At first glance Project Warlock is just another shooter and that’s why you should play it. It’s a testament to how a simple formula can be special through attention to detail. It’s not going to wow you with innovative gameplay. The enemy AI is from 1996. The skill and level mechanic is good but nothing new. You’ve seen most of its weapons before. When you play it you realize none of those drawbacks matter.
The locations and monsters are diverse and well animated. Each of the five episodes has their own set of monsters, loot, even the health and mana pickups are unique. The flavor of each episode includes unique map designs. In the Ancient Egypt dungeons for instance you’ll run into numerous traps while in Hell you have to navigate narrow pits. It shows refined experience, iteration and play testing. They took Romero’s rules for DOOM map making and updated them to include modern design principles. The city felt like Duke Nukem, the graveyard felt like Wolf 3D and Hell felt like DOOM 2 but I never got lost like in some of those older map designs.
Shooting and melee feel satisfying from the beginning and have some unique qualities. I had to get used to throwing my knife to conserve ammo and charging up my magical staff before getting to the more commonly understood weapons like a chain gun that has to spin up before firing. The weapon upgrade kept all of my weapons relevant too. I stopped using the normal shotgun for a while after getting the super shotgun but after upgrading it to a long range slug I switched to it regularly again. I used every weapon on the final boss and three of my spells.
Of course there’s a few things to complain about – the AI is terrible and I wish the game was longer but I paid $10 for it on GOG.com and it’s worth more than that. It’s a joy to play and worth your time.
MrWynd's PC Gaming Opinions 