[PC] - Iron Grip: Warlord Review

[pwnophobia]

Title: Iron Grip: Warlord
Platform: PC
Platform Reviewed: PC
Developer: Isotx (http://www.isotx.com/)
Publisher: Isotx (http://www.isotx.com/)
MSRP: $9.99

Iron Grip: Warlord Review

Writer: Ben 'kragg' Daniels

Iron Grip: puts a slightly different spin on the traditional "horde mode" by meshing the standard "shoot every living thing" play mechanic with simplified RTS elements. The object of the game is to repel waves of incoming enemy forces who attempt to destroy your HQ while simultaneously hunting down enemy "Officers". Everytime you kill an officer, the enemy morale meter drops. Kill enough officers to reduce morale to zero, and a winner is you! Since you will be always outnumbered and often outgunned by your AI opponents (they get tanks and giant steam-powered spider walkers which you, sadly, do not) you and up to 7 other players (or some fairly smart AI bots) will need to reinforce the positions around your stronghold(s) to defend them. You can quickly switch between the first person and overhead RTS views to lay down machine gun turrets to mow down waves of infantry, or AT turrets to fight back against incoming vehicles. All the installations can be upgraded using the points you accrue during the round by killing enemies and collecting valuable spoils hidden about the map. You can also setup supply points to restore health and ammo at key areas and there are a host of fun IEDs such as fuel bombs, trip wire bombs, land mines, and camouflaged poison tanks that can be scattered about the streets to create more chaos for the incoming horde. One gripe is that the placement options for turrets and certain bombs is limited to areas like streets, which can be frustrating when you KNOW that being able to place the item just a bit further would help you fortify a choke point on the map.

http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/irongrip-w1.jpg

The controls are not terrible, but feel dated as well. Due to engine limitations you basically feel like you are playing Quake. You can jump and duck, and run around inhumanly fast, especially after purchasing an adrenaline upgrade for your character, but at times you feel very disconnected from the environment, and there were a few instances of clipping into objects and walls during play. I felt one really positive element was the use of heavier weapons requires you to slow down and set them up. For instance, you can't shoot a tank buster from the hip. You have to shoulder it up, and aim through the face shield before firing. Likewise, the heavy machine requires you to stop, crouch, and setup the gun on it's tripod before firing. The setup time adds some realism and balance to the games most powerful weapons, and also makes using them more satisfying as well. One of my favorite experiences was when I was hunkered down at the end of a main road with pwnophobia and some other random player, and setup my heavy machine gun partially covered by two heavy turret nests. I opened fire and absolutely shredded a platoon of about 60 soldiers marching forward in the alley. It's moments like that where the mechanics of this game really shine through.

http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/irongrip-w3.jpg

While Warlord isn't going to win any awards for cutting edge graphics, as it was released back in 2008 and developed on the "Id Tech 3" Engine. However, the "steam punk" art style really shines through and is a refreshing change from the typical science fiction and world war-era settings that glut the genre. In the IG universe, soldiers wear armor that visually falls somewhere between a Spanish Conquistador and power armor from Fallout.

Streets are dirt and cobblestone, and the architecture ranges anywhere from late Roman to Gothic eastern European structures. Everything from the maps to the weapon models feels appropriately gritty, with plenty of rotting wood and rusted iron. The musical score was appropriately epic, and set the tone for each battle, with enough variety to keep it from feeling overly repetitive. The sound effects varied in quality; while most of the weapon and explosion effects carried plenty of bass and satisfied, I felt like the voices were sub par. I also experienced more than a few audio glitches while playing with Pwnophobia over the world wide web. However, I'm not sure if this was due to the game or perhaps that it was running in tandem with Skype in the background for our voice chat.

http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/irongrip-w4.jpg

My final verdict when it came to Warlord was that it is a good effort with some excellent ideas, however the execution left something to be desired. Every round began to play out the same after a while, and that led to a lack of desire to go replay the game. The moments of fun just couldn't outweigh the growing feeling of tedium. One thing that I believe could solve this, and bring the game forward leaps and bounds is the inclusion of a versus mode, with the inclusion of AI bots. One team is the rebel force, while the other controls the enemy officers and is supplemented by the confederate army. I was telling Pwnophobia this could provide an experience similar to Left4Dead versus mode, but capitalize on the added RTS elements, which I think could make for something really special and add a lot of replay value. (If you're reading this Isotx, this idea is my gift to you. Run with it!) Again, I gave an extra half eye because I thought this was an ambitious project for a small team. However, much like Communism, Iron Grip: Warlord is full of lofty ideas that work on paper, but fall short when it comes time to actually make them operate in reality.

