Project Warlock Review

Intro to Project warlock

Project Warlock scratches that itch that you get from the old Doom games. The steep learning curve in Project Warlock can be difficult to handle. There is no tutorial to help you get started. When you are a casual gamer or more this should not be a problem. The story is simple-minded and easy to follow. You blow up the enemies before they blow you up. Your death can come quickly in this game, you need to pay attention to what is happening around you. The enemies lurk around every corner. If the enemies don’t kill you, falling off the map or standing in environmental hazards will kill you.

This review contains spoilers

Story

This is my interpretation of the story of Project Warlock.

You begin Project Warlock as a low-level warlock with minimal equipment. You need to fight your way out of a prison cell in a large castle. The guards have become flesh-eating zombies. You also have icky spiders to deal with and blood-sucking vampire bats. When you get farther in the castle, you will encounter succubus demons who will try to tempt you with a good time. Resist their offer or death shall come quick. You will find your way through the dungeon cells and defeat the undead. When you finally reach the end of the dungeon cells, there is but one way to go. You need to go into the sewers. You jump in with hesitation towards what awaits you down below in the sewers. The smell is unbearable and the undead chase you everywhere you go. After looking around you find the exit that leads to the graveyard.

If you thought there where many undead in the sewers, the graveyard has many more. You have recovered some of your injuries from that you got from being captured and tortured. You feel confident that you are growing stronger, strong enough to defeat the sorcerer who had captured you. With this in mind you face the undead in the graveyard. You defeat all the undead in the graveyard to reach the castle entrance. The castle entrance door is locked. All that you feel is a cold icy wind.

You decide to go to the battlements and look for the key to exit the castle. You go through the courtyard to get to the battlements. You find the sorcerer who had captured you in the battlements.

You learn that Satan sent the sorcerer to capture you. Satan sees you as a threat. You use your magic and weapons to defeat the sorcerer. Lucky you, you find the keys on the sorcerer’s corpse. You go back to the castle entrance and open the castle doors to find an icy wasteland.

This icy wasteland is Antarctica. You decide to kill any horror you see around every corner while you explore the wasteland. In your exploration you find an icy cave. You go inside the icy cave. Inside the icy cave you find writings on the wall about Cthulu. The writing shows that Cthulu is sleeping somewhere in the icy wastelands. The writings also describe a special route to enter hell. You decide it is time hell got another ruler, you. Goodbye Satan!

The route to hell leads through Cthulhu’s lair. You quickly continue your exploration through the icy cave. Before you know it you find yourself in an abandoned laboratory. Horrors come out of this lab that you have never seen before. After killing the horrors you leave the laboratory. After a short exploration, you find Cthulu’s lair. You decide to face Cthulu immediately. After a long tough battle you are victorious! As the icy cave writings predicted there is indeed a secret passage leading to a desert.

You enter the secret passage to the sandy desert. Mummies come out of every nook and cranny filled with sand grains. Other ungodly weird creatures attack you. You show them no mercy and rid them of their ungodly undead life. In the distance you see a temple on the horizon, you decide to head there. You need to find the treasury, in the treasury should be the next secret passage.

The temple is filled with riddles and puzzles. In every corner of the temple are secrets to find. In one of these secrets you find the route leading to the sphinx. The sphinx is not an Egyptian statue but it is an enemy. You challenge the sphinx to a deadly duel. After a mighty clash of the titans you are victorious! You feel yourself getting stronger but not yet strong enough to take on Satan. You find the secret passage behind the dead sphinx. Through the passage you see a destroyed city.

If you want to defeat Satan, you need to have more weapon power. to get more weapon power You decide to assault the armory. In the destroyed city robots are roaming around. The robots in the city have tried to stop hell’s forces. There is no sign of human life. You fight your way through the old neighborhood blocks where once lived happy family’s. When you reach downtown there is also not much left of what the city once used to be. Though there are many angry robots. You demolish the robots and continue your journey to the armory. Soon you reach the factory where the weapons were being made. Just as you thought, all the weapons have already been moved to the armory. Why can I never catch a break? You feel that your luck has run out but it is not the time to give up. You continue your search towards the armory.

You reach the base where the robots are bigger and stronger than before. They are no match for your magic and weapons. You fight your way through the robots to get to the armory. You raid the armory and take everything you might need. In doing so you get interrupted by a giant tank. You get ready to fight the giant tank. You use your newly found rocket launcher to blow up the giant tank. Now you can collect the rest of the weapons. You get ready to go to hell.

When you are entering the portal to hell, Satan attacks your mind and tries to control your mind! The battle for control over your mind takes place in your memories. You can see the places you have been to before. Horrors from the depths of hell assault your mind. You resist with your magic and your guns. They have always been your best friends! The first memory is back in the dungeons. You fight your way through the evil influences from Satan in your memory. When you think you have taken back control of your mind, you find yourself back in the icy wastelands. You give Satan no rest and fight him once again for the control of your mind. You can feel the pressure of Satan’s demons. After fighting through the icy wasteland memories, you find yourself back in the desert.

