Last year’s Xbox Live House Party brought with it a variety of games, from the family friendly Bejewelled Blitz to the delightful HD up scaling of cult classic Beyond Good & Evil. There was no doubt that Microsoft would repeat the promotion this year, including the much-anticipated Alan Wake sequel and the long-delayed I Am Alive. Kick starting the Xbox Live House Party 2012 comes the captivating effort of Warp from Trapdoor and Electronic Arts. It certainly looks cute, but don’t be fooled. This isn’t one for the kids.

Scientists that test products on animals are almost universally seen as cruel. Scientists that test on aliens provide a different “what if” scenario. What happens when the aliens break free? The cute alien Zero has been captured by some humans who want to test things on him, when they inadvertently give him one of his powers back – the ability to teleport. As barebones as plots come, the goal in Warp is essentially to escape the facility while being assisted by a nameless entity. There is always a nuance against humans and testing other species in scientific environments, but that is about as complex as the plot gets.

Zero starts off with no powers at all, but soon gets the rather interesting ability to warp. As you proceed through the corridors of the base, you can teleport into various objects to hide, distract or even burst out of them in a violent manner. If there is one reason why the game isn’t suitable for kids, it is that one of the many tricks you can do is warp inside scientists and soldiers, before bursting them. As the choice is ultimately yours in whether or not you want to go on a massacre, the game can either be a top down stealth game reminiscent of the majority of the original Metal Gear Solid or a top down action-puzzle game.

Proceeding through the base and finding your alien brethren will give you other abilities. The Swap ability allows you to switch places with any object you can teleport into, while the Launch ability allows you to project the object you are currently occupying across the screen. The result of having these interesting abilities is that the puzzles are fairly well designed and boss encounters require more lateral thinking than simply teleporting into them and bursting. There’s just one problem though. The game has limited tricks that it can throw at you, meaning that crafty problems fast become tedious tasks.

Warp is also quite short. While your first play-through will take around five hours, it is certainly possible to get through the entire game in a couple of hours to get the multiple endings. For those who want to explore the base a little more, there are film canisters to destroy in order to erase evidence of Zero’s carnage, while grubs can be collected to upgrade his abilities. You can also collect grubs by doing well in challenges that test your proficiency of the abilities, though you also unlock all the challenges upon completing the game once. There is some variety, but a co-operative mode utilising the same abilities would have made the whole package seem more complete.

When it isn’t raining blood, with guts and gore painting the corridors, Warp has a generally cordial style. Zero and the majority of the other aliens you see are essentially rudimentary shapes with interesting designs. There is one alien that resembles something out of a horror movie, but you only see it for literally a few seconds. The humans range from cowardly scientists to gung-ho militia who are easily bored patrolling the bright and futuristic corridors. Challenge levels have an orange hue, while certain parts of the complex are waterlogged or have alarmed areas that flash red. Simple shades in general, but nothing that looks out-of-place. Warp could have benefitted from a little more variety in the sound department, especially the end credits which have no sound at all.

Beneath the twisted skin of Warp lies, for the humans at least, an eviscerating experience that is beyond anyone could imagine. It mixes both the hide and sneak nature of the Predator films with logical puzzle segments from Portal. The only downside is that the fairly short run-time allows the game to become stale far sooner than it probably should. With a lack of even a co-operative function, there just isn’t enough to come back to once you’ve explored the entire complex and achieved a gold rank on the challenges. There are little minor details that let it down, but ultimately, it all boils down to a full commitment for something that only lasts a few hours at the most. Warp is by all means very compelling, but there just isn’t enough substance within its entrails.