New Space Hulk

[Branm]

Camera, animations, muddled ugly graphics, slow and dull gameplay, lack of any tension during overwatch and ofcourse the entire lack of polish and abundance of bugs are things you don't simply fix with a patch. Worst of all, it seems to me the devs simply don't know how to make a good game. Because the most glaring fault this thing has is its utter lack of anything resembling fun.

Which is simply astounding concerning its pedigree.

The game is a very poorly executed translation from the boardgame to a computer game. One done by people who simply seem to lack the skills necessary for creating a fun computer game. Even when they have older, succesfull examples all ready to show them how it was done before. That surprised me and that makes me just shake my head at the thought of this dev making a new JA.

Have you actually played it? I think that RPS review unfair. While it isn't massively polished it IS a faithful adaptation of the board game. After 4 hours in both multi and single I didnt encounter any show stopping bugs either.(The multi game browser blows though but eh that can be improved)

Only annoyance is that you cant skip movment but I don't think its as bad as people make it out to be considering you dont have to wait for your unit to finish moving before issuing another movement command.

 

[Trash]

Have you actually played it?

No. I have a tendency to explode into rage at every new game that's released and write long rants about it. What the fuck do you think?

 

[Branm]

Have you actually played it?

No. I have a tendency to explode into rage at every new game that's released and write long rants about it. What the fuck do you think?

Not sure tbh lol. Last time I played the board game was like 10+ years ago but I don't think its quite as bad as what you are making it out to be. Feels like the board game I used to play way back

Meh... I'm having fun with it....I usually leech everything, but I cant say I regret buying this.

 

[Infinitron]

Dude in the RPS comments gave his own review:

Well I am very disappointed at this review. So here`s a reader wot I think:

Two days ago when I was trying to figure out what time the game would be released, I went to the steam community page and was surprised by a dev post. It was the CEO Full Control talking about everything the dev team were working on before release. As in, they were still working on the game, two days before release. Here’s the post:

“Sliverleech [developer] 13 Aug 2013 @ 5:13pm
Yeah – I’m the “do everything else to keep the production team producing” CEO guy Just ran down to fetch more beers for the late nighters polishing the animations.

Michael is adding secondary animations at the moment to characters so that their purity seals move with the movement, loin cloths move etc.

Ben is testing all the achievements

Lee is adding some polish vfx to the menu when you unlock a new image for the campaign banner

I just did an interview with Starburst Magazine, implemented the vfx Lee made (yes – I also code) and before running off to bed here at 10 pm I just wanted to stick my head in here to answer the latest round of questions.

Tomorrow we are doing the trading cards and finishing the release trailer! Its awesome.

So have a great night everyone.”

Bit of a red flag, no? As much as I respect his openness, it also shows how the game wasn’t really finished at release. But let’s get on with the review.

In short: Space Hulk is an attempt to convert, as faithfully as is possible, a board game into a computer game. It was clearly made by die-hard fans of the warhammer 40k universe. And it sacrifices a lot for this. No character progression or squad selection, slow moving terminators etc.

But here’s the thing: I’m one of those guys that hated Fallout 3. Why? Because I loved the original Fallouts. I hate it when devs don’t trust the original source material. And that’s why I love this adaptation. It suffers exactly the opposite problem. It trusts the source material too much. Pretty much every tough decision the devs faced, you can tell their answer was “ahh, let’s make it like the board game.” I respect that, I really do.

As for the specifics:

-Animations: Incredibly slow. Except everyone forgets to mention that the genestealer animations are quite fast. Its never taken more than a minute for the genestealer AI to process his turn, simply because those cracked-up velociraptors zoom across the map. A terminator, on the other hand, has to spend half his turn just to turn around (as per the board game rules), so the devs opted to make them huge clunking behemoths. And I think its great. Perhaps not great if you’re used to the super fast X-COM commandos dashing everywhere, but terminators are not supposed to be lithe. They look, and feel bulky. Now the devs did try to offset this by allowing you to order multiple units at the same time. So you can give orders to your other astartes whilst the first one moves.

-Bugs: They’re out there. Looking through the community page on steam one will find all kinds of bug reports. Personally I have only encountered two: A specific animation bug where firing on a mission objective shows the terminator fighting into the air (it still registers though, but has caused a lot of confusion for some people) and a serious bug where completing mission six (exiting the librarian) leads to defeat instead of victory. This has stopped my progress cold in the game (which means no one can progress past mission six atm, including mr. Florence). To the devs credit:

“Sliverleech [developer] 1 hour ago
Version 1.0.1 on its way
Hi all,

We are right now working on a bugfix release that will come out in some hours from now.

