This year’s Xbox Live Arcade: House Party was kicked off by a quirky little game called Warp. Created by Trapdoor Inc, and published by E.A. the game has a simple play style. Warp is a top down, stealth, puzzler. Yes, sounds strange, but imagine if you took the controls of Smash TV or the first Legend of Zelda and mixed it with the stylish puzzles from the Portal games.
In Warp, you play as Zero, an alien who’s been brought to a secret government facility where they experiment on…you guessed it, ALIENS! During your battery of tests you hear a voice, another alien is communicating with you through telepathy. After talking with your new acquaintance, you realize escape is the only option. This is your primary objective in Warp.
Zero has the ability to warp from place to place, like Nightcrawler from the X-Men. You can warp yourself into barrels, turrets, a ball, or even people. Once inside any of these objects, you can shake yourself to cause whatever you are in to explode. My new hobby is blowing up scientists and security officers. Upon escaping, you will absorb other captured aliens, and gain their powers Mega Man style. Their powers help you to escape. Some of what you will learn from them is how to throw echoes of yourself, swap places with your echo, and launch the objects that you are inside of.
As you explore the underwater lab you will discover grubs which power up your abilities. You can upgrade the speed of his warp, the pace at which he walks, his health, stealth and many other abilities. By making Zero’s footsteps quieter, or his warping quieter, there will be a lesser chance for detection by security guards or anyone else who might want to stop you from leaving. The film canisters unlock concept art in the options menu.
The biggest obstacle to your survival in Warp is the commander of the facility. His goal is to protect the world by making sure you are dead. There are plenty of checkpoints throughout the game to save your progress which is good because you will die, it’s unavoidable, but it’s okay because you usually, at most, only go back a minute or so from where you died. Challenge levels are unlocked as you find them in story mode. You can do them as you find them or from the start menu, but beware, challenge levels are not easy. The leader boards are nice because they let you see how you compare to the rest of the world and your friends. Much like a Metal Gear game, you can let everyone live if you so choose, or kill anyone you come across, the choice is yours. The voice acting is not bad, almost comical at times as to the 50’s nature of the game. The look is nothing to write home about either, but that’s not what makes this game appealing; the appeal is in its puzzles. The variety of puzzles and the way they are delivered makes them addicting because you find yourself wanting to solve them in order to move into the next hall or lab.
Trapdoor has done a great job delivering a puzzle based game to the masses. Kudos to Microsoft for choosing Warp to lead off the house party as it is everything it should be, fun and challenging at the same time. It’s well worth the price of admission. If you don’t believe me then download the demo and give it a whirl.
For fans of: puzzle games, especially the Portal games.
Coming March 13, 2012 to the Playstation Network