Favotie Video Games: The Warriors (PS2) 2005

Warriors come out to play-eee-ay!

Can you count suckers?  I say the future is ours if you can count, and if you can count you might have noticed that the only movies I reference more than The Warriors on this blog are Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian.  I’m not alone either; The Warriors is probably the second most sampled movie in hip-hop after Scarface, and every black dude I know has seen the movie.  This is probably due to the fact that The Warriors is fucking awesome.  It’s one of those movies that all cool people seem to like.  Rockstar games also saw fit to pay homage to the classic film with the 2005 video game aptly titled The Warriors.  Can you dig it?  CAN YOU DIG IT?!  CAN YOU DIG IT?!?  Well, I certainly hope so cause that’s what the rest of this blog post is about.

FUN FACT: All black people are cool.
What about Steve Urkel?
Fuck Steve Urkel.

The Warriors (PS2) 2005

The Warriors videogame obviously takes a lot of its cues from the film, but the gameplay is rooted in the side scolling beat ‘em ups of yesteryear; games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and Streets of Rage 2.  The game’s plot takes place before the events of the film, with the movie acting as a sort of an extended final level broken into different chapters.  The whole thing still feels very unified and captures the look and tone of the film perfectly.  The game is dark and violent, but like the film it never feels brutal or nihilistic.  Both take a more comic book-y approach.  People get stabbed, shot, and Molotov cockatailed, but hardly anyone actually dies.  I do remember however that when I was playing the game my mother took issue with the game’s liberal use of f-bombs (people saying FUCK), but she watched Deadwood all the time.  Oh, “that’s how cowboys really talked.”  Well that’s how gang members would really talk in a videogame version of a dystopian future as imagined in the late 1970’s.  Geez mom.    

A girl portraying the character Poison from Final Fight. 
FUN FACT: The character Poison was retconned into a tranny after it was pointed out that Final Fight's protagonists were beating the shit out of women.
FUN FACT: This cosplayer is all woman, and boob.
 

It’s also one of the best two-player co-op games in the last decade.  Other than Portal 2 it seems that videogame developers have completely forgotten the importance of playing a videogame with your little brother.  You can kick his ass in Call of Duty or whatever but eventually he’s going to get tired of getting the shit kicked out of him and refuse to play with you, forcing you take turns.  Ughh!  It’s not my fault you suck at Doom 2.  What puts The Warriors co-op mode above even Portal 2 is the ability of the second player to join and leave the game at their convenience (kind of like in Sonic 2.)  This Feature is great if you’re anything like me and you have to go to the bathroom all the time.  Maybe I should see a doctor.

"Quit being such a bitch.  Where are you going?... Don't tell mom I said bitch."

I mentioned playing videogames with my younger brother because this game was an important bonding experience for us.  In between viewings of the movie we each beat the game a few times co-opting large segments of the other’s play-through.  I helped my brother 100% the game, and then a couple of years later we started playing the game again and on the hard difficulty we 99%ed the game on a single play-through, meaning we didn’t replay the levels over and over to hit the various goals.  We just played the level until we got them all without consulting a walkthrough.  It’s less nerdy than it sounds.  We just had a lot more free time back then. 

The Chief from Carmen Sandiego was the radio announcer in The Warrriors film.  Finding Carmen Sandiego may not help you reach 100% but it couldn't hurt.

I’ve played The Warriors about as thoroughly as it’s possible to play a game, and I can say without a doubt that it’s one of the best video games of all time.  If you like fun check out The Warriors, if you don’t maybe consider Russian Roulette.  Unfortunately PS2 games will not play on newer versions of the PS3, and the game has not been ported anywhere else that I’m aware of so it might be kind of hard.  Playing a video game from a few years ago might be hard but fortunately in America acquiring a gun is never hard, so there’s always Russian Roulette.  Those guys in Deer Hunter looked like they were having fun, right?

Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!

Congratulations! You've captured Carmen Sandiego.  If you didn't manage to beat the game in 1986 you should know that she just fucking escapes from jail again right after you catch her and the game starts over.  Good thing you learned your state capitols.