It will as minimum fix
- OSX 10.6 input issues
- Mission 6 win condition (brown bag is over our heads)
- Mission 4 fixes to logic

And some menu issues found.

Just to let you know what we are working on!”

-AI: As someone who plays a lot of wargames, this is tremendously important to me. New X-COM had horrible AI, and had to employ game mechanics to work its way around it (the free move the aliens get). Empire Total War was/is unplayable due to bad AI. And no one is talking about Space Hulk’s AI. Why? Because its quite good, that’s why. First off its not predictable, so replaying a mission will mean the AI will use different entry points for its blips. Second, it forces you to make hard choices. Let’s say you set a terminator on overwatch down a corridor (something you’ll be doing a lot of). If the AI can’t reach you that turn, it’ll stay hidden, outside the line of sight (maybe behind a door, maybe around a corner). Now its your turn and you suddenly have a very tough choice to make. Do you leave your terminator behind a the rest of the squad moves on? Because if you leave him on overwatch, the most you’ll be able to do is move him one step back. The AI is great at putting the player in catch-22s. And I’ve yet to see anyone mention it.

-Multiplayer: In regular multiplayer, you can’t see how many genestealers are in a blip. In hotseat you can, however, because both players are on the same machine and the genestealer player can’t be expected to memorize the values of all his blips. Not an optimal solution, to be sure, and it would be better if the devs gave an option to hide blip values. Still, its an understandable problem.

-Graphics. Everything looks like it should. Haven’t seen many criticisms of the game so far on this front. Its also worth noting the many little details the devs have hidden away in the game. Purity seals on machinery. Tomes and codexes, prayers scribbled on walls. Bones and scratch marks. Again, not the kind of stuff you notice, but its there, and contributes (along with the ponderous thunk of the terminators) to that Warhammer 40k feel. Also, the excellent first person cam. Whenever you select a unit, on the top right corner you’ll see a blurry video feed of what he can see. It’s great stuff.

To sum it all up: Space Hulk is a game that was obviously released a bit too soon, and as such has some bug fixing to do. That’s the business and I understand, devs don’t control their own QA and all that. Unfortunately this includes a serious game breaking bug that will hopefully be fixed today. As for the actual game, it is clearly obvious that this was designed by fans, huge fans, of Warhammer 40k. It refuses to distance itself from the source material in any noticeable way, and I just can’t criticize a studio for making that choice (it even shows the dice rolls in the message window). I’ve enjoyed it tremendously so far. Just know what it is (a board game adaptation) and know what its not (fast-paced. It’s slow and ponderous, as I believe it should be.)

 

[Branm]

Yeah I can agree with that review... Not sure what people were expecting....They said all along that they are making a faithful adaptation of the board game....

 

[Trash]

And yet they did fuck it up. Fanmade mod Alien Assault started out as a Space Hulk game but got rebranded due to a cease and desist. And that game is tons better than this, despite no budget and lacking the Space Hulk name. The game is not bad because it is 'faithful to the board game.' It is bad because it's lacking in way too many parts and implemented the game mechanics in a shit way. All pointing to a dev who simply falls short. But whatever, I said my say. Go give the game a try for yourselves and see.

 

[Dr Tomo]

Have you actually played it?

No. I have a tendency to explode into rage at every new game that's released and write long rants about it. What the fuck do you think?

 

[Garm]

So it sounds like it needs some bug fixes; options to speed up animations; and an editor (which sounds to be incoming?) and it'll be decent?

 

[Volrath]

Everything is shit

 

[Baalorlord]

Just got my hands on this to try it out. Here are a boardgamer's impressions:

Firstly, as expected, the game isn't 100% true to the tabletop rules. There are a few key differences, some of which affect gameplay more than others. Firstly, once a model has been activated it does not need to finish its movement completely before another model can act. In the board game once a unit uses an action point it must finish its turn before another unit can act (command points may be spent to allow it to act again). This gives a bit more leeway with maneuvering to the space marine player, but more importantly may allow some movement abuses for the genestealer player to deny overwatch fire or the sustained fire bonus. I would have to test it out in multiplayer to be sure.

