There are those of us out there that just need some good old fashioned First Person Shooter, run and gun action, but lately it seems that all FPS games being released are based around an intricate storyline or some fancy new “gimmicky weapon”. Warpath brings the intense action of all out war between three different races in the form of three different types of gameplay modes that FPS gamers will know all to well and makes no apologies for being waist high in non-stop action. Digital Extremes and GrooveGames have come together to release Warpath, a FPS shooter that adds a twist of strategy to its gameplay design. You take the role of one of three races that occupy the planet of Kaladi’s surface and are fighting for possession of it. The Kovos have lived on the planet for generations and have always been the protectors of their world. The biomechanical race of creatures called the Ohms, have made it their goal to take over the planet and use its resources for their own needs. The third is that of humans, known as the MAS Coalition, that have decided to make a colony on Kaladi, unbeknownst to them of the war that is raging between the other two races.

The idea behind Warpath is that the three races fight for the planet by ways of taking over a small piece of it at a time. Before the action starts, you are shown the conflict zone, which is a grid of several hexagon spaces covering the surface of the planet, each race taking a large chunk as their own. Each hexagonal region, when selected, will show the attributes it has and what kind of battle will take place on it. The battle will be one of three game play modes: Team Deathmatch, CTF or Front Line Assault. As well, you will be shown the difficulty of the area, if there are any unlockable weapons and how many C.A.M’s there are available. Once selected, you will enter the fight with whichever race you decided to attack and will need to win the fight to capture the section. Once you have won or lost, the other two races will take their turns, either attacking your race or each other. The goal of the game is simple; win all the spaces on the conflict zone and take control of the planet for yourself.

Powered by the slightly dated Unreal engine and the well known Havoc physics engine, Warpath leaves a lot to be desired graphically. There are plenty of maps that you find yourself fighting in and quite a lot of them look very similar. The Ohm maps are all mustard colored, metallic corridors, with blowing sands and floating dust. The snow covered Kovos maps and the industrial Coalition maps don’t bring a lot of diversity to the table and make each map seems like you have already played it previously. Other than lifts that raise and lower you from level to level, there really isn’t much else to break up the monotony of each deathmatch map. CTF maps range from extremely small to midsized, but there are no overly large maps to find yourself playing in. A good example is the Rush map, where the two bases are separated by nothing more than a bridge several yards in front of each. The Front Line Assault maps, which involve your team taking possession of three control points to allow the main generator to be vulnerable to attacks and destroyed, are the largest to be found, and even then, they really aren’t all that impressive. Some maps include vehicles such as the Maverick hover bike, or the three person jeep, which given the size of the maps, is pretty much useless and unnecessary, not to mention the huge learning curve it takes to learn how to drive each.

One thing that all FPS games have in common is the wide variety of weapons and the fact that they are usually unique in certain ways. Warpath falls short in the number of weapons that can be used, with a total of only six. You originally start with only two, but the other weapons of each faction can be unlocked when certain spaces are taken over. The weapons found in the game are of the usual stock; a shotgun, machine gun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher and grenade launcher, each with their own fancy names to cover their blandness. One feature of Warpath that does bring a little life to its weapon selection is the addition of C.A.M’s (Combat Augmention Modules). Each hexagonal section on the map will tell you how many cams are available at the start of the battle. When the action starts, you can press the Y button to load up the upgrade screen and can add additional features to your weapons. The first upgrade costs one cam slot, the second two and the third, three.

This adds a little strategy to which weapons you want to give an extra kick to and which will be used as is. Each addition can add a faster rate of fire, better accuracy or totally new type of attacks, such as the Vanguard Orb, that shoots out a blob of energy reminiscent of the DOOM BFG, out of the Vanguard Shotgun. In addition to your selectable weapons, you also have a sword as your alternative weapon called the VibroBlade. Although it would seem to be used as a last resort, the VibroBlade is one ass whoopin’ weapon and can take out enemies in a slash or two, a lot easier than firing round after round from your pea shooters. Not everything in your bag of tricks is about killing however. You also have a self healing device called an EMAD that you can pull out at anytime to give yourself a replenishing boost of health to keep you in the fight, alive and kicking just a little bit longer.

Up until the final battle, when you have taken total control of the map, you will always be fighting with a team of AI controlled players during the single player campaign. Both your team and the enemy have some of the flakiest intelligence seen in a while. Enemies will run past you and just keep on going, allowing you to kill them from behind and some team members and enemies will just stand around at times for the hell of it. This doesn’t happen all the time, as seen in the CTF and Assault matches where the AI usually does their job, but every once in a while, they will zone out and start day dreaming while they are supposed to be wiping the floor with each other. With AI that blinks in and out of responsibility with high frequency, players may want to spend most of their time with the online aspect that the game holds. When playing either over Xbox Live or system link, you can play 8 on 8 against some real enemies that will hopefully put up a little more of a challenge.

Warpath may not keep your interest for too long while playing through the single player campaign, but if you can look over the absurdity of the computer players, it is a good way to sharpen your skills before bringing them online. Finding players on Xbox Live may be a little easier said than done however, as last time checked, unfortunately, there weren’t too many servers that were occupied with actual players. Gamers that have been looking for a fresh and new FPS shooter won’t find Warpath reinventing the wheel by any means. The strategy of fighting for and taking over enemy territories is a nice feature, but at the heart of the game, the gameplay, graphics and dense enemies don’t make the game stand out when there are many other FPS games, some released over a year ago, that give a much better gaming experience.