What's the appeal?

[Malidictus]

I apologise for such a simplistic question, but... For someone who's never played the Space Hulk board game, what's the appeal of this game? I got Space Hulk: Ascension on discount recently and have hade some amount of fun with it, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of... Complexity to it. Combat seems to always be binary. Either you miss or you kill in one hit. Either you kill in melee or you die in melee. There's no health, no wounds, no ability to tank a few hits. Dorrs exist but for the life of me I can't figure out why. I can close them but all that does is block my shots since Genestealers can just open them. Positioning barely ever matter since the majority of the game is one-Terminator-wide hallways. And it doesn't help that the whole thing runs at 15 FPS when two full teams are deployed.

I'm not trying to slag the game of course. I paid money for it and I'd like to enjoy it if at all possible :) I just don't seem to be able to figure out how to do that. It has the potential to be really cool, but it always seems to boil down to turting on Overwatch and untangling Tactical Dreadnought Gridlock.

[RobOda]

There is HP, for the genestealers anyway. As you go through the levels the nastier variants start coming out of the woodwork. They'll have 2HP. Broodlords will rock along with 3HP.

They'll even use abilities to reduce your toughness by 1/2, or to drag you out of your position, or kill you via their own deaths using acid blood. Immunity to flame effects is another one that can be annoying.

As for doors, they can force enemies to use up 1AP to open them, but if you flame them you jam the door and they then have to waste time destroying it. Some levels have broken doors that are jammed at the start, those are obstacles you need to get by, which can be difficult when 50 nids are on top of you. That's where you start deploying your heavies with chainfists to get through them in double-time.

Positioning is relatively simple, yes, just block off coridoors and lock it via overwatch. It gets harder if you use melee (space wolves) since nids are better, or if you're on a timer or you need to get somewhere. Timed missions are a pain if you just stand about trying to fire away as you will get overwhelmed at some point with early weapons.


As for FPS, disabling the camera supposedly helps.

Btw, I agree the game is rather one-dimensional, once you've experienced one campaign you've seen it all really. I play it as a companion game, just go through a mission or two and then leave it and play something else. Otherwise you'd get burnt out because there's so many campaigns/levels to go through if you're a completionist. =x

[Malidictus]

Oh, OK. I see what you mean. Getting farther into the game would have helped, I guess, but I'm already about, what? 5-6 missions in. I've seen larger Tyranids but I didn't notice them having more health, I don't think. Being able to jam doors would be very useful, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. That would put a significant barrier at my back and is what I was trying to accomplish, but all I seem able to do is open or close them.

And again - I'm not saying the game is bad. I just can't seem to click with it. Maybe I can speed up the animations a little bit that'll help with the "feel," but there seems to be an odd delay to everything. Could be my framerate causing my control inputs to get lost, but I swear I've had to right-click several times to cancel some commands. I'll keep trying, see what happens. My Heavy just unlocked the Assault Cannon, though I can't quite tell what makes it better than a Storm Bolter. Still looks cool, though :)

[dv]

The advantage of an Assault Cannon over a Storm Bolter is the area effect. It attacks three tiles for 1 AP or nine for 2 AP. Overwatch attacks only one target and is a waste of ammo.

The Assault Cannon start to shine with BS5 and targeting reticules upgrade. That requires level 6.

[Llch]

I finished more then 10+ matches (hard to say without stats) and my termos are around 5-6 rank at the moment playing Insane dif (means a LOTS of gens). At first there were no brood lords and such. The game was easy at first. Right now I'm staring at Broodlords with 4 HP/-30% chance to hit/fireproof, Nids with 3 hp AND meat hooks or nids with hooks and acid sacks. I stoped trying to farm exp and started making effort to reach objective before my heavy runs out of Nightmare flamer (vulkan doesn't cut it anymore 3 hp nids are able to run through corridor in flames more and more often) While my fireproof sergant/psyker fighting nids in corridor full of fire to make a path. It's epic really

On side note Space hulk suffers from the same thing that Mordheim suffers too... Game Workshop policy: NO MODS OR COMMUNITY PATCHES WE WILL PURGE AND SUE YOU.
no ifs. And Game Workshop also takes LION share of pure profit (more then 50% in some cases) while doing averything to make development of all virtual franchise even more chore as it is. The only exception is Battlefleet ghotic and Deathwing but only becouse development companies have there own lawsuit armies to butthead with Game Workshop.
Google about Game Workshop policy to virtual games on your own to see range of the problem

[jackx]

Moving through narrow corridors to complete objectives, maintaining a defensive paramter in the process (and thereby killing loads of GS) is the main appeal of Space Hulk.

