Arkanoid and Breakout were the more famous brick-breaker videogames in the '80's, but in the same genre less famously was Atari's Warlords. In its second modern reboot, Warlords brings back brick-breaking – or in this case, castle-wall-bricks-breaking – with a visually appealing and colorful rendition, although the gameplay doesn't have the same level of impressiveness that the eye-candy graphics have.No matter the visuals, at its core, Warlords gameplay is simple – protect your castle's walls while taking out the other three castle's protective brick layers. Last stronghold standing wins. Busting through that simplicity is a few destructively malevolent elements: a fireball-breathing dragon that passes overhead and rains a fiery force of burning boulders upon the playing field, and knights rumbling on that same locale, strengthened by power-ups that can be just as catastrophically effective as the brick-breaking orbs bouncing around the screen.
Physics plays a huge part in Warlords. Bouncing a projectile or two around the playing field, the goal is to break down the opposition's fortress walls, and then once that happens, deliver a final "kill" blow by smashing into the castle's front gate and destroying the icon contained within. Knowing angles to bounce those projectiles around into brick-breaking placement is the skill needed to be mastered, but a lot of the randomness of which way the fiery projectile bounces plays more of a role in who wins or loses than the physics-enhanced placement skills of a particular player.
There's some multiplayer possibilities, either cooperative or competitive (including 2v2 and a co-op siege mode), which offers a more challenging game with a human counterpart or two or three. But in the single-player mode, gamers will zip through most levels unchallenged in brick-breaking supremacy. Visually, Warlords is nicely brought into the modern gaming kingdom, with plenty of color flooding the screen. It can get too color-flooded, however, when a bunch of knights are running rampant in the middle of the screen, collecting power-ups that can turn the tide of a battle. It's great in theory to have control over both the projectile-blocking shield and the knights, but it gets much too complex trying to split the focus on two distinct gameplay components, especially with the speed of everything chaotically moving all around.
‑ Lee Cieniawa
The Good:
‑ Visually appealing and colorful upgrading from the original
The Bad:
‑ Hard to focus both on defending your castle walls and collecting power-ups with your deployed knights
Score: 7.5 / 10
