The Warriors - hands-on

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These streets might be portable, but they haven't gotten any smaller

If any developer has proven it can crank out a decent PSP game, it's Rockstar, creator of Grand Theft Auto. After the company squeezed two full-sized versions of its landmark car-crime series onto Sony's handheld, it's not really surprising that Rockstar's PSP port of The Warriors is nearly indistinguishable from the console game released in late 2005.

"Nearly" means a small drop in visual quality, the absence of a second analog stick and the addition of ad-hoc wireless for co-op play, but that's about it.

In the short amount of time we've spent playing through this bleak urban beat 'em-up, we haven't noticed anything that was different from when we played it on the PS2. The open, multi-leveled environments, the deep brawling system and even all the random weapons (trash cans, baseball bats) littered around the environment are represented in force. Nothing's been subtracted, but nothing's been added, either - although that's less of an issue when you consider that The Warriors will sell for $20 when it hits stores in mid-February.

If you missed it the first time, The Warriors smartly adapts the 1978 cult film of the same name into a semi-free-roaming brawler, filling out its playtime with an extensive, pre-movie backstory. As various members of the maroon-vested Coney Island Warriors gang, you'll roam the steaming streets of 1970s New York, building your infamy by tagging rival gangs' turf and stomping their conveniently uniformed members. Along the way, you'll be able to break into stores for a quick theft spree, mug almost anyone on the street and even toss a few punks through a few plate-glass windows.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.