Available now in Steam Early Access, Warstride Challenges feels as much of a training aide as it does a game.
As its name suggests, it presents players with challenges, each one tougher than the last. And so it’s by improving your speed, skill and accuracy that you’ll be able to progress, and ultimately rise up the leaderboards. For those who can hack it, Warstride Challenges proves to be a hell of a lot of fun.
Jumping into the first stage of challenges, you’ll initially find that only one is available to you. By completing that you’ll unlock the next, and so on, and so on, until you have a range of challenges available to you. You might occasionally reach road blocks, however, requiring you to have obtained a specific number of medals. But no worries, you can then replay challenges you’ve already beat at higher difficulties, allowing you to gain the medals you need. In many cases, these harder challenges feel like new ones entirely.
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The challenges start out simple, like making your way to the end of a straight corridor while killing a single enemy. But you’ll also need to do it with haste, jumping where possible to increase your speed, and being accurate with your shots. Eventually challenges become much more complicated, requiring you to navigate though areas while jumping over chasms, sliding through gaps, and killing every enemy you encounter on your way to the finish line.
To keep things interesting, new weapons are introduced as you make your way through the challenges, as well as powers such as slo-mo. New gameplay quirks are introduced, too, such as enemies that can only be killed by blowing up explosive pots near them. You’re kept on your toes from one challenge to the next, keeping you engaged and invested in your progress. And to provide even more impetus to push yourself, you can add the ghosts of friends or random players so you can see how you stack up.
Available at a budget price, Warstride Challenges already offers considerable bang for your buck. There are plenty of challenges, and with you being graded according to your performance, chances are you’ll play each of them multiple times in order to aim for the best grade. And it’s in doing that that you’re likely to become a better player, not just in this game, but in first-person shooters in general.
A level editor is also included, so players can create and then share their challenges with others, though it’s very much work-in-progress as this stage. Over the course of Warstride Challenges‘ Early Access period, which is expected to last around one year, developer Dream Powered Games aims to improve it considerably, as well as add new challenges, powers and abilities. A real-time multiplayer mode is also planned.
With the price of Warstride Challenges set to increase when it leaves Early Access, it might be a good idea to jump in sooner rather than later, especially considering there’s a further 25% off until 26th April. It already feels very polished, with only partial controller support being our complaint so far. And let’s face it, most players will want to play with a mouse and keyboard anyway. With a year’s additional polish and more content to be added, we reckon this could become something pretty special.
