Doom Warrior is an upcoming gladiator MMO combat game from Creaky Corpse. The idea is to go around fighting other players and NPCs and levelling your gladiator to the tops of the charts each week. Unlike most games these days, Doom Warrior uses the arrows key as a control method (remember when all games did this?). In our preview the game starts off with a short tutorial which teaches you how to fight. You receive prompts in the middle of the screen where your eyes naturally would be focused. These tell you which buttons to hit to perform attacks & blocks. Later on when you’re past the tutorial, you no longer receive attack hints, just blocking ones. They are also moved out of the middle of the screen and to the bottom left corner. Not sure why, but I guess it’s to keep it out of the way of the action. You wouldn’t notice it at first if you didn’t know it was there as it goes away fairly quickly.
Doom Warrior features player housing in the form of lairs you can buy which will supposedly include harem girls, but as of our preview they didn’t have this feature, but rather they had stat bonuses (for a price), clans, in-game mail, in-game chat, and a real money store where you can buy things like the rarer currency type called Darkstones. You are able to purchase equipment including weapons, armor, and shields. There are other locations in the map of Doom Warrior such as the Runesmith. Here, players can purchase runes to place into socketed items.
Doom Warrior is not a game where you can simply power level for hours at a time. You are limited to a certain number of fights per hour. In our preview we started off with 8 fights per hour. You can apparently buy more with Darkstones however. The counter on your fights will refresh when an hour as elapsed.
Other features of Doom Warrior include custom biographies for your character, purchasable locations called Temples where you’ll receive stat bonuses, and power boss-type enemies who are much stronger than the average opponent and have a chance to give rare equipment. In the final version of the game, there will be a storyline with cutscenes & FMV, but this was not yet implemented in our preview.
As we mentioned earlier, there are ranking boards for players to compete to be best. Each arena has one for players and one for clans. For players, whoever is at the top at the end of the day is crowned the Arena Champion. For clans it is a weekly contest. When you win a fight in the game you are given two options to select from. You can either choose Mercy or Execute. Mercy doesn’t do much at all, but Execute will cause your opponent to lose Battle Points (used to determine the rankings) & gold. When your character levels up you can add points to five different stats in any way you choose. These are Strength, Toughness, Agility, Stamina, & Blocking. Characters also gain magical spells in Doom Warrior. My character had a lightning ability for example. There is also magical resistances on certain armor to help counteract this.
During fights you have a stamina-like meter which depletes you attack & cast spells. It will fill up over time and when you successfully block an attack. So you can’t just attack nonstop like in a hack & slash type game. The graphics in Doom Warrior are gorgeous and makes you really feel like you’re in gladiatorial combat, though the stamina meter can make it seem a little slower than it would be if this were a real life fight. But maybe this changes with a higher Stamina stat? One thing to note about Doom Warrior is that it is quite bloody, being a gladiator game. So this is definitely not one for young kids. I mean when you choose to execute an enemy, you chop off their head!
All in an all Doom Warrior is pretty fun even against jut AI opponents. I can’t even imagine what it’ll be like with lots of people playing in the live/final version. If you like the idea of slaughtering people in gladiator style combat, you’ll want to keep an eye on this one. The game is scheduled to be released on PC, Mac OS X, Android & iOS and is currently in Closed Beta.
As of Friday the game’s official public Closed Beta test has begun and you can apply for a beta key on the official website. In the beta version they added in an opening cutscene with full voice acting that explains who your character is and his motivations for fighting. Also in the beta they have seemingly implemented special skills & abilities I didn’t see in the preview version. The arena champion I fought in the above video had a skill where any time I attacked him it damaged me as well, and that is how I died. Another thing to note, in the preview, female characters weren’t yet active, but in the beta they are. Females have full frontal nudity in this game (other gladiators & slave girls), so if you’re offended by this, it’s something to be aware of. Also, this is definitely not a game for kids as I mentioned previously. That’s something else the beta has that the preview version did not, slave girls. Apparently you can rent them or buy them for a little more gold and they will give you stat bonuses. Not sure if you have to have a lair or not as I didn’t have enough gold to try it. Doom Warrior is a pretty fun game if you like the idea of beating the crap out of someone in a weapon fight, gladiator style, which I do, so I would recommend it. Not a fan of the real money stuff, but it is seemingly limited to buying Darkstones which are only usable for certain things, so hopefully it won’t make the game full pay-to-win. To see the game in action, check out the above video from the beta version.