Recent reviews by INCyr

Very disappointed with this game. Had a LOT of potential, but ended up being a waste of my time.

The game has an interesting premise, but the execution is sorely lacking. Hacking items gets old, especially since the world resets everytime you exit a room. So that puzzle that you've completed already? If you leave the area, you'll have to do it again. And there's a lot of backtracking. The idea of hacking items is interesting, and kinda cool the first few times, but eventually I just ended up running around enemies instead of hacking them, or just letting them hit me because I knew I'd heal up within a few seconds.

The enemies you DO need to hack (guards, mostly) can be finnicky. You want them to go to a specific location, but often times I'd have to hack them one direction at a time to get them to the correct location. And since, as mentioned above, you have to do this everytime you re-enter an area, it gets REAL old real fast.

Also, there's NO direction in this game. I ended up using a walkthrough pretty religiously, because for the most part, I had NO idea where I needed to go next, or what I needed to be doing. When I entered a puzzle room, I didn't know if I needed to come back later, or if it's something I could potentially solve with the tools on hand. (Note: usually it's the tools on hand.) But they certainly weren't clear about what needed to be done - although once you did it, it did appear fairly obvious most of the time.

And even using a walkthough, I never finished the game. The coding goes from changing values, to starting to do a bit of algorithmic stuff, to indepth coding REALLY fast, and as someone who codes for a living, the coding was either too simple, or stuff I didn't want to wade through to make sense of it. And I know they had to "simplify" the interface for interacting with code, but my god if it didn't make my head hurt trying to figure out what I needed to deal with. But eventually I just gave up, and quit the game.

The final insult? In quitting the game, it crashed my computer - this is one I'm deleting from my library and will likely never fire up again. I can't say I'm at all impressed with any of the games Doublefine has come out with lately, from the unfinished DF-9 (or whatever the hell it is), the "we need more money" Broken Age (which I sadly backed - it's the only kickstarter I backed I regretted, and there were kickstarters I backed that I never saw anything from) and this, which feels like a really cool concept coded up by high school comp-sci students.

tl;dr - Don't waste your money. It might be worth picking up if you can get it for free, but I still think there are better things to do with your time, like anything else. Watch a Let's Play, and you'll get to see the best and the worst of it.

I'm not a huge 40K fan, although I do enjoy the universe they've created. I've tried Space Marine, which had some really good qualities, but ultimately was a fairly large failure of a game. I've tried Dawn of War II, and enjoyed it, but it doesn't feel that much like a Warhammer game - it's more of a strategy game with warhammer skinning. Not that that's a bad thing - it's a very good strategy game (at least, in my opinion), but it doesn't really capture the flavor of 40K.

Space Hulk, on the other hand, manages to take a lot of what makes 40K special - the bleakness, the fight against overwhelming odds - and capture that essence pretty damn well. This comes in part due to the fact that it's pretty much a straight reimaging of the board game of the same name, but that doesn't make it any less fun. In fact, one of the reasons I'm enjoying it so much is that the Board Game takes while to set up, and requires 2 people to play. It can be great fun, but despite owning the board game for a few years now, I don't think I've played it more than twice. Maybe three times. This game, however, has already gotten me more play time, and I've been able to see more missions than I ever have on the board game. And the board game cost $100 - AND you're lucky to find it these days - it was a limited run printing.

This game pits you as the commander of a squad of space marines against a hoarde of aliens - sound familiar? In fact, the original game was inspired by the movie Alien & Aliens. Anyway, you command your squad to objectives - enter a room, kill everything, retrieve some artifact - and then see how well you pit your skills against the oncoming alien horde. And horde is correct - unless there's a specific "kill X genestealers (the aliens) to win" objective, there are unlimited enemies. That's right, they just keep coming. And, to make it worse, the odds are never in your favor. The best you can hope for is to keep them at range and kill them before they get to you, because if they do? It's over. Oh, sure, you have a chance - but not much of one. So you have to plan, and plan well, and even when you plan the best f***ing plan the imperium has ever seen? Yeah, you still need a bit of luck on your side.

This does make it frustrating - but far from impossible. And even those times you lose, you'll learn, and you'll know that it was the luck of the dice, and next time, maybe things will go better. It gives you the freedom to try out different strategies, and take some risks - after all, if you need luck on your side anyway, why not try that risky gamble, in hopes that it'll pay off?

The levels aren't very long - no more than 30 minutes that I've seen, per attempt. Quicker, obivously, if things go really bad really fast. And prepare to lose some guys as well - it'll happen. But that doesn't mean the game is over - your remaining troops can still win the day. And losses aren't permanent - so if a guy dies in one level, he'll be back in the next. Which also gives you some freedom to take risks and not worry - your marines are there to complete the mission, and if that means dying for the cause? Well, that's they're job, and they'll do it.

So yeah, I highly recommend this game. When it first came out, apparently it had a lot of issues, but as of this writing (v1.5) it seems fairly well polished, with the only major complaint is that the animations can be kind of slow. But that's intentional - these are guys in 2 ton armor suits - they're not going to be quick. Again, adds to the flavor.

So yeah, if you get a chance, and like strategy games - I highly recommend you check this one out. But feel free to wait for a sale - I got a copy for $2 in the Summer 2014 sale, and it's likely you'll be able to get a copy for about that cheap again in the next few months, if not during the Winter 2014 sale.