A Week of 40K

As you may have read Liable picked up the Warhammer 40K Assault on Black Reach box on Black Friday at Paradox. I also picked up Warhammer 40K: Space Marine last Saturday on Steam. I played through the demo and after cutting down a couple hordes of Orcs and ripping the heads off a few especially big ones realized I had to have it.

Thus far I'm pretty satisfied with Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. I think I'm about half-way through it, being only 4 hours into it suggests it might be a little short. Honestly though, I don't mind a short game as long as it keeps me interested all of the way through. I keep expecting to get bored with it. I think I've come across nearly all of the weapons and I think I've ripped the heads off of nearly all of the different types of Orcs available in the gaming. It hasn't gotten old yet. The scenery isn't even that particularly interesting. It lacks much of the detail most modern shooters have.

I don't mean graphical detail. There is loads of that. I mean the details other games integrate into the level design to make the story deeper. Perhaps if I knew more about the 40K universe there would be details I'd catch. The audio logs hidden through out the game tell a couple of different stories and it would have been awesome to see the details of these stories strewn about the environments. Ever since Myst it's been pretty common to do so and recent games like Bioshock and Metroid Prime have used it to great effect. The story is clearly not what keeps me coming back to the game.

My favorite part of this game is getting into hand-to-hand combat with the Orcs. There are 4 buttons used while fighting. The first, left click, shoots the equipped weapon. The second, right click, begins a weapon combo. The third, the "f" button, makes a stun attack. When an enemy is stunned you can use the fourth, the "e" button, to execute a stunned enemy. Also, as you fight a fury bar builds once it maxes out you hit the "t" button to enter ass-kicking mode. The most useful part about this mode is that you don't have to stun an enemy to execute them. The key thing to know about executing other than it's awesome to watch is that it restores your health while it happens.

With all this in mind hand-to-hand combat becomes a series of trade-offs as you try to figure out when to keep cutting, when to stun, and when to execute a dude to get health back. This decision making process gets me invested in the hand-to-hand combat like no other game I've played before like it. In a way it reminds of the satisfaction of catching a guy with the chain-saw in Gears of War but it takes it further and makes it a core part of the game play. A part that delivers and keeps me loading the game again and again. Relic, just like with their RTS games, has shown quite a bit of innovation can happen by just taking what other games have hinted at and running with it.

That's enough about video games lets talk about something more tangible. As mentioned earlier Liable picked up Assault on Black Reach. We finally got a go to it last Tuesday and I've got to say so far I'm not convinced. I thought I'd be more enamored with the sci-fi bits but I found myself missing the magic of WHFB. I guess that's even more ironic because I play dwarfs which don't even have magic but stay with me here. I'm not giving up on 40K yet. I've only played one game so clearly it wouldn't be fair. I think I just have to get my head in the right place to enjoy it more.

Liable and I have a game of WHFB queued for tomorrow afternoon. Time might be a little tight. I got my fingers crossed we'll be able to make it through 6 turns. I guess I'll just have to finish him off in 3.