<\/p>\n

The telefrag: a convention of some first-person shooters, particularly older ones, where one thing being teleported into the same place as another causes death.\u00a0 What was at one point largely a way to force players not to stand in a spawn point with a shotgun, or just create the fun and mayhem associated with the prospect of an instant death in a competitive game, has now become a central mechanic in an Xbox Live Arcade title which is decidedly not from the first-person perspective.\u00a0 That title, Warp<\/em><\/a>, sums up the basic content of the game, short range teleportations.\u00a0 \u201cWarps\u201d probably would have been more on the nose, sort of like how one might call Super Meat Boy<\/em> \u201cJumps\u201d, but I can understand why they might not have gone with that title.\u00a0 The word \u201cwarps\u201d causes me to think of the pipes in a warp zone, and that is not what this game is.\u00a0 What it is, is an action puzzle game that some people might like but is hard to recommend that everyone run out and buy it.\u00a0 (Or stay in to buy it as this is a download only game).\u00a0 This particular Microsoft ‘House Party’ is sort of like a soiree at a dry house — some people might have fun, others might even enjoy the lack of lubrication, but many are not going to like dealing with the reality of everything.<\/p>\n

Powered by the Unreal engine, Warp<\/em> tells the story of an alien that gets thrown into captivity in a \u2013 presumably \u2013 secret government base to be poked, prodded and probably dissected after an untimely, but perhaps experimental, death.\u00a0 Government scientists are jerks and they don\u2019t like weird science-fiction creatures, which is odd because everyone I\u2019ve ever met who majored in or liked any field of science was way into science fiction and would much rather chat with or date a Centauri rather than cut her open to count the hearts.\u00a0 Obviously a white lab coat and comically large rubber gloves turns you evil because that is what these scientists have and they have no interest in talking to anyone without the standard number of parts.\u00a0 In any event, players will take control of the alien as he tries to escape the facility.\u00a0 Along the way he is guided in part by an Objective marker on a map, but more contextually by a strange voice that rattles off gibberish, commentary and displays text at the bottom of the screen.\u00a0 There is not a ton of narrative of which to comment further.\u00a0 Escape the base, read some occasionally funny text, develop a dislike for your human captors.<\/p>\n

The little guy is a cute orange blob with arms, legs and floppy antenna that does not look very menacing at all.\u00a0 He sort of looks like a waist-high bottle of orange Fanta soda wearing the Hamburglar\u2019s mask, with six pieces of black rubber hose for appendages and illuminated, yellow eyes.\u00a0 In addition to awkwardly trotting through corridors, he will spout off an almost unending series of gurgling, indecipherable and decidedly alien vocalizations which sound like a horrific amalgamation of a zergling and Wall-E, but cute.\u00a0 It is not as complicated sounding as Simlish, but it is emotive enough to give the wordless creature some personality.\u00a0 The scientists and the soldiers that guard him are, again, jerks.\u00a0 Vanilla soldiers patrol some sections of the base and will shoot any alien on sight whilst saying the typical guard things. (\u201cWhere did he go?\u201d, \u201cI better look over here!\u201d)\u00a0 Overseeing the entire base is a commander that will constantly berate his underlings and describe his desire to kill the alien his base is set up to contain and observe.\u00a0 Some of the voice acting is amusing, but a lot of it can be tuned out.\u00a0 The quality has great swings between filler and gems like, \u201cYou idiots!\u00a0 I told you to build a death trap, not a fucking obstacle course!,\u201d which is about the most spot on thing a commander of an impractically laid out and ridiculously dangerous base could say.\u00a0 An almost constant annoyance is the sound of scientists running around and whimpering after they\u2019ve seen the alien.<\/p>\n

