues. In the panic that ensues, Luther frames The Warriors for shooting Cyrus. As the gangs flee back to their home turf, The Warriors soon realise that they need to bop their way back to Coney Island. To make matters worse, the truce has been called off, The Warriors have no weapons and every gang in the city is out looking for them. The movie follows their struggle back home through enemy turf, and shows their encounters with various gangs including the Turnbull AC's, The Orphans, and The Baseball Furies.

Rockstar Games have had the licence to The Warriors for 7 years, and the game has been developed over the last 3. I have now had the chance to go to the office of Rockstar Games in London to take a look for myself firsthand. Before I begin the actual preview, I shall say that this was an early build of the game which wasn't finished, and that some of the features / music / voices / will change by the time of the final release.

Rembrandt’s Initiation

First of all I was treated to a couple of the game’s tutorials which teach you how to play the game. For this, you play as Rembrandt who is not yet a member of The Warriors, and so the tutorial is based upon his initiation into the gang. Taking control of Rembrandt, you learn how to move, look around, kick, throw punches and some other nifty moves. Once you have totally trashed the first guy by way of a few punches and kicks, a few Warriors jump into the arena and you must successfully fight them off to pass the initiation test. Snap attacks let you lash out in any direction, which is useful when you are surrounded by guys. Another thing the game lets you do is build up your "Rage" which gradually accrues as you lay down moves. Once the rage bar is filled you can take out your enemies in unique attacks and special moves for a short period of time. A red mist descends across the screen whilst this happens to really capture the feeling of a rage attack. Rembrandt appeared to be much faster and was doing some nice swinging kicks. Each Warrior will have their own unique fighting style, so for example the character Swan will use his legs a lot more than Ajax who is heavy muscle, and uses his arms a lot more. As you can expect, this game is ultra-violent and you can expect the language to match.

Getting Flash With Your Cash

Following the tutorial, Rembrandt earns his colours and becomes a Warrior. The game subsequently walks you through how to vault over fences, jump across roofs, and smashing through old fences. On our travels we came across some tramps / hobos, which you can bribe for information, or simply beat up. It is unclear how much of a role they will play in the finished game. By this point, our character Rembrandt was pretty beat up which is shown by the in-game graphics whereby people show cuts and bruises over their bodies. To get fixed up, characters need to take Flash, which is a drug that can be purchased from a dealer, stolen from a pharmacy, or picked up where someone has dropped it (and possibly from muggings). If you are going down the purchasing route, you will need to get some money together. Luckily, some of the gang members we decked in earlier dropped a few dollar bills but more was needed. I was shown three ways in which money can be acquired. Rembrandt proceeded to mug some unsuspecting guy by manoeuvring behind and grabbing him. From what I gathered, you have to find the cash about the person using the analogue stick on the gamepad, and keep it in the same place for a certain period of time. This is made more difficult by the gamepad vibrating. To get some more cash, Rembrandt raided a local shop. In this instance he smashed through the window and took some items that were on a shelf. Another way to get a bit of money is to steal car radios. After smashing through the window of a car, you rotate the analogue stick on the gamepad in a motion akin to spinning a screwdriver to remove the screws which looked quite fun. Our radio sold for $15 and gave us enough money for some Flash. Sure enough, after Rembrandt “took” the Flash, all his cuts and bruises were gone. In the early build of the game, you are allowed to carry nine helpings of Flash. A cool feature of the game is that if you accidentally “die”, other members of The Warriors can revive you with Flash. However if everyone else has died, then there’s nobody to help you!

The One And Only

The next treat of the preview was to watch a cut scene of Cyrus’ speech, the shooting, and the chaos afterwards. This closely followed what happened in the movie. The sounds used was taken straight from the movie, but it is still to be seen (or heard) whether that will be the case with the final game, though personally I think it worked very well. The visuals of the cut scene were excellent (which you can indeed see in the game’s trailer).

