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Where Starship Troopers meets Full Metal Jacket!

And now, something completely different...

This time I will not review and rpg. Nope.
This time I review a shoot'em up. Yes, because Wartools is a sort of story driven shooter in which you play a super soldier, Bravo.
He is a genetically augmented hybrid between an alien and a human created in laboratory to defend Earth from an alien invasion. And the game is some sort of linear story with shooting sections and other minigames, but let's start...


Ok, but somehow I suppose things will go from bad to worse...

What is this about?
Ok, the premise is that this game is made by Red-Cube, maker of some popular (for example Grimorum) and less populars (like Gods of Ashes, a game that was sadly untranslated but looks great to me!) games.
This game, like the others, makes use of the "taller charsets" and of the edited Xenogears facesets I already saw in Grimorum. This is a correct choice, as they don't clash much with the dramatic atmosphere that would be a bit ruined by the chibi-er sprites.
Oh and like Grimorum, there's plenty of pixellated violence, nothing that can probably traumatize anyone, anyway even when I would expect the screen to fade out in black (especially during the suicide of a particularly important character), instead we see every single death in all its gory detail. It's a choice that perfectly rapresent the futility of war and violence, and the pain of those that tries to escape the carnage, without succeeding.

Ok, from what I've said you can expect a dark and grim story, and well, you will have it! But what about the gameplay? Wartools is for the most part a shooter in which you have to kill the opposition, remembering to reload and to find a safe place to rest, to recharge the energy (that refills automatically after a while).
It's a simple system, you shoot towards the direction you are facing (and you can lock your character in a specific direction, so that you can strafe left or right while shooting). I like the fact that you can hit (but also be hit!) those enemies that are on different height levels, and not every obstacle with protect you from enemy bullets: standing behind a table won't save you and your enemies from the deadly bullets. I appreciated this little details.

But that's not all! No, the game would be really boring. Besides the dialogues, that contribuites to the story, you have some diversions or minigames: a section in which you have to avoid enemy fire to destroy some alien bunkers, a first person shooting gallery, a puzzle in which you have to reassemble the disassembled rifle, and an interrogation in which you have to cleverly answer to some questions that can cost your life.

The game is quite old and not very long so don't expect much, anyway it's clearly well done: both music and mapping are surely of a good quality, graphics is nice and the idea od a shooter is not bad at all. But is everything good?


War, war never changes...

Any problem?
Well the main problem I found is that when your energy is depleted but you are still alive... well it does not recharge! I do not know if this is a bug or if it was done on purpouse but I found this to be annoying: better reload (you can save everyhere, so, why not!) and try again to avoid being hit too many times.

I also thing that the time during the "assemble the rifle" part is a bit short, and I did not like the choice to use a green/brown/red hue filter: I know that this was done to replicate the visor of the soldiers and to improve the atmosphere, but I think that's a shame that this did not let me appreciate fully the details of the maps.

About shooting... as I said in my Grimorum review, Rmk2003 is not especially suited for combat. But here there is another problem as opponents are less aggressive, but far more durable than in the other game, especially when you have to fight stronger opponents like the few bosses of the game. It's in fact easier standing in front of the enemy and shoot him until he dies, most times he will simply walk around and will forget to attack, instead from distance enemies are quite dangerous.
Hmmmm I guess that if the opponents would have been (just a bit) weaker and (just) more aggressive the game would have been almost perfect (like Grimorum with unlimited bullets, but with the need to reload, that's it!).

There are some spelling errors ("carful", "coprs"), but not too many.

Than there is the plot that isn't bad at all, maybe a bit too predictable. But that's a minor issue, really, since it's surely better than the usual boring "last space marine survivor against the alien army"!

Final Thoughs
Wartools in my opinion is a successful experiment. While I preferred a lot Grimorum for the story and the visuals, I also liked Wartools gameplay, and I played it from the start to the end. This is a nice diversion from bigger games, not too hard, and not too long, different from most other rpgmaker games (well maybe except for Esoterica, the shooting parts are quite similar).
So what? 3.5 for me, a quite good experience!

Posts

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Thanks for the review dude.
It's old indeed. This is a more stable version from I think 2013. The original is from 2009. Far back when I started to get more familiar with the rm2k3 and it's functions. I had quite some ideas and experimented a lot these days.

Back in the day people tended to overlook it's problems due to the emotional story. Actually it earned a lot of praise (at least in Germany lol).

Looking back, I should a have reworked not only it's gunplay but also it's progression. More missions in the field while having smaller story segments as flashbacks in between.

I've been thinking about translating Gods of Ashes a lot. Let's see what time brings...
author=Red-Cube
Thanks for the review dude.
It's old indeed. This is a more stable version from I think 2013. The original is from 2009. Far back when I started to get more familiar with the rm2k3 and it's functions. I had quite some ideas and experimented a lot these days.


It worked well I think, the gameplay was even better than Grimorum (that instead in my opinion had a better story and graphics), and it was a clever idea. Nice.

author=Red-Cube
I've been thinking about translating Gods of Ashes a lot. Let's see what time brings...


Well, I must say that from what I have seen Gods of Ashes looks exceptional. The setting and the gameplay seem exactly what I've been looking for... concerning the stoyy, unfortunately I cannot say (and understand) anything! :)
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