Secondly, the heavy flamer functions a fair bit differently than in the board game. In the board game, the heavy flamer targets and affects an entire "board section", literally the phyiscal piece of cardboard that contains the target square. Instead the area-effect is a cone template, four squares in length and widening from one square wide at the origin to seven squares wide at the end. The flames extend around corners. The flamer retains its 12-square range, so you essentially shoot a jet of flame that widens into a cone at an arbitrary distance of your choosing. Doesn't make much sense, but neither did the flames being magically limited to a particular piece of cardboard in the original. This change is fairly understandable, since the computer game uses a seamless map and arbitrary limitations on the flamer based on imaginary "board pieces" would be both silly and very confusing to new players. This change means that the heavy flamer is considerably more powerful than in the original game since the space marine player has a lot of leeway in determining exactly where the flames go. I haven't yet been able to try out the librarian's psi-storm, which also targets a board piece, but I imagine it has had a similar change.

Thirdly, the space marine player cannot use command points to react to genestealer movement in any way other than by unjamming bolters, which is done automatically for you. This is understandable since the game would have to stop after every single genestealer action in sight of a marine to ask the marine player if he wanted to react. I can't think of any feasible way to program such a feature. Unfortunately this rather reduces the space marine options, and eliminates the awesomeness that is reaction-fire with the heavy flamer. Clever players can do a lot with command points during the genestealer turn, though I imagine most players will not miss this feature too much.

Overall, fairly faithful to the original game. Nothing I can't see the reasons behind.

As a computer game, Space Hulk makes a few unforgivable mistakes. Patches can probably fix some of these but I'm not particularly confident that the devs will do so. This game has terrible performance issues. As in the video posted earlier in this thread, I suffer horible FPS drops for no discernible reason at all, even on "Fast" grapics settings with AA and Vsync off. My system is getting on in age but there is zero excuse for a small game with mediocre graphics like this to have poor performance on a system that can run Shogun 2 with no problems. Animations are shitty as others have said, but since I was looking for this to be a tactical board game first and a shiny videogame second, it is not really a concern for me. Sound design is similarly lackluster, with the total lack of in-game music particularly damning.

The game provides only the most rudimentary hotkey functions, with some actions having no hotleys whatsoever (such as rotating a terminator) and no ability to customize hotkeys. On a PC-only release! Madness.

The genestealer AI for the campaign is predictably braindead, and tends to simply rush your forces and get killed in the process. As with most game AI it knows how to play and will take the most efficient move to reach your terminators and kill them, but it doesnt know how to win - when faced with an impenetrable defense it will not attempt to build up to a critical mass, block the path to the objective, or attempt flanking maneuvers like a human player would. They also have no idea how to manipulate doors to draw out overwatch shots. As such the campaign isn't particularly interesting and is probably really only useful for practice before multiplayer.

I have yet to encounter any bugs personally, though the steam community page for this game has plenty. Most notably, the victory condition for the sixth campaign mission is bugged, though the devs are already working on a fix, to their credit. Apparently the undo button can be abused heavily in the campaign, since if you undo and re-do an attack the die roll will have a new result, allowing you to reroll your way to victory! I think the undo button is absent in multiplayer, so don't misclick if you're up against a human.

My verdict: If you have a friend who wants to play a pretty cool boardgame with you over the internet, then buy this at Christmas for $7.50 at which point they will hopefully have ironed out the worst of the bugs and maybe even added the ability to customize hotkeys. Otherwise, skip it.

 

[Diablo169]

 

[Brotherman Bill]

The trailer said that 1000 space marines were launched, and 50 survived. Later on the same chapter came back to "avenge" them. Wtf? A space marine chapter, with the exception of Space Wolves and Black Templars, is never larger than 1000 people, as mandated in the codex astartes. If a chapter was reduced to 50, it would have been for all purposes exterminated, and would use millennia to get back to strength, if it wasn't outright merged with another chapter from the same geneseed line, or gone on a penitent crusade until death (much more likely). Given that this is the blood angels, it might be theorized that the chapter they merge with might want to take the Blood angel name for gloreh and emprah-creds, but that's it. And an entire chapter of spehs mehreens would include cruisers, heavy ships, auxiliary equipment, even dreadnoughts and tanks. No way 1000 spehs mehreens could lose that hard.

No major extermination event has been recorded in blood angel history far as I know, so this is bollocks. pirate it and seed until you have completely destroyed game companys profits.

 

[Branm]

The trailer said that 1000 space marines were launched, and 50 survived. Later on the same chapter came back to "avenge" them. Wtf? A space marine chapter, with the exception of Space Wolves and Black Templars, is never larger than 1000 people, as mandated in the codex astartes. If a chapter was reduced to 50, it would have been for all purposes exterminated, and would use millennia to get back to strength, if it wasn't outright merged with another chapter from the same geneseed line, or gone on a penitent crusade until death (much more likely). Given that this is the blood angels, it might be theorized that the chapter they merge with might want to take the Blood angel name for gloreh and emprah-creds, but that's it. And an entire chapter of spehs mehreens would include cruisers, heavy ships, auxiliary equipment, even dreadnoughts and tanks. No way 1000 spehs mehreens could lose that hard.

