Hands On: Defeat Your Enemies From the Inside In Warp

Jumping around to find hidden Grubs is just part of the fun in Electronic Arts' Warp, on display at PAX Prime in Seattle this weekend.
Image: Electronic Arts

Why blow people up from the outside, when doing it from the inside makes way more of a mess?

That’s the philosophy of the little bundle of joy you play as in Warp, a downloadable game for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC coming from Electronic Arts this winter and on display at Penny Arcade Expo this weekend in Seattle. He’s an alien who’s been kidnapped by a group of scientists, and he decides that he’s not going to be experimented upon. Instead, he sets out to gain back the powers that they stole from him, which first and foremost include his ability to warp.

He can leap forward a few feet in front of him with the push of a button, going through doors, walls, whatever. But that’s not the fun part. You can also warp into most inanimate objects, using them to hide from the guards and scientists. Failing that, you can warp right inside of the people themselves. At that point, all you’ve got to do is start shaking the left analog stick to move around inside the scientist’s hapless innards, which will eventually cause him to explode into a pile of goo.

Even better than this? Why, the soldiers are well-trained, and they recognize when their former buddy is about to go nuclear. So they won’t hesitate to shoot him on the spot. So if you’re faced with a roomful of guards, you can warp between all of them, shaking them up a bit to get their friend to shoot them, then jumping right into the next guard and keeping the chain going.

If only Solid Snake had these powers, his infiltration missions would be a piece of cake.

Keep out of sight of the humans! Or just get inside their bodies and explode them. Either way.
Image: Electronic Arts

Besides inducing soldiers into recursive mercy killing, Warp is about learning to navigate through a space with the ability to jump through walls and other obstacles. A small reticule on the floor lets you know where you can warp, a helpful tool. You’ll basically be tasked with continuing to move forward without being shot by guards, trying to figure out how to take down deadly turrets, sneak around alert soldiers and just generally figure out what to do to move on.

Trapdoor, the game’s small Montreal developer made up of (among others) Ubisoft veterans, says it’s about playing your own way. You can murder every person in the game or you can go through the entire thing without killing anyone. And you’ll probably get rewarded for that. Company founder Ken Schachter says his team is “stat-happy” and will record and make note of all manner of player behaviors. As I played the demo, the game noted when I had walked an entire kilometer of in-game distance and killed a certain number of people.

You’ll have quite a few different powers, not just the ability to warp. Schachter threw out the terms “Swap” and “Launch” while cagily declining to explain what each of those means in context. A third power that he did show us was called “Echo.” You can make a little clone of yourself and run him freely around the levels, and he will distract guards long enough for you to sneak through. You might also use him as a lure to get guards to shoot things — like obstacles in your way — that they ordinarily would never think or want to shoot at.

Trapdoor is encouraging players to experiment; to that end, it has placed checkpoints generously throughout the levels of the demo. They’re expecting that you’ll get shot a lot. You’ll want to try anything and everything, because Trapdoor seems to have dropped as many hidden items and goals into each level as it has ways to die. You can try to collect hidden Grubs, try to find a whole bunch of hidden stuff to destroy, etc. Warp will be an obsessive gamer’s nightmare.