Score: 3 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/3.gif

[pwnophobia]

Writer: Adam 'pwnophobia' Cogswell


Mixing an RTS and an FPS is a great idea: Allow the player to interact with the world in a first person view point while also being switch on the fly into an overhead view to drop buildings and defensive structures. IG Warlord takes the idea of a "horde mode", or seemingly endless waves of bad guys, and allows you to build turrets and towers to stop the incoming forces. When you're not busy building towers you're in first person view mowing down the enemy with your rifle. The problem is this game does only part of it correctly, with other basic commands being left to the way side.

http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/irongrip-w5.jpg

Every game of IG Warlord plays out nearly identically: Spawn in first person mode, build a few structures at choke points and defend your stronghold(s). About fifteen seconds after you spawn, waves of Confederates pour onto the map from pre-determined locations and head toward the nearest stronghold. The Confederate armies are made up of four different types of bad guys: You've got the machine gunners, the flame throwers, the rocket launchers and the mechanized tanks. Also accompanying any of the small armies is an Officer, and he is the key to victory. I should stop and tell you that each of the maps in the game are just about fully open, you can run through buildings, up stairs and down through catacombs to make it from one side of the map to the other. Now with that being I can tell you why having this Officer is a great and terrible idea. At any point during the course of the game some of the soldiers, including the Officer, will break off into one of the buildings and hide. If you don't kill an Officer, hordes of bad guys will keep coming after you. You can see where the Officer is on the mini map however the map is VERY small with no zoom function, making it impossible to pin point the exact location of any unit. Because the mini map is so small it's really hard to use it for anything other than knowing where your turrets are set up at, or how far away you are from a stronghold. Once you make your way through the maze of buildings and find the Officer, that round is over and another Officer will spawn during the next wave of guys.

Moving on to the turrets and the RTS elements, they leave a lot to be desired. I never quite understood why when you shot your gun, zipped out into RTS to build a tower, and back down why you wouldn't have reloaded your gun during that time. That's right, as soon as you go out to the RTS view you can only move your character around the map. So if you just shot, wanted to quickly setup a defense, and take another shot in between placing buildings you won't be able to. When you're in RTS mode a small menu appears in the lower right hand corner with a number of options to choose from, and your build-able area only includes what you can currently see on the screen. Now imagine trying to play Starcraft while only being able to click on the options to place buildings, multi-tasking upgrades and building units, it'd be almost impossible! That is how the menu is setup in IG Warlord, absolutely no hot keys. When you get over the initial shock of no hot keys for a building, you'll click and try to place one to quickly find a familiar red outline for your object....that doesn't ever seem to disappear. Trying to find a place to place any building on the map seems totally random and there are no indicators other than the red/green highlight on the unit as to where you can place it. This makes it extremely difficult to setup proper blockades or paths for the units to run through, which always brought Kragg and I back to fortifying the strongholds rather than meeting the enemy head on.

http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/irongrip-w6.jpg

Killing enemies gives you power, the amount of power you receive is based on the type of enemy you've killed. Power is used to upgrade, create buildings, and purchase weapons for your character. Once you've zoomed back into FPS mode you can bring up a menu to buy the weapons, this is a real time menu and as soon as you purchase something you'll have it in your inventory. There is really no point in buying any weapon other than a machine gun because the melee weapons and pistols are severely under powered, the one shot flint-lock rifle is too slow to reload and before you could sneak up on an enemy and kill them you're more than likely already dead. On a positive note, each gun has some sort of alternate fire. For example the flame thrower allows you to spill some of your fuel on the ground and use the primary trigger to ignite it which allows you to setup walls of fire in the path of enemies gaining you LOTS of power to be used toward upgrading.

Graphically the game isn't impressive, it looks like they took the Quake 3 engine and tried to add A LOT of detail to units and buildings. When you walk into a building you may notice that the walls are all textured, chalices are gem encrusted and floors are tiled. The problem is the engine doesn't render well and instead of being blown out of the water you'll quickly glance over the scenery and move on. Clumps of enemies are partially distinguishable from each other but ultimately blend together because of the small variety in shades of grey. If you make it near an enemy you'll likely notice that their limbs don't move, instead they'll put out one leg and scoot across the screen. Bullets from guns are small streaks of white and the flame throwers burst out in small yellow and blue bubbles. There was some time put into designing different models for yourself and your partners but they are hardly noticeable. It is also extremely difficult to tell who is user controlled and who isn't because the only distinguishable difference is a thin line of white around the indicator, which is a triangle, over the characters head.

http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/irongrip-w7.jpg

The entire game has such a great concept, and could have been delivered in such a manner that it would make me want to come back time and time again if they just added little tweaks. Hot keys for RTS mode, being able to reload while zoomed out, showing me where I could and could not place units or even allowing multiplayer games to have it be PvP. Without these little touches it felt like you were fighting the game to have fun, there are too many incredibly frustrating moments of not being able to do what you think you should be able to. With so many other great independent FPS and RTS games available it is incredibly hard to justify playing a game that doesn't incorporate the simplistic parts of each genre couple with the fact that it looks like it is fresh out of 1999.


Score: 2.5 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/25.gif

[pwnophobia]

http://evavhost.com/i/news/irongrip-w2.jpg

[Capt_Thad]

When/why did this stop getting developed as a source mod and moved over to Id Tech 3? I was following it way back when, but I kinda fell out of touch with it.