Developer: Trapdoor Inc.
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rrp: £7.99
Released: 21st March 2012
Available on Steam
Played using: Xbox 360 Control Pad
Your ship has crashed on an alien planet. Through your brief bouts of consciousness you see the native inhabitants of the planet picking over the wreckage. They carried you into a building and did… Something to you. Just to make matters a little more weird one of the other buildings occupants has started speaking to you in your head. You’re dazed and confused but one thing is clear, you have to escape these hairless apes.
You play as Zero, a rather cute looking little alien, as he (I’m going to call it a he for ease of writing) makes his escape from the facility he’s in. As you can imagine these ‘humans’ aren’t about to just let Zero leave and will quite happily use deadly force to stop you.
The core mechanic of this game is that fact that Zero can teleport, or warp, short distance. If you’re choose to you can warp into and out of things, or chose to destroy them once you’re inside by waggling the left analogue stick vigorously… This can be particularly messy if you warped into a person.
You view the game world from a top down perspective, usually this is fine but occasionally this perspective gets in the way. It’s clear that Trapdoor Inc have endeavoured to fix this issue and with some success but there are some times where the camera angle can be a real hindrance.
Zero is moved with the left analogue stick, the right alls you to pan the overhead camera ahead. [A] warps Zero to whatever point the dictator is located. There are further actions that require the other buttons but those are unlocked as you play.
Through your playthrough you’re going to find Grubs, these strange little things are a food source to Zero and act as currency for the upgrade system. The grubs aren’t only found scattered around the base, you can also win them as prizes in ‘challenge boxes’. The ones that are scattered can be really hard to get hold of though.
Grubs aren’t the only collectible though, you can if you wish destroy film canisters too. Honestly I haven’t found any in game reason to do so though, from what I’ve read they are a hold over from it being a console title in which destroying them would unlock an achievement or trophy.
To upgrade a skill you simply need the correct amount of Grubs, find a upgrade station and warp into it. Each upgrade has been separated into six categories: movement, warp, frag, echo, swap & launch and other. The upgrade you’ve selected will be given a brief explanation of what it does, how many Grubs you have and how much it costs on the left side of the screen.
At the beginning of the game you can’t access all of these because some of the skills are unlocked as you progress through the game. Each upgrade has a corresponding number on it which indicates how many Grubs you need to spend to unlock it. Generally, each category has only one or two upgrade options, movement for example has one that allows you to upgrade Zeros speed and another that makes its movement more quiet. The exception to this is the ‘other’ category that has three choices, two of which are for revealing collectible a on the map and the other for a faster recovery time after being inhibited (which I would explain but it’s a bit of a spoiler).
The game requires you to have a Origin account even if it’s bought and played through Steam. To top the off the damned thing will ask you to manually login each time you load the game up or if you quit to the title screen. AND to make matters worse, you have to use the keyboard and mouse to do so and even then it doesn’t recognise basic functions like pressing enter to begin the login process… Ridiculous.
Admittedly this isn’t a actual requirement to play the game, but if you have and fail to login you can’t access your session.
The game keeps track of all sorts of things, like how many warps you’ve done, how many steps you’ve taken, and how many people you’ve killed. All of these stats are listed on a global leaderboard, that is, if you logged in.
Warp is a strange one for me, while I enjoyed it, the game was very short, lasting about four hours in total. It just feels like they missed an opportunity to really expand upon the relationship of Zero and his telepathic friend (whom you meet quite early on). The puzzles aren’t too hard but there are sections of the game where you can literally trap yourself in a inescapable loop forcing you to start the whole game anew.
I will recommend it, but with the caveat of only paying at most £5 for it.
If this interests you perhaps try;
Mark of the Ninja
Ms. Splosion Man
Monaco