It's a basic gameplay formula that works well when paired with an intense atmosphere, whether that's the claustrophobic feeling of the Hulks and the seemingly endless horde of approaching Genestealers in video games, or wanting to punch the other player in the face in the board game. ;)

I suppose enjoyment of Space Hulk is as binary as most of the game's core elements - you either like it, a lot, or you don't like it at all.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Llch:

I finished more then 10+ matches (hard to say without stats) and my termos are around 5-6 rank at the moment playing Insane dif (means a LOTS of gens).

I suppose levelling up my guys may help. I have my eye on the Plasma Cannon at the moment, for no particular reason. Difficulty may also be the problem. I play on Easy because that's what the game recommended. "If you're new to Space Hulk..." Well, I'm new to Space Hulk, having literally never played it before. I don't think higher difficulty settings would help, though. Enemies with more health does sound interesting but it's still the same fairly basic combat mechanics dictated by the very narrow corridors. The most fun I've had so far has been those occasional 3-wide corridors where more than one Terminator can fire since at least then positioning starts to matter.

Honestly, I kind of wish the game had fewer Terminators in play. The 4 or 5 from one squad is fine, but two full squads bogs down the turns into endless micromanagement. And we're back to "time units" once again, here called "action points." I never liked those in the old XCOM games because the result is a lot of basic but persistent mental math of "if I take three steps, will I have enough points for Overwatch? Maybe if I could queue up several actions to "test" if I'll have enough points that might not be so annoying.

I'll keep pushing at it, though. See if levelling up at least one of my squads will make the game more interesting.

Originally posted by jackx:

I suppose enjoyment of Space Hulk is as binary as most of the game's core elements - you either like it, a lot, or you don't like it at all.

That's possible. I like the IDEA of Space Hulk, but I'm not so sure on the execution of it. The major reason I even got into WH40K (albeit superficially) was the Space Marine video game and to a lesser extent Dawn of War. I like the overall themes, but this is a bit too much like the board game, I think.

[Kel]

Fair points Maldictus. Space Hulk is a fairly old table top game with old table top concepts which were decided by dice rolls. It was was a pretty aquired taste as a table top game as it is now as a computer game.

i grew up playing chess so you can imagine what a step up Space Hulk was for me.I played it alot as a kid and i still love it today but i understand new players fail to see the attraction with all the new games and ideas we can play.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Kel:

Fair points Maldictus. Space Hulk is a fairly old table top game with old table top concepts which were decided by dice rolls. It was was a pretty aquired taste as a table top game as it is now as a computer game.

I actually decided to read up on the rules of the Space Hulk board game, and they do look pretty tight. I see a lot of that game's design is driven by usability on a table without forcing players to do complex calculations or write stuff down. For example, flamers have 6 fuel. How do you track that? You give the Space Marine player 6 flame tokens :) Space Marines also seem to have only had 4 action points, executed all at the same time, with "command points" on top of that. It's a VERY simple system, wich is what you want in a tabletop game with no computer assistence. Hell of a lot better than the Doom board game where the rules were so complicated I got lost trying to learn them.

I remember trying the original Space Hulk video game that this one is based on and found it even more simplistic and annoying, but that's from the perspective of a video game. When I think "computer board game," I think more along the lines of XCOM's tactical gameplay. That's basically a very very VERY complicated turn-based board game, just one which would be an absolute nightmare to play "by hand." Space Hulk the board game is something I would probably play as a board game if I had a physical copy or if I can find a version of it for Tabletop Simulator. I have a friend who's into tabletop stuff using that.

I think the major disconnect here is between what works as a board game and what works as a computer game... Or rather, what I expect out of either. I expect a board game to be simple enough that I can remember the rules with the help of a basic cheat sheet, which Space Hulk really is. However, I expect a computer game to be complex enough that my overall input as a thinking human being matters more than the under-the-hood calculations.

Thanks for the perspective, though. I really appreciate it.

[Black Sheep Wall]

The depth of this games combat/weapon/skill system beats the ♥♥♥♥ outta X-COM...

You need to level your dudes and unlock some gear.
If you aren't playing on at least hard, bump of the difficulty.

If the game isn't spawning enough stealers to swarm you, then yeah, it's gonna feel pretty weak.

That changes alot when you don't even have enough bullets to kill everything that is moving in a round.

[Llch]

If you want table top virtual game try Armello
XCOM fans try Long War mod, it's f**** brutal