The reason that they are afraid of the warpy, neon glowing blob is that he is a mass murderer.\u00a0 His primary offensive maneuver is to lethally telefrag the opposition.\u00a0 As stated earlier, the primary game mechanic is the warp, used for movement and killing.\u00a0 While it has three dimensional environments, the game is structured as a top down, two dimensional game where jumping is unknown and movement is constrained to directions of up and down, left and right.\u00a0 Should a large pit or closed door be encountered, instead of hopping or, say, opening the door, the little guy will do a short ranged teleport.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In order to help reduce confusion, the distance and approximate destination are indicated by a small cursor that is always in front of the guy, indicating where he will go when the A button is pressed.\u00a0 Some objects can be warped into, including filthy, blood-filled humans.\u00a0 Once an object is warped into, players can either warp out again, stunning a creature if it was alive, or choose to waggle one of the joysticks to have the target swell, show signs of strain, and eventually pop like so many Pookas and Frygars.\u00a0 However, unlike in the brightly colored adventures of Dig Douglas, humans that go pop in Warp<\/em> erupt in an explosion of blood and gore, temporarily covering the organ pill-shaped man with the red, sticky stuff and causing him to leave little scarlet footprints on the floor.\u00a0 It is more amusing and silly than it is horrific, but people popping and a few curse words explain why this seemingly benign game got an M rating from the ESRB.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to redecorating the walls with the plasma and platelets of your captors, Warp<\/em> consists of avoiding guards or blowing up computer nodes to advance through a level.\u00a0 In order to get through a level players will have to dodge laser beams, trick guards and turrets into shooting each other or accidentally blasting active computer nodes which will open gates, and occasionally warp through a wall to dodge gunfire.\u00a0 The warp idea is neat, but at a certain point it becomes questionable as to whether there would be any need to warp if all of the doors in the base were open, as moving on the X and Y axis\u2019 would get the alien most of the places he needs to go.\u00a0 He can hop into objects to make them either explode or hide from enemies, but that is not what I think of when I think of warping.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

About the closest thing to a Nightcrawler moment in the game comes if a guard has the alien sighted and he happens to teleport at just the right moment to avoid the bullet and make the shot go into something else, maybe a person.\u00a0 This does feel great every time it is pulled off, but for every time I avoided death, there was another where the alien got shot and the game reloaded to a checkpoint.\u00a0 Predictably, there are some force fields that cannot be warped through and some effects that cause the lil killer to temporarily lose his ability to mess with space\/time.\u00a0 Things do get fairly interesting once the ability to swap guards and exploding barrels is gained.\u00a0 The puzzles and tactics that result from the ability to swap places with other things is unique and I wish was featured more.\u00a0 Sadly, this ability is not unlocked until after the game\u2019s halfway point.<\/p>\n

The graphics are good but not very interesting beyond the main character.\u00a0 The game clearly tells what kinds of different barrels there are or where there are nets that will stop the momentum of said moving barrels, but it is basically a generic base.\u00a0 Conveyor belts, science labs, warehouses, and dark pipe filled corridors all look nice but it\u2019s nothing that is not featured in dozens of other games.\u00a0 As it is an underwater base and the camera is thirty feet above the floor, occasionally undersea creatures can be seen swimming by.\u00a0 Some of the rooms are filled with a decent amount of detailed charts or office supplies.\u00a0 Nothing amazing; it looks fine.<\/p>\n

