WAR of the AI is a post-apocalyptic Augmented Reality first-person shooter taking place in a world where AI (artificial intelligence) has taken over the world and mankind is being wiped out from the face of the Earth. You need to fight for your survival in a Man vs Machine sci-fi theme.
WAR of the AI is an ARKit Augmented Reality game, but it also has a manual ground detection option as well. You can play it in room-scale where the objects and the enemies appear large or make it small so so you can play it on a table and make the robots appear like toys.
There are five different weapons in the game (i.e. P-50, P-100, P-650, P-950, P-300) there is a six weapon but it has the same name (P-300) so I guess it’s the same weapon with a different skin. I haven’t unlocked it so I am not 100% sure. Once you have several guns, you can switch guns during gameplay by clicking the weapon icon on the bottom-left side.
Your character has a health bar—if it reaches zero it’s game over. You have an option to pick up health packs that drop on the floor from time to time. You can pick them up by just shooting at them with your weapon.
You start with the P-50 pistol and unlock the P-100 as you play. I’ve finished all the six rounds and never got another weapon unlocked. The other weapons are hidden behind microtransactions. Furthermore, if you want to play behind the six levels, you’ll have to buy the premium version of the game. I didn’t buy the premium version, so this review is based on the freemium version of the game. I also played it on my 9.7-inch iPad (2017) just so you know.
What makes WAR of the AI unique is that each level has different filters and visual effects applied, like night vision, snow, rain, etc.I think that the visual effects are what actually makes this game different than many other FPS AR games that I’ve played. I have to admit that it looks really nice and it does make a difference when you play the game.
Having Pretty Visuals is not enough
Having said that, my main problem with the game was that the enemy’s AI is dumb, the level design doesn’t change other than the overlayed visual effects, the enemies are the same, their behavior doesn’t change and if I am not wrong, they all come from the same exact location the whole time.
I did enjoy watching those beautiful visual effects, they are really nice and increase the immersion. However, I just couldn’t ignore the fact that the game becomes stale and boring after a very short time because nothing else changes other than the visuals.
The weapons have a nice design, I liked the shooting visual effects and the sound is not too bad, but the game lacks the feeling of progression, it’s not challenging at all and doesn’t feel rewarding. Building a nice scene and adding beautiful visual effects isn’t enough to make a game enjoyable to play. It’s the combination of several factors, which this game failed to provide in most part.
With better AI, an in-game rewarding system, a more challenging gameplay, maybe adding flying enemies (so the game takes place not just on the ground), different level design for each stage, better gun sounds, various type of power-ups and a boss fight—all those could have made a big difference.
Let’s take a look at a gameplay footage.
I think I could have enjoyed the game more if it was challenging but it wasn’t. You can easily finish all the 6 levels in less than half an hour without even dying once. The game is so easy, that you don’t even need to pick up the health packs, just make sure you look around the scene to make sure you won’t miss those sneaky little robots coming for your legs.
The developer also mentioned a 360-degree playing field, but the fact is that the game played only 180-degrees in front of you. I’ve played all the six levels and there was not even one time that an enemy surprised me from behind or above my head.
The developer also mentioned in the game’s description that you can physically move to hide behind the AR objects, and although it is possible, there is no reason to do so. I can just go “Rambo” all the way and wipe all the enemies out without risking anything.
Take games like AiR monster, ghosthuntAR: Survival and Dragon Power Fighter AR—all those game brought a beautiful presentation, but they also felt challenging. When a game feels challenging, the AI is discerned as a threat and the fight becomes more personal, engaging, intensive, challenging and fun. WAR of the AI felt more like a shooting gallery than an action first-person shooter. In some ways, it’s kind of funny, because the name of the game is WAR of the AI, but it doesn’t really feel like a war when the AI is so stupid.
No, I am not saying that all of those games that I’ve played have smart AI. Some developers increase the difficulty by adding speed to the movement of the character, make the movement less predictable and therefore harder to deal with. The problem is that some developers just add more enemies and get you to a point that you have no way that you can deal with the number of enemies or their speed. So what they do is just create an endless mode where they don’t need to create an advanced AI algorithm so you’ll still have a chance to win even at very high levels as you are going to fail one way or another at some point.
Bottom line is that there are things that can be done to make the AI less predictable and harder to compete with. This is very important for an FPS game, AR or not, and I think WAR of the AI fails to deliver that exciting and challenging gameplay experience.
Conclusion
WAR of the AI features unique and interesting visuals, but those are just overlays. The game itself plays and feels exactly the same across all levels. Having more weapons won’t change the fact that the game isn’t challenging and it doesn’t feel rewarding at all. I still enjoyed progressing to see how the next round will turn out, but at the end of the day, it’s just a no-thrills AR FPS game.
You can download the game for free in the App Store here.