The mummies are back! Along with the many other horrors that are attacking your mind.

You keep on fighting for the control of your mind. Once again you reach the destroyed city. You can feel Satan’s grip loosen. You keep on fighting Satan. You reach a portal at the end of the destroyed city. Finally, you reach hell. Satan is waiting for you. You are both exhausted from the battle for control of your mind.

The battle begins! You empty all your weapons on Satan and use all your magic. Satans followers come to you in hordes trying to kill you.

After a long and intense fight Satan bows before you. You take your shotgun and shoot Satan through his head. You are now the leader of hell, all of hell now belongs to you. You ascend your throne.

The gameplay

The gameplay in Project Warlock is an old school first-person shooter. The developer wanted it to look like a classic first-person shooter game.

Project Warlock has good graphics and uses new mechanics blended into it. This combination makes it a new gameplay style. You can play Project Warlock on hardcore but I choose to play the standard mode. The first level is hard as hell (no pun intended).

You can level up by collecting gold throughout the levels. The gold gives you, weirdly enough experience points. When you level up, you get status points. The status points can be used for upgrading your character.

You will be sent to the workshop after you have completed a level. In the workshop, you can upgrade your weapons and learn spells. You can also allocate status points. In the workshop, you can find a couple of health and mana points but they don’t fully heal you. This seemed like an odd decision from the developers to me. For example, when I had finished a level with 1 health point left, I only got 20 health points to refill for the next level. my maximum health point at that time was around 300.

With a status point, you can choose from the following status upgrades.

Strength: this increases your melee damage.

Life: this increases your maximum health points.

Spirit: this increases your maximum mana.

Capacity: this increases the maximum amount of ammo you can carry.

With every 5 level-ups, you also gain a perk point. This can be used for special skills. For most perks you need to have enough status points of strength, life, spirit, capacity for most perks.

Melee master: every third hit with the ax deals massive damage. The requirement for this perk is 5 strength.
Treasure hunter: all the loot you find is doubled. There are no requirements needed for this perk.
Quick healer: you gain 5 health extra from every medkit. The requirement for this perk is 5 life.
Student: when you level up you get a random status point. The requirement for this perk is 10 randomly allocated status points.
Shotgun expert: Each shotgun ammo pickup gives you 2 extra shotgun shells. The requirement for this perk is 5 capacity.
Pyromaniac: the explosive crates you find contain more ammo. The requirement for this perk is 5 capacity.
Lead Hunter: you find more SMG and pistol ammo. The requirement for this perk is 5 capacity.
Ghost: you can move through the enemies. The requirement for this perk is 5 spirit.
Toughness: increases your health by 30 health points and reduces all damage taken by 20%. The requirement for this perk is 5 life.
Magic potential: increases your mana by 30 points. The requirement for this perk is 5 spirit.
Soul collecter: all enemies drop extra mana when they are killed. The requirement for this perk is 7 spirit.
Sprinter: you will become speedy Gonzalez. You will gain an insane amount of running speed. The requirement for this perk is 3 strength and 3 life.

In Project Warlock there is no tutorial. Nothing in this game will be explained to you. You start with a few low-level weapons and a couple of melee weapons. You can use your computer mouse to fire or attack. One of the weapons, a trident looking one, will use mana when you fire it. When you run out of mana you will not be able to use weapons that need mana to fire. You can charge the weapon to shoot with a stronger beam that penetrates the enemies and does more damage. Hold your mouse click to charge and release to fire. The spacebar is used for the interaction with objects. It makes the first level extra hard if you have not figured this out. In Project Warlock you will have lives. You use one of your lives when you die. You can find more lives in secret locations but if you run completely out of lives, you will start from the last save point. I would like to suggest that when you play this game you keep on pressing the spacebar while you are walking alongside the walls. I have found over 50 secrets this way. Also, be on the lookout for cracks in the walls. You can open these cracks with your ax.

You can enter a level by crossing the bridge and interact with the computer. Select the first level, all other levels are blacked out until you unlock them. Enter the first level and try not to die. Otherwise you need to start over from the beginning of the game. There is no saving until you complete the first level. Each level is broken up into two to four parts. When you get a loading screen it acts as a checkpoint. It took me a while to figure this out because it was not explained anywhere in the game. In Project Warlock there is no jumping, this greatly disappointed me. I feel like a jumping function in Project Warlock would have been a great addition. Just like in the Doom game series or Duke Nukem game series, the weapons you find will greatly increase in power. The further along you get the stronger weapons and spells will become.

The enemies and objects are different in each world. They are recycled in the last world. I did not like this because it did not make the fight with Satan special. There were a few new enemies in the las world. You are sometimes able to see the back of the enemies. This amazed me because this type of graphic styled game usually just does a 2d flip flop. The developers clearly put effort into the graphics.