The best way to describe this game is \u201ca decently well made title that requires puzzle solving skills and some quick reflexes.\u201d\u00a0 However, the game is not all competence as more often than not frustration will rear its ugly head.\u00a0 Every hazard, of any sort, will kill the main character in one hit.\u00a0 It is very vexing to die, be prompted to \u201cTry Again\u201d by pressing B, watch the game cut to a loading screen for ten seconds, die again five seconds later and not be sure why.\u00a0 Or, as is often the case, you know exactly what you need to do and why, but the game\u2019s clumsy controls will not let you.\u00a0 In a game that requires split-second timing on several warps, the response between button press and warp is delayed such that there will be several try agains.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Also, after a certain point Echos, little holographic\/psionic projections of the alien, can be sent out and controlled to distract guards or extend the warp range, but the alien has to stay still when doing this.\u00a0 When they die or go beyond their limited range the controls immediately shift back to controlling the projector, which if Echoing near the edge of a cliff or laser beam, will really suck if you do not stop pressing on the stick and accidentally start walking into the hazard.\u00a0 To go from being safe in a place to send out echos to dead due to this control system is maddening.\u00a0 These problems become very common towards the end of the adventure as the traps and guards become more and more populous and the frequency of checkpoints does not increase.\u00a0 I probably died more times in the last hour and a half than I had in the previous five.\u00a0 And, given that last sentence, if length of game is a factor in your game decision making, you might want to add the word \u201cshort\u201d to the descriptive phrase in the first sentence of this paragraph.<\/p>\n

As a sideshow to the action players can collect grubs, because aliens obviously love luminous larvae, and blow up film canisters found throughout the levels.\u00a0 The former can be used on upgrades, like the ability to walk faster, and the latter unlocks concept art.\u00a0 Not all of the grubs are collectable from the outset as players will first go through some areas without all of the powers necessary to get them.\u00a0 Towards the end it is possible to backtrack to get all the grubs, but when the last level begins it is impossible to go back and get everything.\u00a0 To be fair, the game does warn that it will be impossible to go back to the base after the last level is begun, but it is disappointing that there is no ability after the credits roll to renter the base to quickly clean up all the collectibles.\u00a0 Maybe some people will want to replay the entire thing just to get a few achievements, but I doubt it.<\/p>\n

There are also challenge rooms which can be unlocked by finding yellow nodes in the base, or by completing the game and unlocking them all at once.\u00a0 These rooms are in abstract looking areas filled with various mechanical, gameplay elements and players are given a task to complete.\u00a0 The closest comparison to these rooms are the virtual training missions from Metal Gear Solid<\/em> as completing the task of killing all targets or getting to the end of a map are accomplished with only a limited arsenal of abilities and judged by quick completion.\u00a0 They are supposed to train players on how to best play the game, but in reality they are dull and not very much fun.\u00a0 It is not as though the mechanics of the game are so difficult to grasp that separate challenges are needed to help train players to master the idea that this game uses warping instead of jumping.<\/p>\n

Warp<\/em> is a lot like the thing which comprises its title: it does not last a very long time and it goes from novel to mundane quickly.\u00a0 Teleporting is a big deal in The Fly<\/em> as the story involves the genesis of the technology with the triumph and hubris of its inventor.\u00a0 By the time we get to Star Trek<\/em> and Heisenberg compensators have been around for years, teleportation is being used as a cost effective means to transport personnel and cargo over short distances, a dull aspect of everyday life.\u00a0 There are not a lot of levels in Warp<\/em> and while some of the core ideas are interesting, it gets tiresome towards the end.\u00a0 Warping around behind doors and such is not such a revelation that everyone needs to pay a visit to the Xbox Live Marketplace and buy the game.\u00a0 At a certain point there is no thrill of discovery and it is just a question of how you use the tools at your disposal to get to the goal.\u00a0 It is a puzzle game at heart, but the puzzles are not varied as they would be in a truly great game.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fine title with some good moments, probably worth playing if you are sick of XBLA action games, but it does not do enough to make players want to keep warping after the credits roll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pros:<\/strong>
\n+ Little Warp guy is charming
\n+ Warping around and swapping places with items and enemies is fun, conceptually<\/p>\n

Cons:<\/strong>
\n– Controls can be frustrating
\n– Game can get repetitive<\/p>\n

Game Info:<\/strong>
\nPlatform: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade (also coming to PC and PSN)
\nPublisher: EA
\nDeveloper: Trapdoor
\nRelease Date: 2\/15\/2012
\nGenre: Action \/ Puzzle
\nESRB Rating: Mature
\nPlayers: 1
\nSource: Review code provided by publisher<\/p>\n