12DOVE Verdict
Pros
- +
Mutliplayer works well
- +
Family-friendly shooting
- +
Up to eight-player vs mode
Cons
- -
Single-player a total bore-fest
- -
Can be hard to find people to play
- -
No blood
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“Water Warfare is the first family-friendly first-person shooter for WiiWare!” proclaims the PR patter. We’d rather be spraying bullets made from alien acid blood into our opponents’ faces, but hey, let’s give H2O a chance. There’s an eight-player online mode and everything.
Chance given. This is trash. Or at least it is in the single-player mission modes where it’s a total bore-fest playing against AI bots. There are 32 missions played out in four different arenas, along with six compulsory ‘my first FPS game’ training scenarios. Feel free to let us know what the latter missions are like as we fell asleep at the remote mid-game.
The online multiplayer mode is where it’s at, and the game plays just like any ‘normal’ FPS does online. There are a bunch of different modes – Deathmatch, Capture The Flag and so on – and loads of different weapons and items to pick up. As in Wii’s recent NERF: N-Strike, weapons mimic those of the real world, with machine guns, bazookas and sniper rifles among your armoury. Hell, you can even grab a pair of pistols for some Halo-style dual-wielding.
Online it’s really not bad at all, with only occasional and very minimal lag when we tried it out. This is providing you can find anyone to play with and don’t mind the lurid environments. Or the lack of blood spurting from sockets where limbs used to be attached.
Sep 17, 2009
More info
| Genre | Shooter |
| Description | Like first-person shooters, but hate all the blood? Well, this WiiWare game puts a water pistol in your hand for some good, clean fun - at least in multiplayer, as single player sucks. |
| Platform | Wii |
| US censor rating | Everyone 10+ |
| UK censor rating | 12+ |
| Release date | 29 June 2009 (US), 26 June 2009 (UK) |
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