Iron Grip: Warlord – Review (PC)

Iron Grip: Warlord is a game done by a small games company called Isotx and is up for the award of best Indie Game of the Year. The general gist of the game is that you’re a soldier trying to protect your stronghold from incoming invaders, and there’s no shortage of enemies to kill, believe me!

I have to admit, when I first started playing the game I didn’t think much to it, but I plugged away and built up my power and unlocked bigger guns and then the fun started!

The objective in each mission is simple. Protect your stronghold, destroy the enemy. When your enemy’s morale has depleted, you complete the mission. To do this you just blow the enemy, or burn, depending on your weapon, to bits, and in doing so you build up your power which in turn allows you to unlock better and bigger weapons which you really do need when the tanks start rolling in and you’ve got 15 enemies surrounding you and to top it off an enemy confederate officer.

Killing a confederate officer drops your enemy morale faster, so whenever you see one flashing away on the map at the top of the screen, go to him and destroy the parasite!

I started the game on easy so I could throw myself straight into the game and, well, it is fairly easy on easy. You can buy weapons by going into your weapons menu and choosing the one you want to buy with the points you rack up when killing enemies, and when you kill on officer he drops a minigun which is great fun to use and your enemies don’t stand a chance against the might of power you have in your hands!

As for gameplay, my computer is very slow (although not rubbish) compared to what’s on the market these days and I can run the game fine, and although the graphics aren’t the best available at the minute, I still think they’re good. The game uses the Quake Engine and makes everything run very smoothly and doesn’t stutter too much on my computer (like I say, mines a bit of a relic!), and the sound is impressive especially with the bigger guns.

There are 3 game modes available:

• Single player
• LAN
• Online

Obviously the single player is self explanatory! LAN is a Local Area Network game which, if you’ve got your own network, eg. student house, then you can battle together in your house (just clean the bloodstains off the wall when you’re done).

I haven’t dared to go online with it yet because I’m still trying to hone my skills. Don’t fancy dying every 2 seconds when I get on there and made to look a fool! I don’t like to be made a fool of!

To say that Isotx isn’t a massive company, then they’ve done well to bring out quite a decent game that’s good for a laugh, and with the added bonus of online gameplay and the expansion pack, don’t expect to get bored of it in a day or to. Iron Grip: Warlord has quite a bit more depth than you might think.

Because of how small the workforce on this game was, I feel they deserve real credit.

3 out of 5

Ender