Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior Preview

At a recent THQ press event in London, we got to try out the latest version of Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior for the PlayStation 2. The game, which is currently in development at Kuju Entertainment and is also scheduled for release on the PC, is a first-person shooter inspired by Games Workshop's futuristic tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. In the single-player campaign, you play as a young Tau warrior who, along with a small group of allies, is doing battle with the forces of the Imperium. The early version of the game we were able to play featured six of the game's 21 single-player levels taken from various stages of the campaign.

Your Tau allies aren't always as helpful as they might be.

After completing the game's basic training level, which does a good job of familiarizing you with the controls and some of the different weapons you'll be using in the early stages of the game, we proceeded to the game's first campaign mission. After a brief cutscene set in the back of a Tau dropship, we found ourselves disembarking into an area where entrenched Imperial forces were proving to be troublesome for the Tau forces already on the ground. Initially we were armed only with a single Tau weapon and a sword, but just like in Halo--a game Fire Warrior seems to borrow more than a few ideas from--you can pick up the weapons of both fallen comrades and enemies. Of course, you can't carry more than two weapons (in addition to the sword and any grenades you find) at any one time, but it wasn't long before we were able to switch between our two weapons as ammo supplies and combat situations dictated. It was occasionally frustrating that we were unable to substitute our original Tau weapon for more-powerful ones that we found as we progressed. Apparently, one of your two weapons will always be a Tau weapon, and this weapon will automatically be substituted with more-powerful Tau weapons as you progress through the game. It all sounds great in theory, but since on more than one occasion we found ourselves without any ammo for our Tau weapon, we had to resort to using it only when no second weapon was available.

With the exception of the Kuju-designed Tau rail rifle (which Games Workshop has now incorporated into Warhammer 40,000, along with a Tau dropship that was designed specifically for Fire Warrior), all the weapons in the game already exist in that sci-fi universe, and as such more closely resemble modern-day weapons more than they resemble anything you might see in Star Wars or Star Trek. The game has a total of 17 weapons, and one thing that Fire Warrior does extremely well is introduce you to more-powerful weapons gradually as you progress. For example, if you kill an Imperial officer or a space marine on one of the game's earlier levels, there's a good chance that he'll drop a weapon that's far more powerful than anything that his lower-ranked colleagues are armed with. You can, of course, pick it up and put it to good use, but since the weapon in question isn't readily available to the enemy forces, it's unlikely you'll find any extra ammunition for it once it's empty. This method of introducing you to more-powerful weapons early in the game works really well, and it ensures that when such weapons become commonplace later on in the game, you'll already have a pretty good idea of how they work and what they're capable of. The majority of the weapons in Fire Warrior have both primary and secondary fire modes, but for the most part this merely determines the rate of fire.

The PS2 version of Fire Warrior supports up to four players on a single screen.

Also, like in Halo, your personal shield will regenerate whenever you get clear of enemy fire in Fire Warrior. This essentially ensures that no matter how much damage you've sustained, if you can make it past the next wave of enemies, you stand a chance of reaching the next available medical kit. It's a great system, and one that works well in the context of Fire Warrior, although the linear nature of many of the game's levels means that it can occasionally seem a little too easy to backtrack to previously cleared areas to allow your shield to recharge.