In Project Warlock are high difficulty spikes. from the first world to the second world it went from, I barely have to pay attention, to what just killed me!? The enemies are able to kill you before you can see what happened. Project Warlock will send 20 enemies at you at once. The game escalates quickly by sending more and powerful enemies. You need to be very careful with what is around the corner.

Something I found to be very annoying is that some of the weapons use the same ammo. I advise you to test the different skills and guns, to find your own style.

The weapons in Project Warlock

Pistol

The small pistol seems pretty useless. When you get the magnum upgrade the pistol turns into a big gun that hurts enemies a lot. Note: the use of the magnum upgrade cost a lot of ammo.

The shotgun

Who doesn’t like the sound of a shotgun? I love it! The shotgun is my favorite weapon in Project Warlock. When you upgrade the shotgun to deal more damage, the bullets rip through enemies.

The crossbow

The crossbow is a very good weapon. You can kill many enemies with few hits. When you upgrade the crossbow it can be one of the best weapons in Project Warlock. Bolts you have fired can be picked up and can be reused.

The SMG

The SMG is a very fast weapon. It uses the bullets even faster. When you get further in the game, you can better save this ammo for the minigun. The double SMG upgrade is fun. It has killed a lot of enemies for me.

Dynamite

It is not fun to put the dynamite down on the ground. There is another option: Throw it at your enemies. Be aware this is a very easy way to kill yourself. It is wise to save the dynamite for boss fights or in case of emergency.

The minigun

The minigun is a mix between the pistol and the SMG. When you upgrade the minigun you will unlock its true power. The minigun will become a mobile turret. You can this mobile turret to sneak up on enemies waiting for you behind a corner. When you are ambushed you can drop the minigun and hide. Your minigun will only save you if you have enough ammo.

The boomstick gravy

This weapon is used like a shotgun. I don’t recommend to upgrade the boomstick gravy. Certain enemies become immune to its power.

The flamethrower

This weapon is very useful but it has a short-range until you upgrade it. The long-range flamethrower is very fun to use and also kills your enemies. Don’t stand in the fire.

The rocket launcher

The rocket launcher blows everything into little pieces, including you. If you can fire without hitting yourself the rocket launcher is amazing. Use the upgrades to fire napalm rockets, your screen will be on fire.

The laser

This is an alien weapon. I disliked the laser beam from the alien weapon in Project Warlock because it felt like the laser did not do enough damage.

The fusion cannon

This is the endgame weapon. I recommend you use this weapon to shoot at Satan. If you have played Turok 1 with and without the chronoscepter, you know that an endgame weapon is a giant upgrade compared to regular weapons.

Magic spells

Magic light

This spell makes the room light up like a Christmas tree. Unless you are out of mana, then you have to face the dark. I have never found a use for this spell. If you have I would like to know where you have used this spell for.

Ice blast

Use the ice blast to crumble your enemies like ants before you. The more spirit you have, the longer the enemies stay frozen. You can one-shot most enemies when they are frozen. The Bigger enemies take more hits from the ice blast to turn into ice cubes.

Sammoner

This spell will summon ammo for you. It can be very useful when you are in dire need of ammo. I have used this spell many times.

The executor

This spell will let you throw axes. The mana costs of this spell are very high which makes this spell ineffective when used too often. This spell is fun to play around with.

Holy guard

This spell defends you from incoming enemy attacks. You need to have perfect timing otherwise you get the full hit.

Curse

This spell is for the experienced players. this is a wonderful spell that causes you to inflict double damage on everything, including you.

Bomberman

It is almost the same as throwing a stick of dynamite. Except you use mana. You will have more to blow yourself up, err I mean blow the enemies up with.

Storm rage

With this spell you become Thor, the God of thunder. Destroy every enemy with your lightning spell. This spell costs a lot of mana, make sure you hit your target. It can help if you have more points in spirit for more maximum mana.

Experiment away and create your own build. Let me know which builds you have tried out and if they worked out for you. I look forward to your comments in the forum.

Pros

• The nostalgic feeling I get from Project Warlock is awesome.
• The graphics match the gameplay.
• You can have both guns and magic.
• Easy perk and leveling system.
• I like the sound of the shotgun.
• There are many secrets to be uncovered.

Cons

• There is no tutorial.
• There is no jumping.
• The overpowered spells can make the game a cakewalk.
• The game throws hordes of enemies at you at once.
• The map has a very confusing layout.
• There is no option to enlarge the map.

What score do I give Project Warlock? …Drumroll…

6.66!

This game was very fun to play. It scratched my itch for a classic first-person shooter game. Project Warlock has a big replay value, where you can experiment with different builds. I recommend this game to everyone that is a fan of a first-person shooter and classic games.