The Warriors

The world seems to be split into three camps: people who have never heard of The Warriors movie, people who have seen it at least a dozen times or more and can quote every line, and people who’ve heard of it but turned the channel every time it came on because they thought it was a repeat of Hair. Count me in that third misguided category.

But after watching the newly released director’s cut DVD and playing Rockstar’s new game based on the movie, a couple of facts emerged. First, The Warriors is a weird movie, but you can see how a true fan might dream of a videogame set in its world of costumecoordinated gangs in an alternate-reality New York. Second, Rockstar really knows how to design a game, build it around a simple yet effective hand-to-hand combat system, and decorate it with cool bonus features. For a fan of The Warriors, it’s heaven; for a videogame fan, especially one who’s looking for a good oldfashioned street brawler, it’s equally as good.

If you’ve never seen the movie, The Warriors tells the story of a near-future New York (which still looks like the past, considering the movie was made in 1979) fi lled with costumed gangs. Cyrus, an infl uential leader who wants to unite the gangs, is killed at a rally and the blame falls on the Warriors. They must then escape home to Coney Island in one night through the mean streets of NYC, which are teeming with opposing gangs looking for revenge.

But to ease you into the game mechanics, as well as the world and all the rival gangs in it, the game starts you out a couple months before the events of the movie. In each mission, youplay as a different member; each an original character from the movie, almost all of them voiced by the original actor. You quickly learn the basic fi ghting moves – light and heavy attacks, grapples, and their subsequent combos – as well as other techniques like sneaking, graffi titagging, and controlling your squad. The fighting is easy to learn and extremely satisfying to carry out. And some really excellent AI (both enemy and friendly) combined with different fi ghting styles, improvised weapons, and two-man tagteam attacks makes for a completely different battle every time you fight. The fighting levels are interspersed with chase sequences and are full of little mini-games around events like lock-picking and mugging that are fun on their own.

The unique, stylized world of The Warriors may not appeal to a lot of gamers; it’s a pretty iconoclastic movie and story. But if you can get past the unfamiliar (though movie-faithful) look, you’ll fi nd an incredibly well-crafted game full of bonus levels, variety, and emergent gameplay that’s as entertaining as it is brutally violent. Rockstar, we expect no less from you.