No major extermination event has been recorded in blood angel history far as I know, so this is bollocks. pirate it and seed until you have completely destroyed game companys profits.

Huh?? Blood Angels were almost wiped out assaulting another a Space Hulk....

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Sin_of_Damnation#.Ug6QrW1dDq4

 

[Haba]

HURRR

Six centuries later,

 

[Dr Tomo]

Stuff

Well it looked like the title was only worth picking up after a 75% sale anyway regardless if it was good or not. Also is there a second opinion that can review the game that isn't all nostalgic about the board game? You review is many times less autistic/better then the RPS reviewer but I prefer to get opinion that isn't all nostalgic over a board game when I never played it and give 0 fucks (pardon) about the board game (never played it/never will).

I see these reviews on the same line as me getting butt hurt over the dow games because they don't follow the same formula as table top and crapping on the game solely on this fact when playing it as a video game it is actually fun. As one of the commenters said in the RPS review, if I want to play a carbon copy of the board game then I will go out and buy one and get my friends to come over.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

The trailer said that 1000 space marines were launched, and 50 survived. Later on the same chapter came back to "avenge" them. Wtf? A space marine chapter, with the exception of Space Wolves and Black Templars, is never larger than 1000 people, as mandated in the codex astartes. If a chapter was reduced to 50, it would have been for all purposes exterminated, and would use millennia to get back to strength, if it wasn't outright merged with another chapter from the same geneseed line, or gone on a penitent crusade until death (much more likely). Given that this is the blood angels, it might be theorized that the chapter they merge with might want to take the Blood angel name for gloreh and emprah-creds, but that's it. And an entire chapter of spehs mehreens would include cruisers, heavy ships, auxiliary equipment, even dreadnoughts and tanks. No way 1000 spehs mehreens could lose that hard.

No major extermination event has been recorded in blood angel history far as I know, so this is bollocks. pirate it and seed until you have completely destroyed game companys profits.

Huh?? Blood Angels were almost wiped out assaulting another a Space Hulk....

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Sin_of_Damnation#.Ug6QrW1dDq4

I am shamed by this display of ignorance. I will prepare for my sudoku.

 

[eklektyk]

simply said it is SHOVELWARE ... no getting around that its a cash grab poorly made and suffering from it.

real shame but as mentioned earlier ther is free and better alternative to this abomination ... [devs clearly are only slightly above browser level of another late delivery from arcania]

 

[Nael]

Here's the lesson: If you aren't satisfied with Dawn of War and it's kajillion and a half mods then you have psychological problems and need help. Not more subpar WH40K games.

 

[Grunker]

Here's the lesson: If you aren't satisfied with Dawn of War and it's kajillion and a half mods then you have psychological problems and need help. Not more subpar WH40K games.

What does an RTS have to do with this game exactly? I have no interest in the former.

 

[Nael]

Here's the lesson: If you aren't satisfied with Dawn of War and it's kajillion and a half mods then you have psychological problems and need help. Not more subpar WH40K games.

What does an RTS have to do with this game exactly? I have no interest in the former.

It's all "klick-klick-derk-a-derk-4-tha-emprah!" to me.

o_O

 

[Misconnected]

Apart from the obscene price, this is exactly the game my friends and I wanted.

If you love SH this is a bargain (the boardgame cost $100, back when you could buy it).

 

[Trash]

If you love Space Hulk you can also download Alien Assault for free.

 

[Misconnected]

If you love Space Hulk you can also download Alien Assault for free.

It's actually a better single-player game at the moment if you use the SH mod pack. The mod pack contains almost all the missions published by GW since SH1e. But those same missions will no doubt soon be available for the new game as well, and AA isn't superior in any other way.

For multi-player, AA isn't an option.

 

[groke]

Are there fat purple throned psyker-aliens or no? I couldn't care less about shitty animations, this is all that matters to me.

 

[Misconnected]

Are there fat purple throned psyker-aliens or no? I couldn't care less about shitty animations, this is all that matters to me.

No. It's a port of SH3e, so there's a Brood Lord which is sort of the same thing [EDIT: same thing as a Patriarch, I meant]. But there's no Patriarchs, Magi or Hybrids.