Solid Game, Bad Company's Policy
This is an interesting game that is solid, but could have been much more than it is. Here we have an Action game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It is a shooter with third person view. What matters the most for such title are:
- combat - which is generally tight,
- sound effects - which are good, and make the bullets and explosions have an impact,
- weapon variety - in this case it is solid, but could have been better, and I will write more about it,
- level design - which is decent in this game.
Visuals are very good. It has that standard Unreal Engine 3/4 visual vibe, since it came out in 2011. It’s built in Phoenix Engine, but I mentioned UE just for comparison. Character models are well made, and they look the way they are supposed to – giga chad guys with square chins and some metal engravings in their skulls, blasting the Orks. Orkish and Chaos aesthetics are also spot on. They all look like just like living plastic table top figurines made by Games Workshop, but animated and filled with life. Facial expressions during cutscenes look good. The environments are mostly destroyed buildings, trenches, fortresses and towns ravaged by war. Outdoor areas and interiors have that distinctive Warhammer 40,000 architecture style with lots of stone, concrete and metal… with skulls, of course. So, now I can compliment the level design, which is linear and straight forward enough, that it never made me wander around, looking for exit or passage. I was never lost. Often level design in games like these can be overdone, thus ends up being confusing and problematic.
Carried weapons feel responsive, firing is tight, aim is accurate enough, reload is responsive. There is decent number of weapons: 4 ranged types and 1 melee type, that can be carried at the same time. Ranged weapons consists of pistol, assault rifle, sniper and an explosive weapon. Then, there are grenades as well. There is no inventory system, player must swap weapons scattered through the maps. Plasma weapons suck big time. I avoided them at all costs. Waiting for plasma weapons to cool down by pressing the [R] button was never cool in video games. I look at you too, Saints Row IV. Clearly some weapons are superior to other.
Voice acting is solid for all characters. Their voices and voice acting felt pleasant, convincing and natural fit for the Warhammer 40,000 setting and their character roles.
Enemy type variety is good. There is never a feeling that it is lacking in challenge. Whenever the shooting starts in certain parts of the map they are placed in such a way that you never feel too relaxed, just because you are familiar with them. Enemy AI is smart. Orcs do take cover when shooting, and they do take cover when advancing be it melee or ranged. It’s so funny to see melee Orks running left and right to dodge the bullets.
One thing I would like to point out: this game does not use the cheap trick to put pressure on player, and spam endless waves of enemies until player reaches an objective. You can be tactical in your battle approach, take cover and camp if needed, there is always fixed number of enemies, and once you deal with them, you can proceed. There are no scripted events either. Boss battles are exception though, but that is understandable.
Now for the bad part.
Whenever I run the game, it reverts its resolution and aspect settings to the default values. It is annoying to set them up every time I start to play the game. I can’t believe nobody bothered to fix that.
Melee combat is clunky. Sprint is clunky as well. After I stop holding [SHIFT] to sprint, character makes 4 additional steps forward before he stops. Add to that annoying AI companions who obstruct my movement occasionally. Melee in this game is simply not satisfying. Plasma weapons are terrible. I already explained the reason why. At some levels the difficulty spikes up at ridiculous levels. They overdid some encounters with excessive amount of powerful giant melee brutes and powerful ranged enemies. They carried themselves away a bit.
Healing system in this game is atrocious. There is no automatic healing after being wounded. There are no health pickups. Player is forced to perform melee “glory kills” to heal. In order to perform glory kill player must stun a big enemy, then press [E] to execute it. There is a flaw in this mechanic – player still takes damage while animation of the glory kill plays out, and health is restored by fixed amount, not the full health bar. This can lead to death, and it does so often. Sometimes when I left last enemy of the group to heal myself with glory kill, my AI companions killed it. This comes with a price. There are instances in the game where if you arrive with low health, and you face enemies at longer distance, you simply can not make it, no matter what. There is a level where you fight the mechanical turrets, as you progress through the story, and glory kills are not possible to perform, because there are no living enemies to kill. Then player must rely on “fury mechanic”, which temporarily boosts player’s damage, slows time to aim, and restores health. This game needs one additional healing method – stimpaks. On lower difficulties they should grant players three of those, and scale it to at least one on hard difficulty. Healing system alone makes the gameplay frustrating.
Jetpack becomes available in certain missions. It is cool to perform death from above kills with it. While it does alter gameplay in a positive way I wish I could glide forward with [SHIFT] while in air. It is only possible to jump with it. Player can’t stop in air after jump to select landing location, like in Saints Row IV, where these features make gameplay much more fun.
In the last chapter, in the final mission, there was a bug where enemies launched me off the surface of the dreadnaught with their ranged chaos spell. I fell off the map, and had to restart from the last checkpoint. They didn’t bother fixing this after all these years.
The major problem with this game is developer and publisher’s attitude. From what I can tell they did not bother to fix this game, nor improve it in the remaster. In remaster simply put the fresh coat of paint, and called it a day. That is unacceptable. If this game was fixed when it comes to bugs, and had some improvements, I would rate it 4,5. Right now this is a solid 3,5. Since there is no option for half a rating, I will give it 3/5. If you decide to go for it, you can have fun for couple of hours.
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