Sounds Great

If you’ve seen the game trailer, then you’ll hear an awesome remix of the Baseball Furies Chase track by Barry de Vorzon, which is used in the movie. In addition, the background music of the game contained "synthed-up" versions of The Warriors Theme and other ambient tracks which I guess you could say were inspired by music from The Warriors, and were fantastic in setting the atmosphere. It is still unclear whether the original soundtrack will appear in the final game, though the release I saw had original tracks strewn through it. It is still to be finalised whether any of the actors from the movie will be lending their voices to the game.

Who Named You Leader?

The first two thirds of the game are set in the 6 months leading up to the events of the movie (which makes up the final third), allowing you to play as each of The Warriors. I was told that you will play as each of The Warriors through the missions, though you can’t choose which one. I do hope that you can go into a free roam mode where you can pick your Warrior, but this game is largely mission based. In one mission we played as the leader of The Warriors; Cleon, and we had to track down various members of the gang across Coney Island. Navigation is assisted by a small map in the bottom right of the screen which has coloured dots representing members of your gang, other gangs, and the police. We soon found a couple of Warriors had been handcuffed by the police and left on the ground so we quickly released them before the cops came back. Next we found another Warrior hidden in the shadows, but surrounded by cops. To let him escape, a bottle was thrown (for this a trajectory of the bottle came up, similar to what you might find in a golf game), which caused the cops to scupper. To get back at the cops, we issued a war chief command. The character you control is the war chief, and you can control your gang like in a squad based game. Some of the commands were similar to follow, halt, cover me, attack and raid. The command we issued here caused all of The Warriors to trash the cop car.

It’s The Turnbull AC's

With our freshly grouped Warriors, what a better thing to do than go over to Gun Hill and beat up some members of the Turnbull A.C.'s. They were seen riding by on their bus whilst we hid in the shadows. In this tutorial you learn about group fighting, where you can double up with other members of the gang to perform special moves. If you initiate a doubling move, the AI is smart enough to join in and help you out. Sometimes the AI might grab a guy so you can lay some moves into him, which was very cool. One of the striking features of the game, was the quality of the reversals and counter attacks, which were smooth and impressive to watch. One of the Turnbull's was wielding a machete, so it was wise to tackle him first. There were Turnbulls everywhere. Some were having their necks broken, others were having their faces smashed into the ground and another was thrown into a wall. One of the things we learnt in the tutorial with Rembrandt was how to use weapons, so the machete was used to good effect. In the game, you'll be able to pick up pretty much anything that can be used as a weapon from bottles (one Turnbull had a bottle smashed over his face before the shards were used to stab him), to bricks, pipes, bins, planks and baseball bats. I don't think there will be a shortage of weapons!

In another mission, we tried the stealth approach (the map showed up blue to say we were hidden in the shadows) and tried to get past The Turnbull's. Unfortunately they saw us so a few more heads got busted. Another thing that you can do in the game is tag turf, similar to the way in which you tag turf in GTA San Andreas. The difference here is that you spray a giant "W" over other gang tags, which is done by tracing over an outline using the gamepad. By tagging turf I think you will unlock bonus features like new weapons.

What’s On The Menu?

For the mission parts of the game, you start off at your Coney Island HQ which you are free to walk around in, and if you feel like wasting a few heads, you walk up to the Subway map on the wall where you can select a gang territory to invade. By scrolling up and down, you cycle through different enemy territories where different missions can be selected. The main title screen, mission load screens, and the navigation menu used a combination of the original Warriors typeset and also of the appearance of the 1970’s NYC Subway which looked pretty cool and I hope it is retained in the final version. Upon selecting a mission, a title screen appeared which stated the date, time and location, before you were delved into the action. This was a nice touch as I can see it being used to effectively build up the suspense to the final night upon which the movie is based, and also leads me to believe that you will have to unlock the missions as you go along. There appeared to be about ten gang territories along the course of the map.

It’s Gonna Be A Big Item