Warstride Challenges is an Early Access title that features a tonne of extremely fast-paced shooting. If you feel as if blasting demons at breakneck speeds in a race against the clock sounds like a fun time, then yeah, this is the game for you.
Warstride Challenges is exactly what was described above. It’s a breakneck race against the clock to defeat demons and get through increasingly difficult gauntlets. It sounds straightforward and possibly formulaic since there have been games that have attempted this in the past. However, Warstride Challenges has absolutely nailed the fun aspects of this formula and most importantly has made it accessible to a large community of creators too.
Players in Warstride Challenges will take on the role of a pistol-packing demon slayer and race through levels against the clock. Time isn’t the only thing against you and there are enemies as well as traps and obstacles that will get in your way. Completing each level will present you with a score as well as online leaderboards to compete against. Players who are extremely competitive will have a field day with this title since you can also enable a nemesis mode and challenge other players’ ghost data.
Launching Warstride Challenges, you are taken through a series of tutorials first. These slowly introduce you to the game’s mechanics by teaching you how to jump and reach the end of a level. Soon enough you’ll be sliding, shooting, and slowing downtime while racing against the clock. Yup, you read that right. You can slow down time in Warstride Challenges and it’s fantastic.
The time-slowing ability is incredibly useful in levels where you are really pressed for time. Being able to slow down everything around you lets you pull off some quick-paced headshots or do some nimble jumping across perilous spike pits with ease. This is so incredibly satisfying to do and is extremely reminiscent of another fast-paced first-person action game that we loved. Ghostrunner.
Warstride Challenges can be directly compared to Ghostrunner because it’s a similar gameplay formula at work. Instead of adventuring through larger levels though, Warstride Challenges has condensed it down to singular levels each with its own specific timed goals. Players can earn medals in these levels and can even go back to them to play them on a harder difficulty.
Changing the difficulty also changes up the level thus enhancing its replayability factor even further. Players will also be able to use different weapons later on in the game and the types of enemies you will face off against in levels also vary quite a lot. Enemy designs look great and the levels themselves are really well designed with some being rather dastardly but not unbeatable.
Warstride Challenge’s soundtrack features adrenaline-pumping music which keeps you focused on getting through the levels at the fastest pace possible. Being able to instantly respawn and retry a level by pressing a button is a great feature too. This helps to minimise downtime and you can almost muscle memory your way through some of the easier levels while pushing yourself against your own high score or against your Nemesis.
If you’re a fan of fast-paced, challenging games that will keep you coming back for more, Warstride Challenges will definitely appeal to you. If however, you aren’t a fan of games that offer challenging gameplay, you may want to look elsewhere since you might get frustrated at repeatedly failing a level by missing a jump or being killed by a demon. Warstride Challenges might be an early access game on Steam but it’s one that we freaking love and we’ll be playing this for quite some time given how much fun it is to load up a level, blast through it and rinse and repeat in short gameplay bursts. It’s addictive and ridiculously fun and the community aspects of the game such as the level editor round it off as the perfect package.
Developer: Dream Powered Games
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
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