The game is good from my solo perspective. The graphics are impressive and fully bring to life the world of Space Marines in Space Hulks. It's atmospheric, the sounds as you walk along, power amour thumping, metal walkways squeaking, genestealers scuttling above or below you, the quiet hum of a relic nearby, I could go on.
The storyline for the game is typical, eradicate xenoth, save the chapter from disgrace, eradicate more xenoth. I've enjoyed it for the journey rather than the expected destination.
When you boil it down this game is a warhammer themed rush/swarm survival fps. Some Warhammer fans don't like first person shooters, as some fps fans don't like warhammer. From what I've seen, for what it is, it's good, but for me even before getting it, knowing it's development history I new it wasn't a full price buy. I feel that's an under sell but I also feel that most gamers would feel slightly miffed if they get the game full price and are neither hardcore fans of fps's or warhammer.
I picked it up at 50% off and at that price I'm happy.
The maps are large with some backtracking, but there are multiple ways to traverse the maps. Different routes/levels can see you cross paths with less enemies(or more) or you get to find a relic in a side store room to help boost your armoury.
I've taken a good amount of time in the last week to push through the final stages of the game.
Some parts you can brute force your way through; Others you need to realise brute force isn't the way and ignore the xenoth, run to activate a console etc.
If I'd stayed to kill 100% of everything I'd still be playing the game well into next year. The game is good but not that long-term good. Difficulty for the sake of difficulty isn't fun for me. It's why I restarted the campaign after the first chapter and went to the lowest level of difficulty. I am a solo casual carebear after all. If this was the only game I played then I'd welcome the longterm immersive challenge. But it's not and as much as I want the experience there are other games to jump into. Besides even on the lowest level it was hard enough.
There was one annoying escort portion that frustrated me. It wasn't the enemies that frustrated but the tactical skull being escorted. As with all escort missions in all games the one being escorted is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow to move. I wanted to pick it up like a ball and run with it.
Part of the escort is that it has to unlock secured doors. Which seems to take longer than going around the way I originally came. You know the way I just cleared of Xenos... The safe path I carved to get to the escort..... So it's just an excuse to pin you down and see if you can survive a mass swarm invasion within a mass swarm invasion. Swarm invasion inception.
A lot of criticism has been levelled at the game but I think it's current form has surpassed and fixed those. One major point has been the A.I of the enemies being non existent or just set as pure swarm no brainers. I have a different point of view having gone through it. Yes they do swarm on you, it's what Xenoth do, it's what they are supposed to do. I guess some gamers can't see past the muzzle flash. But I've seen a swarm rush getting destroyed then the last few of them change tactic, on more than one occasion the last few scatter, hide and change from swarm to single sneak attack. The enhanced edition adds to the enemies as well as making overall changes. They do run for cover, they do avoid your attacks and they do sidestep close up. So the A.I does work, it's subtle and I like it for that reason.
I like fps's, I like the warhammer universe and I like this game because it combines the two really well. The game has had a long road to get here. It may not have the Xbox version any more but the PC version at a lower price has given a lot of enjoyment. I'm sure the PS4 version will do the same for anyone with that console.
As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe not 40k worth but enough....
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