I think it's fair to say that if you have ever played FPS games such as the legendary "DOOM" or "Wolfenstein", then you'll feel right at home when it comes to "Project Warlock". Nothing but a bloody and gory mess, ghoulish and hellish monsters, and a wide variety of weapons at your disposal await you.
The one aspect about Project Warlock is that it doesn't hold your hand at all throughout the game. While playing on its normal difficulty, I found myself struggling to stay alive and being punished for making careless mistakes. After being on PC for about two years, I think it's safe to say that console players won't be disappointed with this title at all.
The game's story is pretty straightforward, but doesn't really capture my particular interest. You take control of a weapon-wielding sorcerer who is tasked with the job of cleansing five different time periods (eras) of Earth and eliminating different waves/hordes of monsters. At each and every level in the end you fight a final boss, which is extremely brutal and will most likely have you end up throwing your controller at your TV screen.
Like I stated,the story is pretty straightforward, but that's not where the game thrives at the most; that's where the gameplay comes in. The difficulty settings in "Project Warlock" are absolutely brutal. The higher you make the difficulty doesn't only change how hard the enemies you encounter are, but it also changes how the game plays as well. It can vary from making you unable to regenerate health, making you unable to find any health or mana viles throughout the levels, or even an option that makes you start the whole game over once you run out of lives, which I didn't even last five minutes while playing.
If you are a veteran of the "DOOM" franchise, I'm sure you'll do a way better job than me. Throughout the levels, you'll encounter different weapons and magic spells that you can use to dismember your opposition with ease. It almost feels tactical in a way, combining your different powers with your weapons. One moment you cast a freeze spell and switch over to your shotgun to blow the enemies up without even taking damage.
In each of the levels, there are also upgrade stations where you can use skill points that you've gained to upgrade your weapons and abilities. I did find some of the upgrades to feel kind of pointless and not even helpful in the slightest, but for the majority of them, it made me feel more powerful and almost unstoppable.
Looking at the different types of stages, they all have the same end goal in mind: destroying a red demon door to get to the end boss. In order to do this throughout the level, you'll have to collect different colored keys to unlock certain doors matching the designated color. Depending on what type of player you are, it might get tedious after awhile, but the constant waves of monsters coming at you keep the adrenaline rush alive inside of you.
Graphic-wise, "Project Warlock" definitely gives off old school "DOOM" and "Wolfenstein" vibes. The pixel shadings and color scheme fits each of the levels perfectly and sets the mood/tone for them as well. In the games settings option, you can also change how the gameplay looks as you play. You can change the shadow options, color pallets, the blood and gore effects, etc. The "Project Warlock" soundtrack definitely had to have some inspiration from the past old-school FPS shooters. The heavy metal tracks feel just right as your running through levels as you shoot and dismember anything that crosses your line of sight.
At the end of everything, you feel like you could run through the game, but you need to up the difficulty level if you desire a bit more of a challenge. For me personally, I got slaughtered countless of times using the medium difficulty, so I don't know if I would be up for that task. I like TV and my controller too much to do that. "Project Warlock" is a fun and exciting shoot 'em up FPS with a variety of weapons and magic spells. Basically, if you enjoy games like "DOOM" as much as I do, you won't be disappointed.
