W.A.R.P – Mini Review: Easy achievements in 5 minutes?

W.A.R.P released a few weeks ago and after getting my hands on a copy I decided to dive in to the 2D shooter, that’s heavily inspired by the Commodore 64 era and early arcade machines like Asteroids.

You take control of your ship using RT to boost forward and LT to fire, with the left stick used to rotate, it’s simple but not as fluid as many games we’ve seen follow the Asteroids formula, but W.A.R.P offers far more than nostalgic 80’s era loading screens.

Achievements, lots of easy achievements..

13 to be exact and without too much effort, you’ll be able to unlock them all in 5-7 minutes, on my first attempt, it took about 6 minutes, but on my wife’s account, with the video recording, it’s natural to fly into the walls a few too many times, but it’s still far from taxing.
The following (very lightly edited video) shows you exactly what to do, with each achievement outlined, to ensure you can add the full 1000 Gamerscore.

We decided not to do a full review for W.A.R.P and put a little time into the above video, because its main charm is the easy achievements, and we don’t factor that into a review score, so achievement hunters can disregard the score below,
But it’s available now for only £4.19/$4.99 from the Xbox store.

Outside of those easy achievements, it’s a fairly average shooter, held back by a distinct lack of fluidity when turning, considering it’s based on a 1980’s shooter, it struggles to outperform those titles and trying to turn and boost at the same time isn’t as effective as it should be.

Thankfully the time limits are usually kind enough that you’ll work most missions without being hindered by the controls, but as you progress to later levels, the lack of fluidity really starts to hamper enjoyment.

Overall presentation is about average for a game leaning so heavily on the 80’s era, and there’s some nice touches, such as the overall animations and the coloured-lines loading screens, thankfully, unlike my childhood, you won’t have to stare at them for 5-10 minutes.
There’s 100 levels, as well as a Survival and Landing mode, however it unfortunately starts to feel a little too repetitive and frustrating long before completion.

W.A.R.P is below average as a video game, but it’s still easy to recommend for achievement hunters.

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