I played a level called Shore Leave, which is set very early in the campaign. If you played Crysis you know that Psycho disappears right before a huge tank battle, having been ordered by command to help out on another part of the island. Shore Leave takes place shortly after that, and it begins with one of Psycho’s buddies, a fighter pilot, getting shot down and bailing out over North Korean positions. So Psycho has to rescue him, and then escort the pilot to safety.
From playing only a little bit it’s clear a lot of things blow up in Warhead. The ASV I started with had a nifty recoilless rifle (other ASVs sport other weapons, such as chain guns), but I could cause even greater destruction by blasting pieces of the environment. From explosive barrels to the gas tanks on trucks to the pump at a gas station, there’s no lack of unstable elements. If you’re in a hurry you can just speed through each North Korean position, but if you want to have fun you can jump out and engage in sandbox battles against the opposition, taking advantage of these kind of volatile triggers.
The nanosuit powers are still the same. There’s strength for being able to leap atop buildings or hurling heavy objects at someone, speed for moving faster, armor for better protection against taking damage, and cloak for invisibility, but Sykes feels a bit different than Nomad. Keep in mind I played a pre-alpha build of the game so this could easily change later in development, but Sykes’ default speed and agility without speed mode turned on seemed a bit more sluggish than Nomad’s. This would be interesting if this is on purpose, as it actually makes speed mode more valuable. In Crysis you usually needed speed in only a few instances since Nomad’s default speed was usually good enough in firefights. Warhead may make the decision between speed and armor much more daunting.
Throughout this entire drive sequence there’s also plenty of stuff going on. North Korean fighter jets swoop low and drop bombs around you, or those persistent gunships show up. About halfway through the map (your objective is a North Korean submarine base) a VTOL transport touches down to recover the pilot, and you’ve got to help the Marines hold off incoming North Korean troops and vehicles. They come from two directions, the woods and the road. Using strength to hurl grenades long distances helps in this situation, but there are also a number of traps that you can set off, causing logs to roll downhill and flatten bad guys.
After fending off the North Koreans and the Marines take the stranded pilot off of your hands, letting you get down to work of attacking the submarine base and getting aboard a North Korean sub. This last part can result in a huge battle, as the base is crawling with soldiers and a tank. Since this is a sandbox game you have a number of ways of attacking the base. You can assault head-on through the front gates or use strength to jump the fence or cloak to sneak through, and so on. Not one for subtlety I used speed to rush up to the fence and strength to leap over it, only to find myself face-to-face with an enemy tank. Speed rushed me to cover before it could engage me with its main gun, and I then used the trusty assault rifle to take out soldiers in my way.
Dealing with the tank is easy if you have a rocket launcher, but if you don’t there’s a new toy to play with, the AT mine. I grabbed one, cloaked, and walked out in the middle of the road. Placing the mine causes you to uncloak, which was perfect since that got the attention of the tank and it rolled toward the mine. I sat back to watch the fireworks only to see it miss the mine. I turned around to engage some North Koreans trying to sneak up on me (the AI of troops is really impressive), and as my back was turned I heard and felt a large explosion, as the tank had backed up over the mine. Other new toys I got to see included the nice automatic pistol (which can be duel wielded) as well as a grenade launcher.
I found the level to be a pretty much non-stop affair, quite a bit different from Crysis which had lulls and downtimes between large set piece battles. In Warhead, you’re propelled from one encounter to another. The game doesn’t quite have the over-the-top intensity of a Call of Duty, but it will still keep you on your toes. That and the sandbox environments will have you constantly thinking, as you can change tactics and approaches on the fly. If the rest of Warhead is like this it should be good news to those who felt that some of Crysis’ passages were too linear.
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