

As the game progresses, the enemies become bigger and more powerful, but not much smarter.

As it is, guns and ammo are all over the floors. For example, if you killed a sniper, you'd get the sniper rifle. One weapon, a particularly powerful small missile launcher, is acquired by taking down a minor demon and adds to the value of the weapon. These weapons usually just appear later on in the game, left on the ground. The rail gun is a particular favorite of mine since it rewards accuracy and quickly takes down the biggest enemies the fastest. The range of weapons here is pretty standard fare, featuring everything from machine guns to a rail gun and a missile launcher. While it's good for greener gamers to have the normal and easy modes, it would've been even better to have a hard mode from the beginning and an "insane" mode for hardcore gamers. Unfortunately, the hard difficulty setting is only available after the normal game has been completed. Doing so will unlock bonus features such as a left-handed weapon. After finishing the game, you can skip around to any mission and have another go, trying to beat your own best time and improve your accuracy. Experienced FPS fans will have no problem plowing through the game on the normal difficulty setting. One section has a dozen or so snipers that need to be taken out with a sniper rifle, but it's usually the big guns that get you through. Other than that, it's all about moving forward and killing everything in sight. There are some of the "get the blue key for the door" type of quests as well as opening up lots of gates. The missions here are pretty straightforward. While the story is simple enough to be told in just a couple paragraphs, it's still a nice touch to keep all of the missions consecutive because it helps to keep up the overall momentum of the game. Cinematics and in-game cutscenes drive the story along and seamlessly keep the action going along at a steady clip. Fire Warrior follows one story arc that travels through 20 connected missions. It's not the most complicated of games, but it's fun enough to play through the whole thing. Gameplay Fire Warrior immediately drops the main character, a warrior from the Tau race, into the thick of a battle situation and keeps the pace up through the rest of the game.

Scrapping the idea entirely of a strategy game, developer Kuju has taken the same worlds and characters and created a big and loud FPS that may not break any ground, but provides some good, slamming action for fans of Warhammer 40,000 and first-person shooter fans who want a quick diversion. Battles were held on spaceships and alien planetscapes in the 41st millennium. If the name rings a bell in your subconscious it's because Warhammer 40,000 is a well-established strategy game with boards and figurines that comic store clerks would stay up late painting by hand.
